文档介绍：: Problems of Philosophy
Prof. Sally Haslanger
October 22, 2001
Personal Identity III
1. Review soul criterion and body criterion
Soul criterion: x is the same person as y iff x and y have the same soul.
Problems:
i) There is no way to establish body-soul correlations; and no way to establish personality-soul correlations. So soul
criterion doesn't make sense of our practices of recognizing and identifying people.
ii) We have no special access to souls, so even in our own case we can't be sure it's the same soul "inside" us whenever we
are conscious.
iii) The problem of identity is "pushed back": what is it for person-stage x to have the same soul as person-stage y? What
makes for sameness of souls?
Body criterion: x is the same person as y iff x and y have the same living human body.
Problems:
i) If I were my body, then I would have no special access to myself. So the body criterion does not do justice to our
practices of self-recognition and self-identification.
ii) It is possible to be the same person without the same body. Body criterion doesn't allow this possibility.
1. Review memory criterion
Memory Criterion (basic form): x and y are stages of the same person iff y remembers x's experiences, thoughts,
feelings, etc. (either directly or indirectly), or vv.
Advantages:
1) Memory criterion allows me to know who I am