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Status Reports

Status: Personal Identity (2025 - December)

(Text as at 13/01/2026 13:14:53)

Previous VersionsNote ReferencesNote CitationsNon-Note Citations

Rationale for this Project


Summary of Progress during October - December 2025
  1. I spent 172.75 hours in 25Q4 on this Project, or related work (172.75 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2025). That's 82.8% of the planned effort (82.8% YTD). Overall, 21.4% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 21.4% YTD) - as against 25.8% planned (25.8% YTD).
  2. To make way for important work on my Web-Tools and other Projects (especially Bridge), I’d retained the time allowance on this project in 25Q4 at the somewhat reduced allocation of 16 hours / week. I only achieved just over 80% of this time allowance.
  3. Again, I made a fair amount of progress on the consolidated version of my Thesis - Personal Identity4. I intend to complete the first run-through next Quarter and then work this into a Thesis-proper, with the rest of the website as supporting material.
  4. Secondly, I read through "Rowlands (Mark) - The Philosopher and the Wolf", mostly while walking Bertie – so not with 100% attention. This is an interesting, though rather intemperate book. I disagree with a lot of it. I need to analyse it in detail and apply the lessons learnt to my Thesis and the various Notes.
  5. I started on "Lechthaler (Manuel) - Composition and Identities", also while walking Bertie.
  6. Otherwise, most of my time was spent listening to the podcasts in "RIP - The Royal Institute of Philosophy - Podcasts".
  7. To control the various links within my Thesis, I’ve created and maintained a PID Note Usage5 Page, though this didn’t get a look in this Quarter. However, I intend it to be a major focus in the near future.
  8. Progress between reports can be obtained from the relevant section of my Summary Task List6.
  9. A full list of items worked on in the quarter appears below:-
    Thesis (Total Hours = 144.5)
    1. Thesis - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 137.75)
    2. Thesis - Research Repositioning (Total Hours = 6.75)
    Thesis Background (Total Hours = 28.25)
    1. Thesis Background - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 24.5)
    2. Thesis Background - Status
Plans for the Near Future – Top Priority Tasks Detailed Task List
  1. Continue with my Thesis12; in particular
    1. Spend an hour a day updating the Thesis Document13 itself.
    2. Spend half an hour a day writing something original; namely, essays on:-
      → The difference between Forward and Backward Psychological Continuity14.
      → The persistence of Androids15.
    3. Continue filling out those sections of my Thesis that I can write something on without further research, using books / papers already analysed.
  2. Continually review the Note describing my Current Beliefs16 on the topic of Personal Identity.
  3. Regularly review and update of the Notes I’ve created on Personal Identity, focusing on those directly referenced by my Current Beliefs17.
  4. Complete the outstanding actions in the Appendix to my Thesis:-
  5. Make progress on specific Chapters of my Thesis, using the tasks outlined in my Thesis Dashboard103, using the materials listed104 in the Chapters and underlying Notes.
  6. Read and comment on105 the following remaining PhD Theses relevant to my own Thesis:-
    1. "Baggini (Julian) - Psychological Reductionism About Persons: A Critical Development",
    2. "Eddebo (Johan) - Death and the Self: A Metaphysical Investigation of the Rationality of Afterlife Beliefs in the Contemporary Intellectual Climate",
    3. "Gendler (Tamar Szabo) - Imaginary Exceptions: On the Powers and Limits of Thought Experiment",
    4. "Keles (Serap) - Personal identity and persistence over time : the hybrid view with regard to hylomorphism",
    5. "Kotak (Aakash) - The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity" (MPhil Thesis)
    6. "Lechthaler (Manuel) - Composition and Identities",
    7. "Lybaert (Fauve) - Personal Identity and the Formal Self",
    8. "Paez (Eze) - Abortion: What We Ought to Believe - An Ontological and Normative Analysis",
    9. "Parsons (Josh) - Theories of Persistence",
    10. "Rau (Philipp) - The Author, Not the Tale: Memory, Narrative, and the Self",
    11. "Skow (Bradford) - Once Upon a Spacetime",
    12. "Southgate (Susan Jane) - Personal Identity: The Simple View",
    13. "Trakas (Marina) - Personal Memories", and
    14. "Woods (Evan Thomas) - The Problems of the Many".
  7. Apply the issues raised by recently-read PhD Theses relevant to my own Thesis to my various Notes:-
    1. "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism", see also the Section on Resurrection below
    2. "Hodson (Sommer) - A Hybrid View of Personal Identity",
  8. Follow up on Keith Augustine's comments on my review of "Hershenov (David) - Review of Nancey Murphy's 'Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?'".
  9. Teletransportation106 (Update Note using the following):-
    1. "Science Unbound - Teleporters: The Death Machines You Don't Want": Complete reading / reviewing relevant passages in these follow-up items
    2. "Hanley (Richard) - The Metaphysics of Star Trek"
    3. "Gribbin (John) - Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality"
    4. "Kaku (Michio) - Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel"
    5. "Krauss (Lawrence M.) - The Physics of Star Trek"
    6. "Penrose (Roger) - The Emperor's New Mind"
    7. "YouTube - Video - The Trouble with Transporters"
  10. Resurrection107
    1. "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism", a PhD Thesis noted above
    2. "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity",
    3. "Ayers (Michael R.) - Personal Identity Before the Essay",
    4. "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?",
    5. "Graves (Shawn), Hereth (Blake) & John (Tyler M.) - In Defense of Animal Universalism",
    6. "O'Connor (Timothy) & Jacobs (Jonathan D.) - Emergent individuals and the resurrection",
    7. "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity",
    8. "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief",
    9. "Loose (Jonathan) - Materialism Most Miserable The Prospects for Dualist and Physicalist Accounts of Resurrection",
    10. "Mavrodes (George I.) - The Life Everlasting and the Bodily Criterion of Identity",
    11. "Mooney (Justin) - The possibility of resurrection by reassembly",
    12. "O'Donnell (Patrick S.) - Death & Dying: A Select bibliography",
      → Also "O'Donnell (Patrick S.) - Human Nature, Personhood, and Personal Identity: A Select bibliography",
    13. "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death",
    14. "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave",
    15. "Quinn (Philip L.) - Personal Identity, Bodily Continuity and Resurrection",
    16. "Quinn (Philip L.) - Some Problems about Resurrection",
    17. "Thompson (Evan) - Dying: What Happens When We Die?",
    18. "Thompson (Jon W.) - Individuation, Identity, and Resurrection in Thomas Jackson and John Locke",
    19. "Thompson (Jon W.) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives",
    20. "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection",
    21. "Zeleznikow-Johnston (Ariel) - The Future Loves You: How and Why We Should Abolish Death",
    22. "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model",
    23. "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited"
  11. Complete analysing the following papers108:-
    1. "Cofnas (Nathan) - Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry",
    2. "Corabi (Joseph) & Schneider (Susan) - The Metaphysics of Uploading",
    3. "FT, Baggini (Julian), Warburton (Nigel) - Five Books - The Best Books on How To Think (Like a Philosopher)",
    4. "FT, ChatGPT - Five Books - The Best Books on Artificial Intelligence",
    5. "FT, Coyne (Jerry A.) - Five Books - The Best Books on Evolution",
    6. "FT, Dennett (Daniel) & Warburton (Nigel) - Five Favorite Books",
    7. "Frary (Mark) - Beyond Repair",
    8. "Galton (Francis) - Visualised Numerals",
    9. "Giusti (Elena) & Derbew (Sarah) - Decolonizing Blackness, alongside the Classics Curriculum: A conversation with Dr Sarah Derbew",
    10. "Gradesaver - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: Study Guide - Introduction", Etc.
    11. "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Disruption, Democracy & the Global Order" (update in the light of YouTube video and CSER summary),
    12. "Hume (David) - Treatise I.IV.VI: Of Personal Identity",
    13. "Kobie (Nicole) - Neuralink: an old idea that could be the future of medicine",
    14. "Korhonen (Anna), Woodward (Sarah) - This idea must die: 'AI will outsmart the human race'",
    15. "Middleton (Anna), Welford (Megan) - The Ethics of Genomics"
    16. "Moreno Figueroa (Monica), Jolin (Lucy) - A world without oppression to you",
    17. "Mulhall (Stephen), LRB - Non-Identity Crisis",
    18. "Olson (Eric) - The Central Dogma Of Transhumanism",
    19. "Paris (J.J.) & Elias-Jones (A.C.) - Do we murder Mary to save Jodie?",
    20. "Peckham (Jeremy) - AI, humanity and Christian ministry",
    21. "Putnam (Hilary) - Brains in a Vat",
    22. "Stenger (Victor J.), Lindsay (James A.) & Boghossian (Paul) - Physicists Are Philosophers, Too",
    23. "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity",
    24. "Velleman (David) - Beyond Price",
    25. "Walker (Robert) - Mary And Jodie – The Case Of The Conjoined Twins",
    26. "Watkin (Christopher) - Christianity and critical race theory",
    27. "Wikipedia - Large language model", and
    28. "Zangwill (Nick) - Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat"
  12. Consciousness109
    1. "JCS - Journal of Consciousness Studies (Consolidated List)":
      1. This is a large project – I need to sort out all the volumes associated with author JCS. Some I have in hard copy. Others were once on-line for free, but now seem to have disappeared. Some I claim to have downloaded.
      2. For volumes I have in either hard copy or electronic form I need to 'burst' them into their constituent papers (at the least for the usual suspects).
      3. Ingenta seems to have the latest issue of JCS for free download: Ingenta - JCS.
      4. Imprint Academic - Journal of Consciousness Studies says its archive is available on Ingenta and is free for current subscribers. So, If I wanted to go ahead with this, it might be best to subscribe for a year (£102; £122 including print [not worth it]); but only if I can spare the time to address the archive!
    2. Aeon110: Read & annotate papers as they arise, especially ...
      1. "Chittka (Lars) & Wilson (Catherine) - Bee-brained": Write-up
      2. "Frankish (Keith) - The Consciousness Illusion": Write-up
      3. "Frohlich (Joel) - Frames of consciousness": Write-up
      4. "Parks (Tim) & Manzotti (Riccardo) - You are the world": Write-up
      5. "Pigliucci (Massimo) - Consciousness is real": Write-up
      6. "Seth (Anil Kumar) - The real problem": Write-up
      7. "Seth (Anil Kumar) - How we build perception from the inside out": Write-up
    3. Panpsychism:-
      1. Set up Note on Panpsychism (as above)
      2. "BBC, Bragg (Melvyn) - In Our Time - Panpsychism": Review / revise.
      3. "Goff (Philip) - A Change of Heart on Fine-Tuning": Re-read & comment
      4. "Goff (Philip) - Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness": Book. Read.
      5. "Goff (Philip) - Is the Universe a conscious mind?": Re-read & comment
      6. "Goff (Philip) - Panpsychism is crazy, but it’s also most probably true": Re-read & comment
      7. "Goff (Philip) - Purposeful universe": Re-read & comment
      8. "Goff (Philip) - Why? The Purpose of the Universe": Book. Read.
      9. "JCS - Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 13, Issue 10-11 (2006)": Book. Read.
    4. Action the following Books and Papers:-
      1. "Birch (Jonathan) - The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI": Write-up
      2. "Bonhomme (Vincent), Etc. - General Anesthesia: A Probe to Explore Consciousness": Read & write-up
      3. "Crane (Tim) - Elements of Mind - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind": Re-read and review notes.
      4. "Dehaene (Stanislas) - Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts": Read.
      5. "Dennett (Daniel) - Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness": Read.
      6. "Donald (Merlin) - A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness": Read.
      7. "Eliot (Lise) - What's Going On in There?: How the Brain And Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life": Read.
      8. "Kammerer (Francois) - The Hardest Aspect of the Illusion Problem - and How to Solve it": Read.
      9. "Koch (Christof) - The Quest for Consciousness: A Nurobiological Approach": Read.
      10. "Metzinger (Thomas), Ed. - Conscious Experience": Burst out Papers and add Metzinger's Abstracts
      11. "Seth (Anil Kumar) - Being You: A New Science of Consciousness": Read.
      12. "Shapiro (Lawrence) - The Mind Incarnate": Read.
      13. "Strawson (Galen) - The Consciousness Deniers": Read & write-up
      14. "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence": Write up Chapter 8: Consciousness
      15. "Veit (Walter) - A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness": Read.
  13. Ensure the annotations from recently-read Papers are added to the relevant Notes:-
    1. "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke on Living Things"
    2. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face"
    3. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology' by Eric T. Olson"
  14. As background tasks:-
    1. Ensure all items in:-
      1. "Various - Papers on Desktop", and
      2. "Various - Papers in Desk Drawer"
      are either addressed or re-filed.
    2. Maintain "Various - Papers & Books Yet To Be Logged", and log papers therein if they become important.
    3. Convert old PDFs to Notes:-
      1. Review the two reports:-
      2. PDF-précis,
      3. PDF-essays111.
      4. Determine how the first is produced, and why the pdfs aren't highlighted, and compare with Write-ups Notes Jump Table
      5. Convert outstanding Essays & Précises.
    4. Complete cataloguing the books downloaded from Springer,
    5. Read and comment on112 the Short Stories in "Somerset Maugham (W.) - Collected Short Stories: Volume 2".
    6. Continue / complete reading / annotating various books113 that have landed in my in-tray:-
      1. "Ball (Philip) - How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology",
      2. "Barash (David P.) - Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are",
      3. "Berns (Gregory) - What It's Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience",
      4. "Blatti (Stephan) & Snowdon (Paul), Eds. - Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, and Identity",
      5. "Bliss (Rina) - What's Real about Race? Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society",
      6. "Bostrom (Nick) - Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies",
      7. "Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death",
      8. "Clark (Andy) - The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality",
      9. "De Waal (Frans) - Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?",
      10. "Dennett (Daniel) - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking",
      11. "Dennett (Daniel) - I've Been Thinking",
      12. "Edmonds (David) - Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong",
      13. "Erber (Joan T.) & Szuchman (Lenore T.) - Great Myths of Aging",
      14. "Green (Joel B.) - Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible",
      15. "Hofstadter (Douglas) & Dennett (Daniel), Eds. - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul",
      16. "Kagan (Shelly) - How to Count Animals, more or less",
      17. "Korsgaard (Christine) - Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals",
      18. "Loke (Andrew Ter Ern) - The Origin of Humanity and Evolution: Science and Scripture in Conversation",
      19. "Levitin (Daniel) - The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Ageing Well",
      20. "Lyons (Siobhan) - Death and the Machine: Intersections of Mortality and Robotics",
      21. "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death",
      22. "Miller (Kristie) - Issues in Theoretical Diversity: Persistence, Composition, and Time",
      23. "Peckham (Jeremy) - Masters or Slaves?: AI And The Future Of Humanity",
      24. "Price (Huw) - Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time",
      25. "Ricard (Matthieu) - A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion",
      26. "Ritchie (George G.), Sherrill (Elizabeth) - Return from Tomorrow",
      27. "Ritchie (George G.) - Ordered to Return: My Life After Dying",
      28. "Rowlands (Mark) - The Philosopher and the Wolf",
      29. "Sapolsky (Robert) - Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will",
      30. "Schechtman (Marya) - Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life",
      31. "Schneider (Susan) - Artificial You",
      32. "Shermer (Michael), Gould (Stephen Jay) - Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time",
      33. "Seung (Sebastian) - Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are",
      34. "Uria-Recio (Pedro) - How AI Will Shape Our Future",
      35. "Walker (Matthew P.) - Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams",
      36. "Wasserman (Ryan) - The Paradoxes of Time Travel",
      37. "Wohlleben (Peter) - The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World",
      38. "Wyatt (John) - Matters of Life and Death"
    7. Continue reading and reviewing papers issued by Aeon114 (and the occasional spin-off). In particular,
      1. Complete write-ups115 for 206 items: Follow this Link116.
      2. Add new items to the database as and when I have time to read and comment thereon, maintaining a 'top ten' Priority 1 items.
    8. Keep up with the Journals I have access to as a Cambridge Alumnus via via JSTOR, Cambridge Core & Project Muse. Update my Journals Note117.
    9. Keep up with the philosophical world by regular reviews of "Interaction - Philos-List", but only seriously pursue118 items relevant to my research.
    10. London Review of Books: update my LRB119 Note to reflect the fact that I've downloaded all relevant items up to the end of 2024. Develop a method of importing them into my database.


In-Page Footnotes:

Footnote 7: Footnote 11: Footnote 104: Footnote 105: Footnote 108: Footnote 112: Footnote 113: Footnote 115: Footnote 118:

Table of the Previous 12 Versions of this Note: (of 98)

Date Length Title
30/10/2025 18:31:41 18360 Status: Personal Identity (2025 - September)
15/07/2025 10:14:53 20145 Status: Personal Identity (2025 - June)
07/04/2025 00:15:50 21863 Status: Personal Identity (2025 - March)
01/02/2025 00:28:48 20669 Status: Personal Identity (2024 - December)
10/10/2024 00:47:31 18007 Status: Personal Identity (2024 - September)
11/07/2024 23:08:10 23169 Status: Personal Identity (2024 - June)
15/04/2024 00:34:34 25699 Status: Personal Identity (2024 - March)
01/04/2024 20:08:10 20961 Status: Personal Identity (2023 - December)
04/10/2023 21:59:02 16917 Status: Personal Identity (2023 - September)
06/07/2023 00:43:12 17293 Status: Personal Identity (2023 - June)
30/04/2023 01:06:14 17972 Status: Personal Identity (2023 - March)
10/01/2023 23:35:31 13323 Status: Personal Identity (2022 - December)


Note last updated Reference for this Topic Parent Topic
13/01/2026 13:14:53 518 (Status: Personal Identity (2025 - December)) Status: Summary (2025 - December)

Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Abortion Aeon Papers Androids Animalism Animalism - Objections
Animals Biological View Brains in Vats Cartesian Ego Connectedness vs Continuity
Consciousness Constitution Constitution View Constitution View - Objections Degrees of Personhood
Descartes Dicephalus Dion and Theon Exdurantism Existential Passage
Functionalism General Surveys Human Persons Hume Hylomorphism
I Individual Intermittent Objects Kant Kinds
Language of Thought Leibniz London Review of Books Metaphilosophy Methuselah
Mind Modality Narrative Identity Nihilism Ontology
Organisms Perdurantism Persistence Phase Sortals PID Note, Book & Paper Usage
Plants Pregnancy Psychological Continuity - Forward Psychology Race
Resurrection Scattered Objects Society Sorites Sortals
Soul Criterion Souls Status: Summary Task List (2026: January - February) Status: Thesis Dashboard (2026: February) Substance
Supervenience Teletransportation Theo Todman's BA Papers Thesis - Current Stance Thesis - Journals
Thesis - Personal Identity Thesis - Preface Thinking Animal Argument Thought Time
Wiggins Wittgenstein Zombies    

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



Summary of Notes Citing This Note

Simon - T1S1T1 Status: Consciousness Studies (2023 - September), 2 Status: Priority Task List (2026 - January), 2 Status: Summary (2025 - December), 2, 3 Status: Summary Task List (2026: January - February)
Status: Summary Task List (YTD: 25Q4 - 26Q1), 2 Status: Web-Tools (2025 - December), 2 Theo Todman's Philosophy Page Theo Todman's Philosophy Research Thesis - Method & Form
Website - Outstanding Developments (2026 - February), 2 Website - Progress to Date (2026 - February), 2 Website Generator Documentation - Functors, 2, 3, 4, 5    

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



Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author Title Medium Extra Links Read?
Chapman (Colin) The Israel-Hamas war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Paper High Quality Abstract   Yes
Todman (Theo) Thesis - The Form of the Argument Paper Medium Quality Abstract   Yes


Text Colour Conventions

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



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