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Inverse View
It is not the case that Biological continuity of vital processes is not sufficient for identity persistence; what matters is psychological or narrative continuity (Parfit, Locke).
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Reasons For
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1.
Psychological continuity is too permissive: it allows multiple future beings to equally continue you (the fission problem).
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2.
Memory and narrative are malleable, reconstructed, and unreliable; biology provides the only objective, causally-grounded criterion.
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3.
If only psychology matters, identical twins with identical minds are the same person—an absurd result that reveals the view's inadequacy.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Personal identity is fundamentally about what matters to us subjectively: continuity of memories, beliefs, desires, and life narrative.
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2.
Biological continuity alone permits identity with someone whose psychology is completely replaced (via total amnesia or brain alteration).
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3.
Intuitive thought experiments (teleportation, fission, gradual neuron replacement) show we track psychological chains, not physical continuity.
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