Sharing my Body. Personal Identity and Individuation
-
Logi Gunnarsson
Abstract
The paper distinguishes between five questions often discussed under the heading “personal identity.” One of these questions is “What am I fundamentally?” The animalist answer to this question is “I am fundamentally a human being.” According to this answer, each of us is fundamentally an entity, of which only one can exist in a single human body. In contrast, this paper argues for the following thesis (the coexistence thesis): each of us is fundamentally an entity, of which there could exist two or more in one body. In addition, this paper offers a criterion of individuation for such entities. The coexistence thesis is a radical thesis: It does not merely say that I—each one of us—could have more than one personality. Rather, stated bluntly, the thesis is that there could be more than one “I” in a single human body.
© Philosophia Press 2009
Articles in the same Issue
- Wittgensteins Traum von der Klarheit der Sprache
- Sharing my Body. Personal Identity and Individuation
- Two Sorts of Dualism. McDowell's Oscillation Between a Transcendental and a Metaphysical Conception of Reason and Nature
- Can Things Endure in Tenseless Time
- Intentions and Compositionality
- Intuitvely Assessed Reasonableness as a Criterion of Validity in Empathetic Understanding
- Essentialism and the Theory of Direct Reference
Articles in the same Issue
- Wittgensteins Traum von der Klarheit der Sprache
- Sharing my Body. Personal Identity and Individuation
- Two Sorts of Dualism. McDowell's Oscillation Between a Transcendental and a Metaphysical Conception of Reason and Nature
- Can Things Endure in Tenseless Time
- Intentions and Compositionality
- Intuitvely Assessed Reasonableness as a Criterion of Validity in Empathetic Understanding
- Essentialism and the Theory of Direct Reference
