Defining Psychological Connectedness - Miles Kodama

What does it mean for a future being to be the same person I am now? How can we claim that someone in 2024 is still the same person they were in 2014 in spite of all the physical and psychological changes they’ve undergone in the meantime? I think the best answers to these questions rely on a reductionist view of personal identity, according to which two minds belong to the same person just in case they share certain psychological connections.(1) (1)For one highly influential reductionist take on personal identity, I recommend part three of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit. If you’d prefer something shorter, SEP has a well-contained introduction to the personal identity literature. On this view—or at least on the version of it that I prefer—there’s no boolean answer to the question “Is this person me?” Personal identity is not an all or nothing relation. Rather, all minds live on a scale of connectedness with my mind. The ones I’m most closely connected to I call “me,” and the ones

What does it mean for a future being to be the same person I am now? How can we claim that someone in 2024 is still the same person they were in 2014 in spite of all the physical and psychological changes they’ve undergone in the meantime? I think the best answers to these questions rely on a reductionist view of personal identity, according to which two minds belong to the same person just in case they share certain psychological connections.(1) (1)For one highly influential reductionist take on personal identity, I recommend part three of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit. If you’d prefer