Personal Identity and Normative Ethics

Epistemological monism and ontological dualism, closely parallel philological Postmodernism and philosophical Modernism. As Social Constructionism seems to be a product of Postmodernism from which roots one of its founders, John Shotter now "backs away", "the edge" brings it closer to Modernism. A model is suggested to describe and explain living chiasmic relations on the edge both in monistic and in dualistic terms.

(This is an early draft; an expanded and substantially revised version is published in "Philosophical Psychology"). Eric Olson and David Shoemaker argue that our numerical identity over time is irrelevant to such practical issues as moral responsibility or self-concern. Being the same individual at different moments in time may, in our case, can be seen as the preservation of the relevant biological processes (e.g., according to Olson), while psychological continuity, independent of these processes, may be crucial for such issues. I (...) will defend the view that, contrary to the above authors, any conception of our diachronic identity has ethical implications, at least with regard to the aforementioned issues. My argument has two basic assumptions. (1) The dispute over identity of persons is a dispute over the conditions of our persistence in time as the same individuals, whether we consider being a person as our essential property or not (e.g., Olson maintains the latter). The question is under what conditions I am the same as a particular earlier or later individual. (2) The pronoun “I,” on the other hand, is an essential component of practical reasoning, so also of ethical one. Thus, the debate on the persistence of persons concerns the identity conditions of the individuals to whom/which we refer when planning our future actions, formulating our intentions. My rational self-concern or my moral responsibility for past actions regards the individual to whom the pronoun refers. An additional result of my argument is to undermine the influential strategy of defending positions on our diachronic identity against the charge of controversial ethical implications. It cannot be argued in the case of every such controversy that a given ethical issue only apparently involves our identity, while in fact what is relevant to it is a different relation binding persons at different moments in time. (shrink)

Abstract A man enters the French Foreign Legion under a declared name. A bankrupt Japanese salaryman disappears overnight and lives unregistered in San’ya. A woman makes solemn profession and receives a name in religion. A man survives a near-fatal illness and reports that his values have permanently changed. Each is described in the same words: he became a different person. William James proposed in 1902 that these belong to one type, the twice-born, and the modern empirical literature on sudden personal (...) transformation has largely retained that unification. This paper argues that they are four different operations, and that the difference is visible once a virtue-form is decomposed into three layers — a marker, a practice, and a source. Applying the decomposition to eleven cases of identity discontinuity yields two independent axes. The substrate may be left unchanged, transferred to a new holder, or exited entirely. The source may be left untouched, given, taken, or re-founded. Three results follow. The source can be given and cannot be taken: an external party that takes over an origination does not acquire it but destroys it, producing power with the discipline intact, so “taken” names an inversion rather than a transfer. The distinction between giving and taking is not psychological and not observable in individuals. A monastery and a high-control group may be identical in every layer except this one, which invites a criterion for assessing institutions that adjudicates no one’s truth claims and makes no judgement about how demanding a rule may be. The obvious form of that criterion does not work, and the paper’s own apparatus explains why. Source-protection provisions — a mandated formation period, a preserved right of departure, invalidity of consent obtained by force, fear or deceit — are both appropriable and displayable, so the Capture Law predicts that once they are used for adjudication they are operated by the organisations they were meant to assess. What survives is smaller: a one-sided test in which absence is informative and presence is not, and a behavioural test of whether such provisions have ever been exercised. The account must survive Eileen Barker’s rejection of coercive-persuasion theory, and §9 argues that it does, because her evidence concerns recruitment psychology and defection rates while the claim here concerns provisions in a document. Her finding that Unification Church members were free to leave and did leave is, on this account, the criterion’s primary evidence rather than an obstacle to it. The paper states its falsifier and has not run it. Keywords: identity · religious conversion · new religious movements · virtue ethics · monasticism · personal transformation · institutional analysis Highlights • Four transitions usually treated as one are four different operations. Joining the Foreign Legion, disappearing as a jouhatsu, entering a monastery and being transformed by a near-fatal illness share a description and share no structure. • A source can be given and cannot be taken. An external party that assumes an origination does not relocate it but destroys it, leaving power with the discipline intact. “Taken” names an inversion, not a transfer. • The reports converge because the source is what survives. In every case the layer doing the narrating is the one layer no external party holds — which explains James’s unification without accepting it. • A monastery and a high-control group can be identical in every layer but one. Same substrate transfer, same new name, same replaced practice, same severity. The difference is whether the source was given or taken. • The obvious way to test for that difference fails, and the paper’s own framework predicts the failure. Source-protection provisions are appropriable and displayable, so the Capture Law says they will be operated by the organisations they were meant to assess. • What survives is one-sided. Presence of a provision is uninformative because it is cheap; absence is informative because omission is costly. And whether a provision has ever been exercised is not fakeable at all. • Eileen Barker’s method becomes the instrument rather than the objection. Members free to leave, leaving in large numbers, is the behavioural evidence the criterion needs. • Anonymity is the low-cost substitute for disappearance. Where an institution can suppress a stigmatising marker, the substrate need not be exited. Relevance For philosophy of identity, a structural alternative to psychological accounts of transformation, which separates cases that a phenomenological criterion cannot. For the sociology of religion, a way of assessing institutions that adjudicates no truth claims, examines no member’s mind, and does not treat severity of discipline as evidence of anything — offered with an explicit prohibition on ever applying it to a person. For institutional analysis, a worked demonstration that a documentary compliance measure is captured by the parties it measures, and what remains testable once that is conceded. (shrink)

The main point of disagreement between naturalist and social performists seems to be disagreements arising from and between the expressivist and the anti-expressivist then also the essentialist and non-essentialist. What I will claim is that these debates, as they currently sit, undo much of what feminists wish to accomplish in defining gender. A reformulation of the problems is necessary into terms of internal and externalism before clear progress can be made in the overarching positions I will discuss. Current models focus (...) on the societal ramifications of gender and classify its existence within this framework. This is what I will suggest is an externalist approach to gender. I will also claim that the essentialist debate of thinkers such as Butler present a false dichotomy of choice between the essentialist theories such as gender and sex identicality and non-essentialist accounts such as Haslanger’s, Butler’s, and Young’s. Each of these theories take for granted the external nature of gender due to their commitment to non-essentialist accounts. What I will show is that this move not only lacks necessitation, but also limit’s further solutions to Haslanger’s problems of commonality and normativity. Through a constitutive approach to this debate, we may explain the variations in gender not expressed within current literature. Our adoption of gender constitutivism does not lack ability for social critique; It could be argued that it expands the limitations which plague both the normativity and commonality problems. This approach should serve to better represent the lived experience of individuals within a gendered society and explain the not yet further discussed downstream effects of gender upon identity and Self-conception . (shrink)

This paper argues that there exists a general problem of authority in theorizing about gender. Starting from two general approaches to how one may attempt to define gender, we find two problems of authority emerge. Very roughly, these approaches can be described as the ‘societal’ and ‘identity’ approaches to gender; each of these approaches seem to come with significant tradeoffs to one another; however, both approaches are integral to current understandings of gender. The proposed solution to these clashing approaches is (...) a constitutive conception of gender. This working theory proposes that normative standards, when endorsed at the level of an individual, work to give authority to the ‘practical identity’ of gender. Further, an account of gender in everyday life is given by using the Heideggerian term of ‘thrownness’. With ‘thrownness’ and an argument for gender’s everyday constitution being achievable with practical understanding by an individual, the constitutive model of gender accounts for the role gender plays in everyday implicit judgments and even identity claims without rejecting the existent picture of social construction or gender being understood as a class distinction. With this, one can claim gender as authoritative for guiding action without denying its oppressive social structures. (shrink)

This essay explains, expands, develops, and reflects on the Razian theory of responsibility and identity, focusing primarily on responsibility for negligent actions. I begin with setting the stage for understanding the importance of Joseph Raz’s theory and what motivates it. Next, the essay lays out the theory itself, and offers some elaboration on some of the less developed features of the theory. The essay closes with two critical reflections.

The concept of practical identity is a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy, both in Kantian-inspired models such as that of Christine Korsgaard, and non-Kantian models such as that of Bernard Williams. However, it is not clear to what extent the references to Kant have a substantive basis, since it is not entirely apparent what exactly one should refer to in Kant when speaking of a ‘practical identity’. This, in turn, makes it difficult to discern what precisely a ‚Kantian‘ concept (...) of practical identity could look like, and whether criticism of it is justified. Here, I will argue that Kant’s texts provide us with several useful aspects of the concept of practical identity, which in turn help us to understand the model of universal moral justification that he advocates. (shrink)

A common complaint about Kantian ethics is that it cannot do justice to the social or intersubjective dimensions of human life – that, unlike Fichte, Hegel, or Marx, Kant remains caught within a fundamentally individualistic perspective on practical or moral questions. In this way, the objection goes, Kantian ethics leaves agents alienated from others around them and their larger community. While not entirely unnatural, I argue here that such concerns rest on a mischaracterization of where the most serious problems in (...) this region for Kant lie. Far from being too individualistic, the real worry about Kantian moral theory is that it may not be individualistic enough. In a contemporary context, where Kantian ethics is associated with the “self-constitution” of agents or the “separateness of persons”, the idea that it is insufficiently concerned with individual persons may come as a surprise. But it would not surprise Kant’s immediate successors like Fichte and Hegel. For this is where they often located the deepest problems facing Kant’s moral philosophy. As we will see, in making such points, they were in some ways closer to Kant’s own views than they recognized. Nonetheless, if this is right, Kantian ethics may in fact more anti-individualistic than many of the ethical systems that followed in his wake. And the most radical elements in Kant’s ethics might point, less to Fichte and Hegel, and more to figures like Schopenhauer who sought to develop a synthesis of Kant and ideas from South Asian philosophy. Perhaps, we might say, Kant has been sitting under the Bodhi tree all along? (shrink)

What makes us persons? Is it our bodies, our minds, or our consciousness? For centuries, philosophers have sought to answer these questions. While some believe humans are physical or biological, others claim we have an immaterial soul. This book proposes a new alternative. Selves were formed in evolution through connections and commitments to others when early hominins lived in tribal groups and developed languages. As humans learned to fulfill these commitments, they not only cultivated relationships but also created their personal (...) identities. Their habits of responsibility established their characters and therefore their reputations within their communities. This naturalistic approach proposes that a self is defined by the history of its commitments to cultural and personal norms. While brain processes are required, the self is not some internal, private mind but primarily a role within its community. As technology advances, selfhood could in the future be enabled by electronic, quantum, or other non-biological means. So if a self is formed through norms, could artificial intelligence evolve to have self-identity? (shrink)

On person-affecting views in population ethics, the moral import of a person’s welfare depends on that person’s temporal or modal status. These views typically imply that – all else equal – we’re never required to create extra people, or to act in ways that increase the probability of extra people coming into existence. -/- In this paper, I use Parfit-style fission cases to construct a dilemma for person-affecting views: either they forfeit their seeming-advantages and face fission analogues of the problems (...) faced by their rival impersonal views, or else they turn out to be not so person-affecting after all. In light of this dilemma, the attractions of person-affecting views largely evaporate. What remains are the problems unique to them. (shrink)

There is a widespread intuition that we have prudential reason to discount the value of an event when it is past compared to equidistant in the future, even holding fixed various factors that might be thought to ground our having such reasons, such as the probability, (dis)utility, and so on, of that event conditional on it being past compared to future. It is also usually assumed that if, holding fixed such factors, we retain such a preference, then that preference is (...) genuinely time-biased: it is sensitive to the temporal location, per se, of the event, rather than to factors (like probability or utility) that are contingently associated with temporal location. However, there is significant dispute about whether temporal location per se is normatively relevant, and hence whether it can ground there being prudential reason to have such preferences. Since empirical research suggests that we retain these preferences under these circumstances, there is a question about whether our actual preferences are prudentially reasonable. In this paper I argue that we can understand our actual preferences not as genuinely time-biased, but as apparently time-biased preferences that are sensitive to the degree to which the personal-identity relation obtains between person-stages. Since degree of personal-identity is normatively relevant, a stage has prudential reason to be apparently time-biased when the personal-identity relation holds more strongly towards the future than the past. I argue that this is, quite plausibly, sometimes the case. To show this I employ a degree-theoretic conativist view of personal-identity on which, (a) which relation realises the personal-identity relation relative to a stage is determined by certain conative attitudes of that stage, and hence can vary from stage to stage, and (b) what realises the personal-identity relation, relative to a stage, holds as a matter of degree and (c) the degree to which the personal-identity relation holds between stages is non-symmetric and (d) some affective relations that plausibly are among those that jointly realise personal-identity for some stages are temporally asymmetric: they hold more strongly towards the future than the past. (shrink)

Personal identity concerns the persistence of a person through temporal and qualitative change. The problem becomes especially difficult when memory, embodiment, personality, values, relationships, and future possibilities undergo substantial transformation. This article develops an account of self and personal continuance through the ontology of finite continuance. Its central claim is that numerical identity, psychological continuity, narrative identity, and continuational viability describe analytically distinct dimensions of personal persistence. Finite continuance does not propose a new sufficient condition for numerical identity. It introduces (...) a higher-order criterion concerning the preservation and regeneration of the conditions under which a finite person can continue to generate viable future configurations. The article develops the concept of sufficient structural connectivity through four conditions: historical traceability, organizational integration, causal-operational continuity, and future reconfigurability. These conditions provide a conceptual criterion for distinguishing ordinary transformation from structural rupture without reducing identity to capacity. The article then situates this proposal in relation to Parfit's psychological continuity, Schechtman's narrative constitution of the self, and Sider's four-dimensionalism. Parfit explains important relations of psychological continuity and challenges the practical centrality of numerical identity. Schechtman explains the constitutive role of narrative organization. Sider provides a systematic ontology of persistence through temporal extension. Finite continuance addresses a further question: how the conditions supporting ongoing reconfiguration are preserved or eroded within a historically determinate individual. The framework is subsequently tested through boundary cases involving dementia, radical personality change, and branching. These cases demonstrate that identity and continuance can diverge in systematic ways. A person may remain numerically continuous while experiencing severe erosion of reconfigurational capacity, while substantial psychological transformation may remain compatible with continuance when sufficient structural connectivity persists. The resulting account conceptualizes the self as a historically sedimented, metastable, and finitely reconfigurable process. Keywords: personal identity; self; finite continuance; persistence; psychological continuity; narrative identity; structural connectivity; reconfiguration; erosion; meta-capacity. (shrink)

Background/Rationale. The Niami framework of finite continuance holds that existence is not a path toward a final essence but a bounded process obliged to preserve its own capacity for reconfiguration against continuous erosion. Every being therefore emerges as a provisional stabilization within an erosive field, while constitutive exchange with an environment renders that stabilization possible. Two prior manuscripts extended this thesis independently. One developed a process-ontological line drawing on Simondon, Prigogine, Maturana and Varela, Luhmann, and Nancy. The other developed a (...) phenomenological, daseinsanalytic, and existential-psychoanalytic line drawing on Husserl, Heidegger, Medard Boss, Wittgenstein, and Deleuze. Neither extension had previously been examined in relation to the other. -/- Aim. This article integrates both lines into a single architecture and asks what changes when a structural subject capable of experience, language, and world-disclosure is described through the combined vocabulary of open, far-from-equilibrium systems theory and phenomenological ontology. -/- Approach. The article proceeds comparatively rather than eclectically. Each interlocutor is assigned a distinct explanatory register and assessed along explicit dimensions of convergence and divergence from finite continuance, including direction of process, normative valence, openness, and terminal versus chronic finitude. Borrowed vocabulary is therefore not permitted to substitute for the framework's own normative commitments. Each comparison is also classified as either an analogy, which carries no ontological commitment beyond its source domain, or an ontological transfer, which does. This distinction keeps illustrative and substantive borrowing conceptually separate. -/- Findings. The comparison yields five consolidated results. First, constitutive exchange is specified through four dimensions: recognition, structural position, pre-determinate capacity, and world-disclosure. Second, the threshold of sufficiency and homeorhesis are restated relationally, as environment-dependent properties rather than internal traits of an isolated subject. Homeorhesis is consequently understood as a return to a viable trajectory rather than to a fixed set-point. Third, the criterion for distinguishing automatic, dynamic, and pseudo-dynamic masking is revised through a three-way test that combines dispositional and perturbation-based assessment with a daseinsanalytic examination of whether openness to the world expands or contracts under reconfiguration. Fourth, the article introduces phenomenological reconfiguration-capacity as a concept naming the subject's capacity to alter not only its determinations but also the manner in which self, other, world, body, time, and possibility are disclosed. Fifth, these results are converted into a clinical architecture consisting of a five-domain map of reconfiguration-capacity, a three-stage perturbation-testing procedure organized around the automatic, dynamic, and pseudo-dynamic distinction, and an outcome ledger that evaluates improvement partly through changes in this classification rather than through symptom reduction alone. -/- Implications and Limitations. The synthesis is normatively load-bearing rather than merely descriptive. It does not derive the claim that reconfiguration-capacity ought to be defended from physical, biological, or phenomenological sources. Instead, it treats this claim as an independent practical commitment that the comparative analysis clarifies and develops without pretending to derive it. The clinical vocabulary developed here, including erosive governance, automatic and dynamic masking, and phenomenological reconfiguration-capacity, is offered at the level of existential-structural description consistent with the Daseinsanalytic tradition. It is not presented as a substitute for empirically validated diagnostic or therapeutic protocols. The article closes by identifying this limitation and specifying the political and clinical manuscripts required to carry the framework's empirical and evidentiary burden forward. -/- Highlights -/- • Unifies two previously separate extensions of finite continuance: a process-ontological line involving Simondon, Prigogine, autopoiesis, Luhmann, and Nancy, and a phenomenological-daseinsanalytic line involving Husserl, Heidegger, Boss, Wittgenstein, and Deleuze. -/- • Specifies what is exchanged in constitutive exchange: recognition, structural position, pre-determinate capacity, and world-disclosure. -/- • Restates the threshold of sufficiency and homeorhesis as relational and environment-dependent properties rather than internal traits of an isolated subject. -/- • Refines the perturbation-based criterion for automatic and dynamic masking by introducing pseudo-dynamic masking and adding a daseinsanalytic test of world-openness. -/- • Introduces phenomenological reconfiguration-capacity as an integrative concept linking ontology, clinical theory, and the post-monopoly human as a regulative ideal. -/- • Distinguishes illustrative analogy from substantive ontological transfer throughout the comparative architecture. -/- • Converts the clinical discussion into an applied architecture consisting of a five-domain map, a three-stage perturbation-testing procedure, and an outcome ledger. -/- Keywords: Finite Continuance; Provisional Stabilization; Erosive Field; Constitutive Exchange; Determination Regulation; Homeorhesis; Threshold of Sufficiency; Structural Subjectivity; Phenomenology; Daseinsanalysis; Medard Boss; Husserl; Heidegger; Wittgenstein; Deleuze; Simondon; Prigogine; Autopoiesis; Luhmann; Nancy; Existential Psychoanalysis; Reconfiguration-Capacity; Post-Monopoly Human; Erosive Governance; Psychological Suffering; Ontological Transfer; Clinical Architecture. -/- . 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In this article I present a characterization of the right to mental integrity (RMI), expanding and refining the definition proposed by Ienca and Andorno’s (Life Science Society Policy 13 5, 2017) and clarifying how the scope of this right should be shaped in cases of cognitive extension (EXT). In doing so, I will first critically survey the different formulations of the RMI presented in the literature. I will then argue that the RMI protects from i) nonconsensual interferences that ii) bypass (...) reasoning and iii) produce mental harm. Contrary to other definitions proposed in the literature, my formulation disentangles the RMI from the right to cognitive liberty (RCL) (Lavazza in Frontiers Neuroscience 12 82, 2018), the right to mental privacy (RMP) (Lavazza and Giorgi in Neuroethics 16 (1): 1-13, 2023), and the right to psychological continuity (RPC) (Zohny et al. in Neuroethics 16: 20, 2023), thus enabling a fine-grained assessment of their simultaneous or individual violation. Finally, I analyse how the extended mind thesis (EXT) reshapes the scope of the RMI, proposing a layered protection of extended mental integrity, which grants stronger protection to the organism-bound cognitive system and self in case of manipulative influences of the mind-extending device. To conclude, I present a variety of neurorights violations and mental harms inflicted to organism-bound and cognitively extended agents. (shrink)

This essay addresses personal identity and its role in sustaining moral responsibility. Against reductionist accounts, namely Derek Parfit’s, which tie identity to degrees of psychological continuity, I argue that such views weaken the foundations of responsibility and risk, rendering practices like blame, praise, and obligation incoherent. If identity dissolves with psychological change, responsibility for past wrongs becomes negotiable, undermining ethical life. To respond to this danger, I develop the idea of the normative self: an identity constituted through the integration of (...) past actions, present commitments, and future aspirations within a coherent narrative. Unlike reductionist models, this account does not merely approximate but in fact captures how selfhood is lived and understood—both from the first-person perspective of individuals who take ownership of their lives and from the third-person perspective of communities that hold one another responsible. Descriptive or reductionist models, I argue, ultimately fail precisely because they cannot adequately explain this dual orientation. I conclude that it is only by conceiving the self as normative that our practices of accountability, recognition, and renewal make coherent sense. Methodologically, I combine analytic critique with narrative and phenomenological approaches, engaging Parfit and Bernard Williams and testing their theories against real and hypothetical cases of wrongdoing, reform, and accountability. The result is a conception of the self that secures responsibility as both backward- and forward-looking, grounding our moral realities in a structure that preserves stability while enabling transformation. (shrink)

In his early works, Derek Parfit famously defended revisionary reductionism about personhood. According to this view, facts about personal identity consist in the holding of more particular psychological facts, which can be described wholly impersonally. He also argued that, in some cases, the truth of this view makes questions about diachronic personal identity empty questions to which no meaningful answers can be given. Yet, in his later works, Parfit defends several ethical theories such as contractualism and rule-consequentialism, which seem to (...) rely on exactly the kind of determinate notion of personal identity to which he objected earlier. Parfit, furthermore, never explored reductionism’s consequences for such theories in his later works. In order to solve this interpretative puzzle, this chapter tries to argue that, even if they are seemingly conflicting, Parfit’s views on personal identity and rule-consequentialism, Scanlonian contractualism, and Kantian contractualism do form a coherent and unified whole. (shrink)

Critical-set views avoid the Repugnant Conclusion by subtracting some constant from the welfare score of each life in a population. These views are thus sensitive to facts about biographical identity: identity between lives. In this paper, I argue that questions of biographical identity give us reason to reject critical-set views and embrace the total view. I end with a practical implication. If we shift our credences towards the total view, we should also shift our efforts towards ensuring that humanity survives (...) for the long term. (shrink)

The central claim here is that the self is an emergent experiential, information processing and behavioral system that arises reflexively in the conscious subject and a body setting that is organized and primed with many of the required processes in place. These processes and their associated functions represent our world as coherent and temporally unified within the construct of a developing and roughly continuous experiencer-agent, or self. These representations are not, however, copies of the external world. In this way, selves (...) develop as temporal subjects; as active and complex informational, dispositional, belief-driven and memory-driven configurations of mental states with unique (personal) properties that interact. They are robust and pivotal subsystems of our global mental organization and are suffused with the phenomenality of perception. As constructs in internal and external time, selves have histories, memories, beliefs, skills, cognitive capacities, attitudes, standpoints, social and emotional equities, pre-dispositions and default responses. Yet they are neither causally nor ontologically reducible to their embodied physical states. They are, rather, implemented in them. The body, I maintain, is a necessary but insufficient condition for the occurrence of a self. (shrink)

Derek Parfit influentially defends reductionism about persons, the view that a person’s existence just consists in the existence of a brain and body and the occurrence of a series of physical and mental events. Yet some critics, particularly Mark Johnston, have raised powerful objections to Parfit’s reductionism. In this paper, I defend reductionism against Johnston. In particular, I defend a radical form of reductionism that Buddhist philosophers developed. Buddhist reductionism can justify key features of Parfit’s position, such as the claims (...) that personal identity is not what matters and can also be indeterminate. Furthermore, Buddhist reductionism can avoid Johnston’s objections to Parfit’s reductionism. I conclude that reductionists have good reasons to favor Buddhist reductionism over Parfit’s version. (shrink)

The Problem of Too Many Thinkers is the result, implied by several “permissive” ontologies, that we spatiotemporally overlap with a number of intrinsically person-like entities. The problem, as usually formulated, leaves open a much-neglected question: do we literally share our mental lives, i.e. each of our mental states, with these person-like entities, or do we instead enjoy mental lives that are qualitatively indistinguishable but numerically distinct from theirs? The latter option raises the worry that there is an additional Problem of (...) Too Many Mental Tokens. This paper argues that there is indeed such a problem, at least in fission cases. In the course of articulating this problem, we will make a number of surprising discoveries about the relationship between personal persistence and the metaphysics of mental entities. We will also see that the Problem of Too Many Mental Tokens has significant epistemological and ethical implications, which will haunt us even once we have addressed the Problem of Too Many Thinkers. (shrink)

A theory of blameworthiness must answer two fundamental questions. First, what makes a person blameworthy when they act? Secondly, what makes a person blameworthy after the time of action? Two main answers have been given to the second question. According to interminability theorists, blameworthiness necessarily doesn't even diminish over time. Terminability theorists deny this. In this paper, I argue against interminability and in favour of terminability. After clarifying the debate about whether blameworthiness is interminable or terminable, I argue there's no (...) positive case for interminability. I then respond to three objections to terminability. In doing so, I clarify the nature of blame, self-blame, and posthumous blame. I also give theoretical reasons in favour of the view that a person's blameworthiness for a minor wrong can not only diminish but also cease completely. (shrink)

According to conventionalist or conativist views about personal-identity, utterances of personal-identity sentences express propositions that are, in part, made true by the conative attitudes of relevant persons-stages. In this paper I introduce assessor relative conativism: the view that a personal-identity proposition can be true when evaluated at one person-stage's context and false when evaluated at another person-stage's context, because person-stages have different patterns of conative attitudes. I present several reasons to embrace assessor relative conativism over its more familiar realizer relative (...) cousin. (shrink)

In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.

Let’s say that an act requires Person-Affecting Justification if and only if some alternative would have been better for someone. So, Lucifer breaking Xavier’s back requires Person-Affecting Justification because the alternative would have been better for Xavier. But the story continues: While Lucifer evades justice, Xavier moves on and founds a school for gifted children. Xavier’s deepest values become identified with the school and its community. When authorities catch Lucifer, he claims no Person-Affecting Justification is needed: because the attack set (...) Xavier on his life’s path, it’s no longer true that the alternative would have been better by the standard of what Xavier now values most. An unappealingly paternalistic way to hold Lucifer to account is to discount Xavier’s preferences as merely adaptive. Instead, I propose understanding the persons of Person-Affecting Justification to be not persons but person stages. This allows us to hold Lucifer to account without having to discount Xavier’s actual preferences, and has interesting implications for compensatory justice, including making sense of reparations for historical wrongs. (shrink)

Santideva's 8th century Mahayana Buddhist classic, the Guide to the Practices of Awakening (Bodhicaryavatara), has been a source of philosophical inspiration in the Indian and Tibetan traditions for over a thousand years. Stephen Harris guides us through a philosophical exploration of Santideva's masterpiece, introducing us to his understanding of the compassionate bodhisattva, who vows to liberate the entire universe from suffering. Individual chapters provide studies of the bodhisattva virtues of generosity, patience, compassion, and wisdom, illustrating the role each plays in (...) Santideva's account of well-being and moral development. Harris also provides in-depth analysis of many of Santideva's most influential arguments, demonstrating how he employs reasoning as a method to cultivate moral character. (shrink)

La intuición de que uno sólo puede ser responsable de sus propios actos es extraordinariamente fuerte y parece establecer un vínculo entre la identidad personal y la responsabilidad moral. Las teorías neo-lockeanas de la identidad personal obtienen parte de su atractivo por su capacidad para dar cuenta de dicho vínculo. En este artículo analizo cómo el problema de la duplicación para las teorías neo-lockeanas afecta a su capacidad para dar cuenta del vínculo entre la identidad personal y la responsabilidad moral. (...) Concluyo que, dentro de un marco neo-lockeano, las teorías cuatridimensionalistas son las que mejor pueden dar cuenta de dicho vínculo. (shrink)

This essay examines the relation between philosophical questions concerning personal identity and character development in Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s philosophy. Shaftesbury combines a metaphysical account of personal identity with a normative approach to character development. By contrasting Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s views on these issues, I examine whether character development presupposes specific metaphysical views about personal identity, and in particular whether it presupposes the continued existence of a substance, as Shaftesbury assumes. I show that Hume’s philosophy offers at least two alternatives. Moreover, (...) I consider whether and how Hume’s philosophy leaves scope for character development and how he departs from Shaftesbury’s normative project of self-formation. (shrink)

In part of The Fragmentation of Being, Kris McDaniel discusses the possibility that we—persons—are not fully real, and the normative upshot of this. The broader metaphysical context is a view on which different things have different degrees of being and what is discussed is the possibility that persons do not have the maximal degree of being. McDaniel thinks that this has a problematic normative upshot: we would not matter. I do not agree. Here I go through some reasons for thinking (...) that the possible metaphysical view discussed does not have the normative upshot that McDaniel thinks it has. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the basis for the moral obligation to remember. As the moral relation to the past is primarily a matter of shared identity, the kind of obligation in question splits into two related issues, namely, that of political, state-oriented and state-organized memory on which the political identity rests and that of memory labour grounded in social identities based in shared, time-extended projects. Drawing upon tensions between these two, I discuss time control and the (...) accumulation of identity as central to memory labour and, referring to John Zerzan’s critique of symbolical roots of power, pinpoint the moral basis of such an accumulation. On the basis of this, I argue for nesting the duty to remember in acknowledging the agent’s recognition of the relatedness and dependency of their agency and possibilities of flourishing which can be obtained thanks to adjusting the field of the virtue of practical wisdom so that it includes members of the time-extended community. (shrink)

Time passed after the commission of a wrong can affect how we respond to its agent now. Specifically it can introduce certain forms of complexity or ambivalence into our blaming responses. This paper considers how and why time might matter in this way. I illustrate the phenomenon by looking at a recent real-life example, surveying some responses to the case and identifying the relevant forms of ambivalence. I then consider a recent account of blameworthiness and its development over time that (...) purports to account for this ambivalence. Blameworthiness, on this account, consists in a psychological flaw; time matters because it brings the possibility of change in the agent, and ambivalence arises because it is hard to know to the extent of such change. This account, I argue, mischaracterises responses to the case and misidentifies the source of their ambivalence. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of emotion, I sketch an alternative approach. Our responses, I suggest, make sense within processes through which we address wrongdoing. Time matters because these processes take time and because time’s having passed raises the question whether and how the wrong has been addressed. Unaddressed wrongs can elicit ambivalence of a specific form. (shrink)

Mark Johnston (2016, 2017) has raised concerns that a worm-theoretic account of persistence through time is incompatible with ethical singularity: that within the life of any actual person, there is only one morally considerable being, namely that person. To deny ethical singularity is to deny a core feature of our ordinary ethical and prudential thinking. The worm theory, Johnston concludes, proves to be “disastrous … for our ordinary moral outlook”. This paper defends the worm theory from Johnston’s argument. Though I (...) agree that the worm theory must deny ethical singularity, it can nevertheless be squared with our ordinary ethical thinking by adopting a temporal counterpart analysis of temporal predication (‘x will be F’, ‘x was previously F’, etc.) for those morally considerable beings involved in a person’s life that are not the person. (shrink)

Metaphysical egoism pursues what Gregory Kavka called ‘the reconciliation project’ (roughly, the project of reconciling the demands of morality with our rational self-interest) by appealing to one version of the psychological approach to personal identity. I argue that, for reasons related to its commitment to an implausible understanding of the notion of a psychological connection, this form of egoism is not plausible. I also explore one way in which metaphysical egoism may be amended, but I ultimately reject it.

For nearly two decades, ethicists have expressed concerns that the further development and use of memory modification technologies (MMTs)—techniques allowing to intentionally and selectively alter memories—may threaten the very foundations of who we are, our personal identity, and thus pose a threat to our well-being, or even undermine our “humaneness.” This paper examines the potential ramifications of memory-modifying interventions such as changing the valence of targeted memories and selective deactivation of a particular memory as these interventions appear to be at (...) the same time potentially both most promising clinically as well as menacing to identity. However, unlike previous works discussing the potential consequences of MMTs, this article analyzes them in the context of the narrative relational approach to personal identity and potential issues related to autonomy. I argue that such a perspective brings to light the ethical aspects and moral issues arising from the use of MMTs that have been hidden from previously adopted approaches. In particular, this perspective demonstrates how important the social context in which an individual lives is for the ethical evaluation of a given memory-modifying intervention. I conclude by suggesting that undertaking memory modifications without taking into account the social dimension of a person’s life creates the risk that she will not be able to meet one of the basic human needs—the autonomous construction and maintenance of personal identity. Based on this conclusion, I offer some reflections on the permissibility and advisability of MMTs and what these considerations suggest for the future. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

The received view about rationalizing explanations divides our psychological status into two kinds: beliefs and desires. In *The Retrieval of Ethics*, Talbot Brewer makes a case against this view. In this paper, I examine our experience as readers of *The Castle* by Franz Kafka to support Brewer's critical program, that is, his challenge to the received view. I will argue, however, that a proper analysis of this experience poses a serious problem to Brewer's alternative approach, that is, to his attempt (...) to retrieve our agency thanks to a proper understanding of the role of the good in rationalizing explanations. (shrink)

Beiträge von Heiner Bielefeldt, Andreas Frewer, Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Lisa Häberlein, Christoph Herrler, Sabine Klotz, Elisabeth Langmann, Nathalie Meyer, Harald Mosler, Michael Sellmeyer und Franziska Sonnauer sowie der Ausschreibung des Förderpreises »Menschenrechte und Ethik in der Medizin für Ältere« 2021.

Thought Experiments in Ethics, 2021 CONTENTS Preface i Chapter I The Story in Your Head: Tomoceuszkakatiti and Gyugyu 1 Chapter II How Thought Experiments Move Us: The Samaritan and His Neighbours 16 Chapter III What Makes a Thought Experiment? 34 Chapter IV Thought Experiments in Practical Philosophy and Bioethics 75 Chapter V The Experience Machine 93 Chapter VI The Last Man Argument 129 Chapter VII The Trolley Problem 158 Chapter VIII The Violinist Analogy 213 Conclusion 246 Notes 248.

Proponents of vaccine mandates typically claim that everyone who can be vaccinated has a moral or ethical obligation to do so for the sake of those who cannot be vaccinated, or in the interest of public health. I evaluate several previously undertheorised premises implicit to the ‘obligation to vaccinate’ type of arguments and show that the general conclusion is false: there is neither a moral obligation to vaccinate nor a sound ethical basis to mandate vaccination under any circumstances, even for (...) hypothetical vaccines that are medically risk-free. Agent autonomy with respect to self-constitution has absolute normative priority over reduction or elimination of the associated risks to life. In practical terms, mandatory vaccination amounts to discrimination against healthy, innate biological characteristics, which goes against the established ethical norms and is also defeasible a priori. (shrink)

In the following paper I explore the consistency and efficacy of Amartya Sen’s position in the light of the philosophical debate on personal identity. To this end, I examine the key concepts of the capability approach as well as the writings that Sen explicitly devotes to the topic of personal identity. Given some difficulties that will emerge as result of the analysis, I finally propose possible improvements.

There are, at least, three fundamental dimensions in what we all are: a physical, a mental and a social dimension. In this paper I will focus in how, in the history of the debate about personal identity, di-fferent neo-Lockean theories have tried to account for these dimensions. The main goal will be to show that the only neo-Lockean theory that can account for these dimensions is what I call the New Narrative Approach, that establishes a distinction between three entities that (...) we are: human beings, selves, and per-sons. (shrink)

Memory modification technologies (MMTs)—interventions within the memory affecting its functions and contents in specific ways—raise great therapeutic hopes but also great fears. Ethicists have expressed concerns that developing and using MMTs may endanger the very fabric of who we are—our personal identity. This threat has been mainly considered in relation to two interrelated concerns: truthfulness and narrative self‐constitution. In this article, we propose that although this perspective brings up important matters concerning the potential aftermaths of MMT utilization, it fails to (...) tell the whole story. We suggest that capturing more tangible potential consequences of MMT use, namely, its psychological ramifications is crucial both in ethical considerations and in making decisions regarding the permissibility of such interventions. To this end, we first examine what current MMTs are capable of and what are the prospects of emerging MMTs. Subsequently, we outline the relationship between memory and personal identity; specifically, we indicate that concepts of self‐defining memories and narrative identity are crucial to considering how MMTs may influence one's psychological functioning. On this basis, we analyze potential consequences of narrative disruption that may be the result of the use of MMTs; more precisely, we consider its potential effects on mental health, well‐being, and personal agency, and outline the ethical dilemmas that decision‐makers face in this context. We conclude by considering the broader cultural context that may have influence on policymaking regarding permissibility of memory modification interventions. (shrink)

Optogenetics is an invasive neuromodulation technology involving the use of light to control the activity of individual neurons. Even though optogenetics is a relatively new neuromodulation tool whose various implications have not yet been scrutinized, it has already been approved for its first clinical trials in humans. As optogenetics is being intensively investigated in animal models with the aim of developing novel brain stimulation treatments for various neurological and psychiatric disorders, it appears crucial to consider both the opportunities and dangers (...) such therapies may offer. In this review, we focus on the memory-modifying potential of optogenetics, investigating what it is capable of and how it differs from other memory modification technologies. We then outline the safety challenges that need to be addressed before optogenetics can be used in humans. Finally, we re-examine crucial neuroethical concerns expressed in regard to other MMTs in the light of optogenetics and address those that appear to be unique to the memory-modifying potential of optogenetic technology. (shrink)

Freedom is a topic which has been and is being addressed by a number of authors from various aspects and on the basis of diverse philosophical or philosophical-religious postulates. A change in the anthropological paradigm necessarily produced changes in the understanding of freedom. Responsibility is a concept that is much less frequent than the theme of freedom. But without it, the explanation of freedom is not adequate and leads to many misunderstandings. When freedom is artificially separated from responsibility, it rises (...) to the highest place in the ranking of values and thus leads to self-destruction. It becomes arbitrariness, and it produces enslavement. Before looking at the relationship between freedom and responsibility, it will be necessary to give some anthropological assumptions, although well-known but necessary for further action. It will mainly concern a man as a person, his individuality and sociality. It will also be necessary to clarify what concepts of freedom we will work with. After introducing some (basic) understanding of responsibility, we will be able to formulate mutual conditionality between freedom and responsibility. (shrink)

There has been a growing worry that perdurantism—and similarly ontologically abundant views—is morally untenable. For perdurantism posits that, coinciding with persons, are person-like objects, and giving them their moral due seems to require giving up prudentially driven self-sacrifice. One way to avoid this charge is to adopt consequentialism. But Mark Johnston has argued that the marriage of consequentialism and perdurantism is in moral trouble. For, depending on the nature of time, consequentialist perdurantists either are unable to do more than one (...) good act or they are morally obliged to adopt a repugnant form of ageism. I argue both that perdurantist consequentialism doesn’t have the latter implication, and that there’s at least one plausible form of consequentialism that perdurantists can adopt to avoid the former implication. (shrink)

Let Reductionism be the correct account of personal identity. How does that change, or constrain our views in ethical theory? In this paper, I presuppose a popular account of Reductionism, the psychological criterion of personal identity, and explore its implications to ethical theory. First, I argue that this view most plausibly implies the extreme view, according to which the ethically significant metaphysical units are momentary experiences. I then argue that the extreme view appropriately responds to the nonidentity problem via rejecting (...) the person-affecting view. I then defend that the extreme view provides support to utilitarianism. Moreover, the extreme view results in the so-called Repugnant conclusion, which says that for any population with very high welfare, there is a population containing more individuals with lives which are barely worth living whose existence, all else equal, is better. I then defend the extreme view’s plausibility in face of this result. (shrink)

Abstract Aim: The COVID-19 infection is transmitted either by human-to-human contact, social-physical contact, and respiratory droplets or by touching items touched by the infected. This has triggered some conflicted behaviors such as stigma, violence, and opposite behavior applause. The aim of this study is to explore several newspaper articles about stigma, violence, or insensitive behavior against healthcare professionals and to analyze the reason for these behaviors during these COVID-19 pandemics. Method: The website of the Turkish Medical Association "Press Releases News" (...) and online newspaper articles have been scanned using keywords and have been classified and analyzed according to the content of articles between the periods of March 11 to April 28, 2020. This is a qualitative study with content analysis. No official ethical permission was obtained as the study was conducted through open access internet news sites. Result: 16 reports were selected from online reports that matched the keywords of the study. 13 of these reports included desensitization, violence, lack of precaution, stigmatization, and applause, and 3 reports included doctors’ statements. After being categorized, content analyses were conducted. Conclusion: This study revealed the necessity of a multi-faceted evaluation of the problems faced by healthcare professionals who are at the forefront of the COVID-19 outbreak. This study has a primary role in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of the pandemic and reveals that doctors are trying to fulfill their duties in an ethical framework despite stigmatized behavior. Authorities should provide various supports to protect healthcare professionals before, during, and after the epidemic for the success of the COVID-19 outbreak struggle. (shrink)

Derek Parfit famously argued that personal identity is not what matters for prudential concern about the future. Instead, he argues what matters is Relation R, a combination of psychological connectedness and continuity with any cause. This revisionary conclusion, Parfit argued, has profound implications for moral theory. It should lead us, among other things, to deny the importance of the separateness of persons as an important fact of morality. Instead, we should adopt impersonal consequentialism. In this paper, I argue that Parfit (...) is mistaken about this last step. His revisionary arguments about personal identity and rationality have no implications for moral theory. We need not decide whether Relation R or personal identity contain what matters if we want to retain the importance of the separateness of persons. (shrink)

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process -- a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context -- and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions: first, it highlights a disturbing parity between the (...) people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox – how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into ‘benevolently racist’ actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one which more effectively challenges the self-oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism: rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world – actions which require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice. (shrink)

In this four part essay I present a comprehensive model of health based on the generalized empirical method of Bernard Lonergan, which integrates the empirical method of natural science and the phenomenological method of historical and related human sciences in a way that is unique among contemporary thinkers. The GEM model, in turn, offers a unique framework - a higher viewpoint - for integrating the manifold viewpoints of clinical practice, the humanities (the drama and narrative of human living), health science (...) and health policy in a methodically dynamic and critically progressive fashion in order to address the many pressing problems of contemporary healthcare. (shrink)