Living Variously

Abstract

Traditionally, philosophers have argued that a single relation-like psychological continuity (e.g. Locke) or biological continuity (e.g. Olson)-grounds personal identity and persistence. But recent empirical work has shed light on a vast number of identity-related practical concerns, and it is unlikely that a single persistence relation could address all of these concerns. In my dissertation, I defend a pluralist view of personal identity, according to which more than one relation can ground persistence and survival. In doing so, I present a novel account of personal identity, which I call the Subscript View. According to the Subscript View, there exist several distinct survival relations, all with different persistence conditions, which can obtain independently of one another. I argue that the Subscript View is able to avoid threats to its ontology and charges of conventionalism and can accommodate a feature of our experience of persistence that no other view, pluralist or otherwise, is able to accommodate.