Notes for 3/30/2026

3/30/2026
[Philosophy Club every Monday, 4-5 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")]
[Bioethics Club: Mondays from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Leigh Hall 408]

If you could choose whether or not to be reincarnated, but with no memory at all of your previous life, how would you choose?
 
Problems of identity

What, exactly, is identity?

Strict identity is usually explained in terms of Leibniz’s Law

Leibniz’s Law is the combination of two principles:

Identity of indiscernibles: If x and y have all the same properties, then x =y.
(All difference is a difference in properties. For x and y to be different, one must have a property the other doesn’t have.)

Indiscernibility of identicals: If x=y, then there are no properties that one has that the other doesn’t have.

LL: x=y if and only if x and y have all the same properties.


X = 4
Y = 2+2
Z = 1+1+1+1

X = Superman
Y = Clark Kent


Synchronic identity: Identity at a single time.

Diachronic identity: identity at different times.
“How can something change and still be the same?”

Diachronic identity = LL minus spatial and temporal properties

Best known example of the problem of diachronic identity = “Ship of Theseus”

Potentially all the material parts of the ship could change, but we would say it is still the same ship.
What, exactly, bears the identity of the ship? (What are the essential properties of the ship?)

Traditionally, judgments of diachronic identity distinguish between essential and accidental properties.

X can be diachronically identical to y so long as x and y have all the same essential properties.

Identity is problematic for things having parts.

Do judgments of diachronic identity require something that remains invariant across changes?

What happens with judgments of diachronic identity for people? (persons)

If materialism is true, then people are collections of parts.

Theories of personal identity:
-    Bodily identity (or brain theory)
-    Dualism (soul theory)
-    Psychological theory
 

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