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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Questions 1 and 2 about personal identity are equivalent.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.A human animal can persist through time without ever instantiating personhood, as in cases of pre-personal infancy or permanent vegetative states.
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    • 2.If the persistence conditions of the underlying substance (the animal) differ from the conditions of personhood, then what persists and what makes something the same person come apart.
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    • 3.Therefore, the persistence question and the personal identity question track different ontological targets and cannot be equivalent.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Locke distinguished the forensic concept of 'person' from the metaphysical concept of 'man', grounding personal identity in psychological continuity rather than substance.
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    • 2.On a Lockean view, psychological continuity answers question 2 (what makes me the same person), while the persistence of the organism answers question 1 (what makes this entity continue to exist).
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    • 3.The equivalence claim collapses a normative-forensic question about moral and legal accountability into a purely metaphysical persistence question, obscuring their distinct explanatory roles.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Person essentialism holds that whatever is a person at one time must be a person at every time when that entity exists.
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    • 2.If every person is a person essentially, then the persistence question (what makes a person persist over time) and the identity question (what makes something the same person) pick out the same conditions.
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