Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Oxford Scholarship Online

1. Prompted by Derek Parfit¹'s early work on personal identity, Lewis advances the view that persons are best regarded as suitably related aggregates of person-stages. Parfit² argues that what matters³ in survival is either identity or mental continuity and connectedness⁴; that the two cannot both be what matters⁵ in survival (because the former is a one-one relation and does not admit of degree, whereas the latter can admit of degree and may be a one-many or many-one relation); and that what matters⁶ in survival is not identity.
2. Contra Parfit⁷, Lewis contends that the opposition is a false one, since it obscures the fact that mental continuity and connectedness⁸ is a relation between two person-stages (i.e., time-slices of continuant persons), whereas identity is a relation between temporally extended continuant persons with stages at different times.
3. The postscript includes both Lewis’ rejoinder to Parfit⁹'s objections, as well as a further defense of person-stages.