Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:34:57.086Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Asymmetric Personal Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2018

THEODORE SIDER Open the ORCID record for THEODORE SIDER [Opens in a new window]
THEODORE SIDER*
Affiliation:
RUTGERS UNIVERSITYsider@rutgers.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Personal identity is not always symmetric: even if I will not be a later person, the later person may have been me. What makes this possible is that the relations that are criterial of personal identity—such as memory and anticipation—are asymmetric and ‘count in favor of personal identity from one side only’. Asymmetric personal identity can be accommodated by temporal counterpart theory but not by Lewisian overlapping aggregates of person stages. The question of uncertainty in cases of personal fission (and in Everettian quantum mechanics) is also discussed.

Keywords

personal identitycounterpart theoryfissionquantum mechanicsEverett
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 127 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Thanks to Don Baxter, Karen Bennett, Tad Brennan, Phillip Bricker, Eddy Chen, Andrew Chignell, Andy Egan, Adam Elga, Hilary Greaves, Liz Harman, Jenann Ismael, Mark Johnston, Tom Kelly, David Kovacs, Peter Lewis, Nan Li, Daniel Manne, Kate Manne, Luke Manning, Andrew McGonigal, Jill North, Daniel Rubio, Jonathan Schaffer, Josh Schechter, Erin Taylor, Briana Toole, David Velleman, and referees.

References

Casteñeda, Hector-Neri. (1968) ‘On the Logic of Attributions of Self-Knowledge to Others’. Journal of Philosophy, 54, 439–56.Google Scholar
Deutsch, David. (1999) ‘Quantum Theory of Probability and Decisions’. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 3129–37.Google Scholar
Greaves, Hilary. (2007) ‘Probability in the Everett Interpretation’. Philosophy Compass, 2, 109–28.Google Scholar
Hawley, Katherine. (2001) How Things Persist. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ismael, Jenann. (2003) ‘How to Combine Chance and Determinism: Thinking About the Future in an Everett Universe’. Philosophy of Science, 70, 776–90.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1968) ‘Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic’. Journal of Philosophy, 65, 113–26.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1970) ‘General Semantics’. Synthese, 22, 18–67.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1979) ‘Attitudes De Dicto and De Se’. Philosophical Review, 88, 513–43.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1983) ‘Survival and Identity’. In Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 55–77.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (2004) ‘How Many Lives Has Schrödinger's Cat?’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82, 3–22.Google Scholar
Lewis, Peter J. (2007) ‘Uncertainty and Probability for Branching Selves’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 38, 1–14.Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. (1971) ‘Personal Identity’. Philosophical Review, 80, 3–27.Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. (1976) ‘Lewis, Perry, and What Matters’. In Rorty, Amelie O., ed., The Identities of Persons (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 91–107.Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. (1984) Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Perry, John. (1993) The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Saunders, Simon and Wallace, David. (2008) ‘Branching and Uncertainty’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 59, 293–305.Google Scholar
Schechtman, Marya. (1996) The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Sydney. (1970) ‘Persons and Their Pasts’. American Philosophical Quarterly, 7, 269–85.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (1996) ‘All the World's a Stage’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74, 433–53.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (2001) Four-Dimensionalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. (2006) ‘Beyond the Humphrey Objection’. http://tedsider.org/papers/counterpart_theory.pdf.Google Scholar
Tappenden, Paul. (2011) ‘Expectancy and Rational Action Prior to Personal Fission’. Philosophical Studies, 153, 299–306.Google Scholar
Thurber, James. (1939) ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’. New Yorker, March 18, 1939. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/03/18/the-secret-life-of-walter-james-thurber.Google Scholar
Vaidman, Lev. (1998) ‘On Schizophrenic Experiences of the Neutron or Why We Should Believe in the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Theory’. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 12, 245–261.Google Scholar
Velleman, J. David. (1996) ‘Self to Self’. Philosophical Review, 105, 39–76.Google Scholar
Wallace, David. (2012) The Emergent Multiverse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wiggins, David. (1967) Identity and Spatio-temporal Continuity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. (1981) Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar