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- For the actual time recorded, click on "Paper Statistics" above.
Write-up2 (as at 03/05/2026 06:57:36): Closest Continuer
Plug Note3
- Thesis Text:
- “Closest Continuer” is an alternative term for the concept “Best Candidate”. Closest Continuer solutions to puzzle cases have to be rejected beause they violate the commonsensical Only X and Y Principle4.
- This situation – where we’re tempted to reach for the ‘best candidate’ – occurs where we have more than one candidate as the continuer of an individual, and we feel we have to make a choice because:
- There is only one social or legal role to fill, and
- The logic of identity causes a problem.
- Consider Locke5’s prince and cobbler or Williams’s body swapping6, but without the swap (ie. where only half the thought experiment is performed, so we have two identical psychologies). If the cobbler’s body is informed by the prince’s mind, then Locke claims that the cobbler is the prince. But if the prince still exists in his own mind as well, there’s a better candidate (says Nozick, for instance in "Nozick (Robert) - Personal Identity Through Time" or "Nozick (Robert) - The Identity of the Self: Introduction"), so the cobbler then isn’t the prince after all – but how (so the objection goes) can the existence of someone depend on the existence of someone else?
- A Perdurantist7 can accommodate these situations. This is by saying that prior to the point of decision, there were always two person stages co-located (ie. there were always two persons present, they just happened to share all their stages up to that point), and that only following the point of decision can we distinguish them. So, we don’t have to choose who is really the prince – they both are, in the sense that each post-decision spatio-temporal worm forms part of a larger spatio-temporal worm that includes pre-decision princely stages. Logical identity only applies to complete spatio-temporal worms, and there were always two worms sharing stages.
- Of course, we might have a convention8 that enables us to choose in a principled manner who can fill which role (the prince remains in his palace, the cobbler’s body informed by the prince’s mind retires to a madhouse). Yet (if we adopt the perdurantist view and the psychological criterion9) they are both the prince for all that.
- My own view used to be simply that the cobbler (ie. cobbler-body) just undergoes a radical psychological change, and so remains the cobbler all along. But I now think the thought experiment may be underspecified. Given the supervenience10 of mind on brain11, the superposition of one psychology on another would have radical physical consequences that would most likely destroy the original, and replace it with a clone12 of the copied brain. But it is a clone, for all that, and not the original13.
- There are other Thought Experiments14, such as varients of Teletransportation15 where Closest Continuer possibilities arise – I will discuss these in Chapter 1016.
- All the above notwithstanding, Perdurantism17 – to be evaluated in Chapter 518 - is a fairly fringe position to take that is often taken as having too great a metaphysical cost to be introduced simply to sort out worries caused by the Only X and Y Principle19. We need to adress the puzzle cases individually and see just why we’re tempted by Closest Continuer solutions. These will – I would hope – arise because of mistaken approaches to the persistence of the entity in question that appears to be undergoing fission20, duplication21 or some other viscissitude.
References
- Relevant Works cited above:
- "Nozick (Robert) - Personal Identity Through Time", 1981
- "Nozick (Robert) - The Identity of the Self: Introduction", 1981, Read
- For a page of Links22 to this Note, Click here.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read23, include the following:-
- General:
- "Blatti (Stephan) - Animalism, Dicephalus, and Borderline Cases", 2007, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Footnote24
- "Clark (Tom) - A Notable Theoretical Convergence", External Link
- "Clark (Tom) - Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity", No Abstract, External Link
- "Garrett (Brian) - Fission", 1998, Footnote25
- "Gasser (Georg) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Introduction", 2010, Annotations, Footnote26
- "Hawley (Katherine) - Fission, Fusion and Intrinsic Facts", 2005, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Noonan (Harold) - Against the Closest Continuer Theory", 2003, Annotations
- "Nozick (Robert) - The Identity of the Self: Introduction", 1981
- "Olson (Eric) - Why We Need Not Accept the Psychological Approach", 1999, Footnote27
- "Parfit (Derek) - Nagel's Brain", 1986
- "Parfit (Derek) - The Closest Continuer Schema", 1984
- "Robert (David) - The Existential Passage Hypothesis", 2020, No Abstract, External Link
- "Stewart (Wayne) - Uzgalis: Accidentally Opening a Transmigration Window by Nixing the Proper Continuer", 2019
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Beings: Preface", 1990, Annotations, Footnote28
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited", 2010, Annotations, Internal PDF Link, Footnote29
- A further reading list might start with:-
- General:
- "Baillie (James) - Identity and Survival", 1993, Footnote30
- "Bourgeois (Warren) - Contemporary Philosophers' Views on Persons: Nozick's Self-Makers", 2003, Read = 5%, Footnote31
- "Cerullo (Michael A.) - Uploading and Branching Identity", 2015, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 133%, Footnote32
- "Coburn (Robert) - Personal Identity Revisited", 1985, Internal PDF Link
- "Garrett (Brian) - A Further Reply to Noonan", 1987, Internal PDF Link, Read = 67%
- "Garrett (Brian) - Noonan, 'Best Candidate' Theories and the Ship of Theseus", 1985, Internal PDF Link
- "Garrett (Brian) - Personal Identity and Extrinsicness", 1990, Internal PDF Link
- "Heller (Mark) - The best candidate approach to diachronic identity", 1987, Internal PDF Link
- "Mackie (Penelope) - Identity and Extrinsicness: Reply to Garrett", 1989, Internal PDF Link
- "Noonan (Harold) - Reply to Garrett", 1986, Internal PDF Link
- "Noonan (Harold) - The Closest Continuer Theory of Identity", 1985
- "Noonan (Harold) - The Only X and Y Principle", 1985, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
- "Noonan (Harold) - The Possibility of Reincarnation", 1990, Internal PDF Link, Read = 100%
- "Nozick (Robert) - Personal Identity Through Time", 1981, Footnote33
- "Slors (Marc) - The Closest Continuer View Revisited", 2004, Internal PDF Link, Read = 7%
- "Valberg (J.J.) - My Future", 2007, Footnote34
- For further papers held on-line of potential interest, follow this Link35. Total papers = 4.
- For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
- Read: No items to list.
- Further Reading: No items to list.
- This is mostly a place-holder36.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2:
- This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (03/05/2026 06:57:36).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 13:
- I need to consider more carefully what change, and how rapid a change, a thing can undergo and remain the same thing.
- This will be discussed in the next Chapter.
Footnote 24:
- When considering duplication issues with double-hemispherectomy & transplant, “closest continuer” resolutions to the problem (amongst other suggestions) are rejected.
Footnote 25:
- The “closest continuer” theory as a solution to the “split brain” fission puzzle is considered in Sections 3 & 4.
Footnote 26:
- Brief discussion of Hershenov’s claim that Zimmerman’s “Falling Elevator” model of physical resurrection is effectively a “closest continuer” theory.
Footnote 27:
- Olson’s rejection of “closest continuer” solutions to the double-hemispherectomy & transplant problem (for the psychological view).
- His objection isn’t to the incoherence of the “closest continuer” as such, but that the hemispheres might be equipollent, leading to no “closest continuer”.
Footnote 28:
- The rejection of “closest continuer” theories is the 10th of Van Inwagen’s presuppositions.
- Decisions of persistence are intrinsic. No outside facts – such as the existence of a better candidate – can affect whether something has persisted.
Footnote 29:
- Zimmerman discusses the “closest continuer” theory extensively in a reply to Hasker.
- It seems that the “Falling Elevator” model of resurrection requires both acceptance of the “closest continuer” theory and the rejection of the “only X and Y” principle.
Footnote 30:
- Consideration of “closest continuer” theories in Section 2.
Footnote 31:
- Description and elaboration of Nozick’s “closest continuer” theory, followed by …
- Its application to duplication puzzle-cases.
Footnote 32:
- Rejects the “closest continuer” theory as a solution to the problem posed by putative uploadings of human brains to computers.
Footnote 33: Footnote 34:
- The “closest continuer” theory is discussed in Section 4.
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