Philosophy Commons^™

Personal Identity, Psychological Continuity, And Survival, James D. Martin, Dennis Earl

Honors Theses

In this paper, I consider the question of personal identity, namely: in virtue of what is one person the same person at two different points in time? I first raise objections to theories which argue it is in virtue of physical continuity or continuity soul, then argue that an account of psychological continuity is most successful. One might object to psychological continuity on the grounds of reduplication and fusion problems. I argue that strict numerical identity is a bar set too high and rather that survival (construed as the continuation of a first-person perspective) is what matters for personal identity. …