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    It is clear to us that we will be the same person until a... — Carmelics
    Home/Afterlife & Death
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    It is clear to us that we will be the same person until a later time by virtue of the fact that we will retain the same character until then.

    Afterlife & Death
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Categorical desires are important elements of our characters.
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    • 2.Retaining the same character over time is what makes it clear that we remain the same person.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Character itself undergoes gradual, sometimes radical change over time without disrupting felt continuity of personal identity.
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    • 2.If character change were sufficient to break personal identity, survivors of religious conversion or severe depression would constitute different persons, which is counterintuitive.
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    • 3.Therefore, character retention cannot be the criterion that grounds our sense of being the same person over time.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Locke and his successors ground personal identity in continuity of memory and psychological connectedness, not in stable character traits.
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    • 2.A person with severe amnesia who retains the same temperament and values lacks the memory-chains Locke requires, yet Williams's criterion would falsely count them as fully continuous.
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    • 3.Character stability is thus epiphenomenal to identity rather than constitutive of it.
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    Topics

    Afterlife & Death

    Related

    A person with severe amnesia who retains the same temperament and values lacks t...Categorical desires are important elements of our characters.Character itself undergoes gradual, sometimes radical change over time without d...Character stability is thus epiphenomenal to identity rather than constitutive o...
    +4 moreShow less
    If character change were sufficient to break personal identity, survivors of rel...Locke and his successors ground personal identity in continuity of memory and ps...Retaining the same character over time is what makes it clear that we remain the...Therefore, character retention cannot be the criterion that grounds our sense of...

    Similar

    Retaining the same character over time is what makes it clear that we ...92%The Buddha asserts the earlier and later person are neither the same n...75%Replacing my current character with an entirely different one later in...73%The identity of a person over time cannot consist of the identity of t...73%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: death
    Williams
    View source passageHide passage
    Consider a woman who wants to die. She might still take the view that if she is to live on, then she should be well fed and clothed. She wants food and clothing on condition she remain alive. In this sense her desires (for food and clothes) are conditional on her remaining alive, and, in being conditional on her living on, they do not give her reason to live. Contrast a father who desires that his beloved daughter have a good start in life. His desire is not conditional on his remaining alive. In this sense, it is, Williams says, categorical. In fact, his desire gives him reason to live, becau...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The conclusion is directly stated in the source passage ("it is by virtue of the fact that we will retain the same character until a later time that it is clear to us that we will be the same person until then"), and premise 2 essentially restates this claim while premise 1 provides supporting context from the passage about the role of categorical desires in constituting character.

    Confidence: Explicitly stated as Williams's view.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit