Abstract
In what follows we shall be examining some fundamental questions in the theory of identity over time, a subject which has undergone something of a revival in the last twenty years, owing in particular to the stimulus of recent work on personal identity. While we shall have something to say about the latter in due course, the focus of our attention will be problems of a more foundational sort which beset any attempt to give an adequate account of the metaphysics of diachronic identity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Geach (1973) pp.287–302; Perry (1968) pp.8–10; Wiggins (1967) p.43; Shoemaker (1963) pp.3–5; Griffin (1977) p.50.
Wiggins (1980), pp.50–1, recognises that tracing of STC is needed to establish community of properties, but he does not elaborate.
Swinburne (1968) pp.22–3. The formulation of his criterion is modified slightly in the second edition (1981), and might be interpreted as overcoming some of the objections we are about to raise against the first formulation. If so, the reader is asked to consider it simply as a plausible formulation that might be proposed.
Hirsch (1982) p.36; see ch.2, passim in Hirsch for elaboration and discussion.
See e.g. Forbes (1985) pp.148–59. This sort of example goes back to Kripke’s unpublished lectures on identity over time.
For more on the vexed question of the persistence of matter, see Hirsch (1982, ch.4), who concludes that we have a ‘relatively concrete and definite conception of the persistence of different sorts of articulated objects’, but a ‘relatively abstract and indefinite conception of persisting matter’ (p.137).
See, for instance, the detailed survey of Puccetti (1973) pp.339–55. While he and those he cites take the duplication of consciousness to be not merely physically possible but actually demonstrated, others, such as Robinson (1988) pp.319–28, seem to take it to be an ‘impossibility’, though he (and Trevarthen, whom he cites) are not clear as to whether they mean technical or physical impossibility. Sperry’s own opinions as to what his operations demonstrated have changed over the years, though it is not apparent that he has ever said the duplication of consciousness violated some law/s of nature. Nor, indeed, is it easy to say which laws would have to be broken.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1993 David S. Oderberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Oderberg, D.S. (1993). Continuity as the Criterion of Identity over Time: The Classical Theory of Continuity. In: The Metaphysics of Identity over Time. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230377387_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230377387_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-39138-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37738-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)