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Thoughts on personal identity - Joe Carlsmith

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Recently, in an effort to clarify my views about personal identity, I looked back at the discussion of the topic in Part III of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons. This post is an attempt to grok Parfit’s view more fully than I have in the past. Parfit’s analysis is an inspiring example of analytic philosophy as a force not just for clarifying concepts or justifying intuitions, but for radically revising how we see the world. Here’s my description of the basic view that Parfit wants to revise (this isn’t the precise version Parfit gives; rather, it’s an attempt to articulate the view as I find it in myself). We have certain ways of relating to the future that seem centrally connected with what will happen to us. If I learn, for example, that someone in the future is going to hit on the head with a hammer, my relationship to this fact differs depending on whether the person in question is me vs., say, Angela Merkel. The difference need not be about the amount of concern: I might well be

Thoughts on personal identity - Joe Carlsmith Thoughts on personal identity Last updated: 01.08.2021 Published: 11.16.2020 Thoughts on personal identity Recently, in an effort to clarify my views about personal identity, I looked back at the discussion of the topic in Part III of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons . This post is an attempt to grok Parfit’s view more fully than I have in the past. Parfit’s analysis is an inspiring example of analytic philosophy as a force not just for clarifying concepts or justifying intuitions, but for radically revising how we see the world

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