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Personal Identity

Reductionism

(Text as at 14/07/2019 18:05:46)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

Plug Note¹

• Reductionism in the field of Personal Identity has much the same meaning as elsewhere in philosophy, namely:-
  1. Explanatory Reduction: explaining PID in terms of simpler concepts², or
  2. Ontological Reduction: saying that persons³ are “really” other things, or are made up of or constituted by⁴ other things.
• This contrasts with the Simple View⁵, which denies this.
• Currently, my thoughts on the matter are derived from:-
  → "Garrett (Brian) - Personal Identity and Reductionism", and
  → "Garrett (Brian) - Animalism and Reductionism",
  but I will add to the topic further over time.
• From my perspective, the interesting element is Garrett’s consideration of Phase Sortals⁶.
• For a page of Links⁷ to this Note, Click here. There were too many links to perform an updating run, so I’ve just eyeballed the results and selected a few titles.
• Works on this topic that I’ve actually read⁸, include the following:-
  1. TBA.
• A reading list (where not covered elsewhere) might start with:-
  1. TBA.
• This is mostly a place-holder⁹. Currently, just see the categorised reading-list.