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Personal Identity

Survival

(Text as at 06/07/2023 00:43:12)

Plug Note¹

• Thesis Text:
  1. Just what does ‘survival’ mean in philosophical contexts? Is it no more than a sloppy locution when ‘persistence²’ is intended, or is it a lesser relation?
  2. The term found its way into the philosophical literature in Derek Parfit’s expressions “identity is not what matters in survival”. Unfortunately, this expression is ambiguous, and is not clarified by being often repeated. It could mean one of:-
     1. When we survive – that is persist through – some adventure, what matters to us isn’t self-identity as such, but the continuation of our projects, relationships and other things that matter to us. However, of course, we need to persist in order for all these things to be ours.
     2. We can survive some adventure without persisting. That is, without being identical to the person who emerges from the adventure.
        
  3. We need to distinguish these two possible interpretations of Parfit³ according to whether survival is or is not identity-preserving. By “survival” does Parfit mean the same as other philosophers mean by “persistence⁴”?
  4. Some philosophers (eg. E.J. Borowski) claim that Parfit thinks that “survival is a matter of degree” (implying, it would seem, Partial Identity⁵) or that (eg. Frederick Doepke) “survival is one to many”.
  5. In the standard Parfitian claim that “what matters in survival is not identity”, Parfit is right that the issue isn’t necessarily “am I (A) identical to B or C”, but “will I have what matters⁶ in survival if B, or C, or both survive”, and that the reason the two questions are elided is that they don’t usually come apart.
  6. However, there’s incoherence in an expression such as “will I survive as B”, if I’m not supposed identical to B, since survival and this use of the personal pronoun seem to imply identity. That is, if Relative Identity⁷ is incoherent, as I believe it to be.
  7. Also in an expression such as “will I have what matters”, to what does the “I⁸” refer if I’m assumed not to persist? To my present self⁹ only? I might now see that I would be happy that a certain future state of affairs, not involving me, appertains; but I would not then have what matters, nor indeed have anything at all.
  8. So, I think a temporal¹⁰ element fits in. Looking forward to some future contingency, we might say that the state of affairs then – in the future – gives me now much of what I want (now) to be the case. My plans will have gone well, my family is in a good state, I am famous or whatever it is that matters to me now. But at that future time I will have nothing that matters, because I won’t exist.
  9. I note that – in "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?" – Parfit says that – in the teletransportation¹¹ case – he would not survive, but would have what mattered to him in survival. So, I take the “what matters in survival” to mean – for Parfit – what would have mattered had he survived.
  10. So, I think we can indeed distinguish, with Parfit, identity¹² from what matters in survival¹³. His idea seems to be that we can have what matters in survival¹⁴ without surviving.
  11. Parfit’s concerns are fundamentally ethical, with Buddhist¹⁵ tendencies. He’s trying to remove self¹⁶ from ethics and persuade us that we don’t need self, and therefore don’t need self-identity.
  12. Parfit’s claim, which I believe to be false, is that we don’t really care about our persistence¹⁷ as such, but about the future success of our projects, which can as well or better be prosecuted by others. But we are more selfish than that, and in many circumstances justifiably so. It may be that some people – saints – could live with this ethic. But most people (entrepreneurs, students and the like) – at least some of the time – make sacrifices now so that they themselves can reap the benefits in the future. If they didn’t have the possibility of this recompense, they might not do what they do, and we might be all worse off. Yes, some people (parents in particular) invest in others and they might well be satisfied if their charges, and not themselves, survived and flourished in the future. But society needs some people to use their own talents initially for their own selfish reasons so that we might all benefit from what they do.

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  Further Remarks:
  1. There’s something of an overlap for the reading lists for this topic and those for Teletransportation¹⁸, Parfit¹⁹ generally, and others such as Life after Death²⁰. I’ve tried to minimise this overlap.

References

• Relevant Works cited above:
  1. "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?", 2014, Annotations, Internal PDF Link, Read
• For a page of Links²¹ to this Note, Click here. There were far 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 read²², include the following:-
  • General:
    1. "Arnold (Keith) - The Subject of Radical Change", 1978, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Baillie (James) - Identity, Survival, and Sortal Concepts", 1990, Internal PDF Link
    3. "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?", 2014, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    4. "Campbell (Scott) - Can You Survive a Brain-Zap", 2004, Annotations
    5. "Corcoran (Kevin) - Soul, Body and Survival: Introduction - Soul or Body?", 2001
    6. "Lewis (David) - Survival and Identity", 1983, Internal PDF Link
    7. "Lockwood (Michael) - When Does a Life Begin?", 1987, Annotations
    8. "Olson (Eric) - Animalism and the Remnant-Person Problem", 2015, Internal PDF Link
    9. "Rey (Georges) - Survival", 1976
    10. "Unger (Peter) - The Physical Approach To Our Survival", 1992
    11. "Unger (Peter) - The Survival of the Sentient", 2000, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    12. "Unger (Peter) - What Matters In Our Survival: Distinctions, Compromises and Limits", 1992
    13. "Wiggins (David) - The Concern to Survive", 1987, Annotations
• A further reading list might start with:-
  • General:
    1. "Agar (Nicholas) - Functionalism and Personal Identity", 2003, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
    2. "Baillie (James) - Identity and Survival", 1993
    3. "Borowski (E.J.) - Identity and Personal Identity", 1976, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
    4. "Bradley (Raymond D.) - Why Survival is Metaphysically Impossible", 2015
    5. "Brennan (Andrew) - Discontinuity and Identity", 1987, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
    6. "Brennan (Andrew) - Personal Identity and Personal Survival", 1982, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
    7. "Brennan (Andrew) - Structure and Survival", 1988
    8. "Brennan (Andrew) - Survival", 1984, Internal PDF Link, Read = 5%
    9. "Brennan (Andrew) - Survival and Importance", 1987, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
    10. "Broad (C.D.) - On Survival Without a Body", 1997, No Abstract
    11. "Bruntrup (Godehard) - 3.5-Dimensionalism and Survival: A Process Ontological Approach", 2010, Internal PDF Link, Read = 22%
    12. "Campbell (Scott) - Could Your Life Have Been Different?", 2000, Internal PDF Link, Read = 8%
    13. "Cherry (Christopher) - Can My Survival Be Subrogated?", 1984, Internal PDF Link
    14. "Corcoran (Kevin), Ed. - Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons", 2001, Book, Read = 12%
    15. "Doepke (Frederick) - Identity and Natural Kinds", 1992, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
    16. "Ehring (Douglas) - Survival and Trivial Facts", 1987, Read = 17%
    17. "Flew (Antony) - Survival: Part 2", 1975, No Abstract
    18. "Flew (Antony) - Three Ways to Survival", 2000
    19. "Funkhouser (Eric) - Notes on Lewis, 'Survival and Identity'", 2014, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 33%
    20. "Harris (John) - The Survival Lottery", 1975, Internal PDF Link, Footnote₂₃
    21. "Lewis (Hywel David) - Survival: Part 1", 1975
    22. "Martin (Raymond) - Identity, Transformation, and What Matters in Survival", 1990
    23. "Matthews (Gareth B.) - Surviving As", 1977
    24. "Penelhum (Terence) - Personal Identity, Memory, and Survival", 1959, Internal PDF Link
    25. "Penelhum (Terence) - Survival and Disembodied Existence", 1970, Book
    26. "Penelhum (Terence) - Survival and Disembodied Existence: Preliminaries", 1970, No Abstract
    27. "Robinson (John) - Personal Identity and Survival", 1988, Internal PDF Link, Read = 11%
    28. "Schechtman (Marya) - Personality and Persistence: The Many Faces of Personal Survival", 2004, Internal PDF Link
    29. "Williams (Anthony Marc) - Why Survival Is Enough", 2008, Internal PDF Link, Read = 7%

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• For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
  1. Read: No items to list.
  2. Further Reading: No items to list.
• This is mostly a place-holder²⁴.

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In-Page Footnotes:

Footnote 23:

• This is an ethical rather than metaphysical discussion.

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Table of the Previous 9 Versions of this Note:

Date	Length	Title
20/09/2022 11:24:00	7125	Survival
04/05/2022 21:46:05	6744	Survival
18/02/2021 01:01:55	4793	Survival
04/06/2020 18:24:29	4022	Survival
14/07/2019 18:05:46	2260	Survival
11/03/2018 20:19:41	3371	Survival
18/12/2010 19:58:05	1707	Survival
26/11/2007 23:25:26	1611	Survival
12/08/2007 10:17:46	1602	Survival

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Note last updated	Reading List for this Topic	Parent Topic
06/07/2023 00:43:12	Survival	Parfit

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Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Awaiting Attention (Personal Identity)	Buddhism	I	Life After Death	Logic of Identity
Note Links Explanation	Parfit	Partial Identity	Persistence	Plug Note Apologia
Relative Identity	Self	Teletransportation	Time	What Matters
Works Read - Explanation

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

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Summary of Notes Citing This Note

Body	Christian Materialism	Continuity	Corpses	Essentialism, 2
Exdurantism	Existential Passage, 2	First-Person Perspective	Forensic Property, 2	Future Great Pain Test
Memory	Mind	Olson - Personal Identity - Oxford Bibliographies Online	Olson - What Are We? Animals, 2, 3	Organisms
Parfit	PID Note, Book & Paper Usage, 2, 3, 4, 5	Psychological Continuity, 2	Psychology	Reduplication Objections, 2, 3
Research - Proposal	Teletransportation, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction), 2, 3, 4	Thesis - Chapter 02 (What are We?)	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)
Thesis - Chapter 05 (Persistence and Time), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10	Thesis - Chapter 06 (Animalism and Arguments for It)	Thesis - Chapter 07 (The Constitution View and Arguments for It), 2, 3, 4	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15	Thesis - Chapter 11 (Resurrection)
Thesis - Current Stance	Transplants	Website Generator Documentation - Functors, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6	What Matters, 2, 3

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?
Agar (Nicholas)	Functionalism and Personal Identity	Paper
Arnold (Keith)	The Subject of Radical Change	Paper		Yes
Borowski (E.J.)	Identity and Personal Identity	Paper
Brennan (Andrew)	Discontinuity and Identity	Paper
Brennan (Andrew)	Personal Identity and Personal Survival	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5
Brennan (Andrew)	Survival	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Brennan (Andrew)	Survival and Importance	Paper	2
Campbell (Scott)	Could Your Life Have Been Different?	Paper
Cerullo (Michael A.)	Uploading and Branching Identity	Paper
Doepke (Frederick)	Identity and Natural Kinds	Paper
Funkhouser (Eric)	Notes on Lewis, 'Survival and Identity'	Paper
Lockwood (Michael)	When Does a Life Begin?	Paper		Yes
Martin (Raymond)	Memory, Connecting and What Matters In Survival	Paper
Olson (Eric)	Animalism and the Remnant-Person Problem	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	Personal Identity - Oxford Bibliographies Online	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	Psychology and Personal Identity	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	What Are We? Animals	Paper	2, 3
Robinson (John)	Personal Identity and Survival	Paper
Schechtman (Marya)	Personality and Persistence: The Many Faces of Personal Survival	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Shipley (G.J.)	Review of Andy Clark's 'Natural-Born Cyborgs'	Paper		Yes
Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules)	Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Body	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)	Paper	2, 3, 4	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 02 (What Are We?)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 05 (Persistence and Time)	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 06 (Animalism and Arguments for It)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 07 (The Constitution View and Arguments for It)	Paper	2, 3, 4	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 11 (Resurrection)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Christian Materialism	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Continuity	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Corpses	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Current Position	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Essentialism	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Exdurantism	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - First-Person Perspective	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Forensic Property	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Future Great Pain Test	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Memory	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Mind	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Organisms	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Parfit	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychological Continuity	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Psychology	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Reduplication Objections	Paper	2, 3	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Teletransportation	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Transplants	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - What Matters	Paper	2, 3	Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Agar (Nicholas)	Functionalism and Personal Identity	Paper - Cited	Nous, Mar2003, Vol. 37 Issue 1, p52-70, 19p;	6%
Arnold (Keith)	The Subject of Radical Change	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4 (May, 1978), pp. 395-401	Yes
Baggini (Julian)	Psychological Reductionism About Persons: A Critical Development	Paper - By Subtopic	PhD thesis, University College London, 1996	1%
Baillie (James)	Identity and Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Baillie (James) - Problems in Personal Identity, 1993, Chapter 2	No
Baillie (James)	Identity, Survival, and Sortal Concepts	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Quarterly, 1990, Vol. 40 Issue 159, p183-194, 12p	Yes
Baillie (James)	Problems in Personal Identity	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Baillie (James) - Problems in Personal Identity	45%
Belzer (Marvin)	Parfit and Lewis on Survival of Fission and What Matters in Survival: Why Parfit won the Debate	Paper - By Subtopic	2002, Draft. Personal Website.	No
Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David)	The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies: Vol. 170, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 465-500	Yes
Bradley (Raymond D.)	Why Survival is Metaphysically Impossible	Paper - By Subtopic	Martin & Augustine - The Myth of an Afterlife, Part 2, Chapter 11	No
Brennan (Andrew)	Conditions of Identity	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Brennan (Andrew) - Conditions of Identity	0%
Brennan (Andrew)	Structure and Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Brennan - Conditions of Identity, 1988, Chapter 3	No
Brennan (Andrew)	Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Synthese June 1984; 59: 339-362	5%
Brennan (Andrew)	Survival and Importance	Paper - By Subtopic	Analysis, vol. 47, 1987, pp. 225-230	17%
Broad (C.D.)	On Survival Without a Body	Paper - By Subtopic	Edwards - Immortality, pp, 276-278	No
Bruntrup (Godehard)	3.5-Dimensionalism and Survival: A Process Ontological Approach	Paper - By Subtopic	Gasser (Georg) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death? 2010	22%
Campbell (Scott)	Can You Survive a Brain-Zap	Paper - Cited	Theoria, 2004; 70(1): 22-27	Yes
Corcoran (Kevin)	Soul, Body and Survival: Introduction - Soul or Body?	Paper - Cited	Corcoran - Soul, Body and Survival, Introduction	Yes
Corcoran (Kevin), Ed.	Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons	Book - Cited	Corcoran (Kevin), Ed. - Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons	56%
Ducasse (C.J.)	Survival As Transmigration	Paper - By Subtopic	Edwards - Immortality, pp, 194-199	No
Edwards (Paul), Ed.	Immortality	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Edwards (Paul), Ed. - Immortality	4%
Ehring (Douglas)	Survival and Trivial Facts	Paper - By Subtopic	Analysis, vol. 47, 1987, pp. 50-54	17%
Feldman (Fred)	Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Feldman (Fred) - Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death	Yes
Feldman (Fred)	The Survival of Death	Paper - By Subtopic	Feldman - Confrontations with the Reaper, Chapter 6	Yes
Flew (Antony)	Merely Mortal?	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Flew (Antony) - Merely Mortal?	2%
Flew (Antony)	Survival: Part 2	Paper - By Subtopic	Lewis (Hywel David) - Persons and Life After Death, Chapter 5	No
Flew (Antony)	The Question of Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Penelhum (Terence) - Immortality, 1973	No
Flew (Antony)	Three Ways to Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Flew - Merely Mortal? 2000, Chapter 1	No
Funkhouser (Eric)	Metaphysics, Spring 2014	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Funkhouser (Eric) - Metaphysics, Spring 2014	94%
Funkhouser (Eric)	Notes on Lewis, 'Survival and Identity'	Paper - By Subtopic	Funkhouser (Eric) - Metaphysics, Spring 2014	No
Gasser (Georg), Ed.	Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?	95%
Harris (John)	The Survival Lottery	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophy, Vol. 50, No. 191 (Jan., 1975), pp. 81-87	No
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
Lewis (Hywel David)	Persons and Life After Death	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Lewis (Hywel David) - Persons and Life After Death	3%
Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith)	The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death	15%
Matthews (Gareth B.)	Surviving As	Paper - By Subtopic	Analysis 38, 1977, pp. 53-58	No
Noonan (Harold)	Parfit and What Matters in Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Noonan - Personal Identity, 2003, Chapter 9	Yes
Noonan (Harold)	Personal Identity	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Noonan (Harold) - Personal Identity	Yes
Olson (Eric)	What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology	Book - Referencing (via Paper Referencing)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	99%
Olson (Eric)	What Are We? Animals	Paper - Referencing	What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology, Chapter 2 (November 2007: Oxford University Press.)	81%
Penelhum (Terence)	Personal Identity, Memory, and Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Journal of Philosophy 56, No. 22, (Oct., 1959), pp. 882-903	No
Penelhum (Terence)	Survival and Disembodied Existence	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Penelhum (Terence) - Survival and Disembodied Existence	No
Penelhum (Terence)	Survival and Disembodied Existence: Preliminaries	Paper - By Subtopic	Penelhum - Survival and Disembodied Existence, 1970, Chapter 1	No
Penelhum (Terence), Ed.	Immortality	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Penelhum (Terence), Ed. - Immortality	7%
Price (H.H.)	Survival and the Idea of 'Another World'	Paper - By Subtopic	Penelhum (Terence) - Immortality, 1973	No
Rey (Georges)	Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Rorty (Amelie) - The Identities of Persons, 1976	Yes
Robinson (John)	Personal Identity and Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 85, No. 6, Jun., 1988, pp. 319-328	11%
Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg), Ed.	The Identities of Persons	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg), Ed. - The Identities of Persons	23%
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Survival	Paper - By Subtopic		Yes
Unger (Peter)	Identity, Consciousness and Value	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Unger (Peter) - Identity, Consciousness and Value	Yes
Unger (Peter)	The Physical Approach To Our Survival	Paper - By Subtopic	Unger - Identity, Consciousness and Value, Chapter 4	Yes
Unger (Peter)	The Survival of the Sentient	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 14, Oct2000, p325, 24p	Yes
Unger (Peter)	What Matters In Our Survival: Distinctions, Compromises and Limits	Paper - By Subtopic	Unger - Identity, Consciousness and Value, Chapter 7	Yes
Williams (Anthony Marc)	Why Survival Is Enough	Paper - By Subtopic	The Journal of Value Inquiry 42(4):433-449, January 2008	7%

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Text Colour Conventions

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2023

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