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Garrett - Personal Identity and Reductionism

(Text as at 06/11/2014 10:13:26)

TT Notes₁

1. • Assume anti-Cartesianism – ie. persons are not immaterial substances.
   • Assume also the Continuity Theory – the claim that the identity of persons can be analysed in terms of psychological and or physical continuity.
   • So, the Psychological Criterion analyses personal identity in terms of non-branching psychological continuity. Theorists differ over now normal the cause of the continuity must be. Some rule out Teletransportation² by insisting on continued operation of the brain / CNS.
   • Similarly, for the Physical Criterion – analysis is in terms of temporal continuity of the body and / or the brain.
   • There are also Mixed Criteria, assigning varying degrees of importance to both physical and psychological criteria.
   • Garrett singles out as continuity-theorists:-
     … "Parfit (Derek) - Reasons and Persons", part III
     … "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Personal Identity: a Materialist Account",
     … "Nozick (Robert) - Personal Identity Through Time", and
     … "Lewis (David) - Survival and Identity"
     They are not segregated by type, except for Nozick as “mixed”.
2. • Can our preferred Continuity Analysis of PID lead to a reduction? That is, can we reduce persons to their bodies and experiences?
   • Garrett thinks that this is a difficult question because the general question of what counts as a reduction of Fs to Gs is difficult.
   • He distinguishes eliminative from non-eliminative forms of reduction. His examples are:-
     … eliminative: abstract to concrete (reduction of directions to lines).
     … non-eliminative: theoretical identification (water to H₂O).
     How do we understand non-eliminative reduction of persons?
   • The aim of this paper is to catalogue the attempts at ontological reduction and show that where they do characterise a genuine reduction, they are false.
   • Garrett claims (followed up in Section 10) that Parfit’s ethical claims for reductionism in
     … "Parfit (Derek) - Personal Identity and Rationality", and
     … "Parfit (Derek) - Personal Identity and Morality"
     follow₃ even if reductionism fails.
3. • Garrett sees no incoherence in accepting the materialism₄ of persons, yet denying that they are reducible to bodies + experiences.
   • Hence, the claim that people are material is uninteresting from a reductive perspective, unless a more “fine grained” account₅ can be given.
   • He claims that because the concept PERSON is a sortal concept, it already contains its persistence criteria, which is what a reduction is trying to elucidate.
   • Note that what is being reduced here, is not PERSON but SAME PERSON.

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This is a place-holder⁶. Currently, mostly see the categorised reading-list below.

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In-Page Footnotes:

Footnote 1:

• This is a review of "Garrett (Brian) - Personal Identity and Reductionism".
• It is indexed to Garrett’s 10 Sections.

Footnote 3:

• But, why should anyone think Parfit’s claims are plausible anyway?
• See "McDowell (John) - Reductionism and the First Person".

Footnote 4:

• Garrett posits – for the sake of the argument – that “all persons are material”. We ignore the caveat about immaterial non-human persons, and assume he’s talking about human persons only.
• Even so is his “are” that of constitution or identity?

Footnote 5: I had thought that it was explanatory rather than ontological reductions that had to give “accounts”.

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Note last updated	Reading List for this Topic	Parent Topic
06/11/2014 10:13:26	None available	Reductionism

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Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Awaiting Attention (Personal Identity)

Non-Human Persons

Teletransportation

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Summary of Notes Citing This Note

Non-Human Persons	Parfit	Reductionism, 2	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?), 2
Thesis - References, 2

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author	Title	Medium	Extra Links	Read?
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?)	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Non-Human Persons	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Parfit	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Reductionism	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - References	Paper	2	Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Dancy (Jonathan), Ed.	Reading Parfit	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	17%
Garrett (Brian)	Personal Identity and Reductionism	Paper - Cited	Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51, No. 2, Jun., 1991, pp. 361-373	Yes
Lewis (David)	Philosophical Papers Volume I	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Lewis (David)	Survival and Identity	Paper - Cited	Lewis - Philosophical Papers Volume I, Part 1: Ontology, Chapter 5	Yes
McDowell (John)	Reductionism and the First Person	Paper - Cited	Dancy - Reading Parfit, 1997, Chapter 11	Yes
Nozick (Robert)	Personal Identity Through Time	Paper - Cited	Nozick - Philosophical Explanations - Metaphysics; The Identity of the Self; Chapter 1.I	No
Nozick (Robert)	Philosophical Explanations	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	2%
Parfit (Derek)	Personal Identity and Morality	Paper - Cited	Parfit - Reasons and Persons, January 1986, pp. 321-349(29).	Yes
Parfit (Derek)	Personal Identity and Rationality	Paper - Cited	Parfit - Reasons and Persons, January 1986, pp. 307-321(15).	Yes
Parfit (Derek)	Reasons and Persons	Book - Cited	Parfit (Derek) - Reasons and Persons	Yes
Shoemaker (Sydney)	Personal Identity: a Materialist Account	Paper - Cited	Shoemaker & Swinburne - Personal Identity, 1984, pp. 67-132	22%
Shoemaker (Sydney) & Swinburne (Richard)	Personal Identity	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	11%

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Text Colour Conventions

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026

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