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Personal Identity

Counting Persons

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

Plug Note¹

• Thesis Text:
  1. What are the adverse consequences of David Lewis’s perdurantist² approach to fission³ in personal identity?
  2. According to this theory, there were always coincident stages of the two space-time worms prior to fission. So, there were two persons there all along; yet we counted only one, being ignorant of₄ the future fission.
  3. What are the consequences of miscounting? No doubt this depends on what function (or more likely functions) our concept⁵ of PERSON⁶ performs.
  4. We might ask whether it is just persons who are miscounted, or are human beings⁷ also miscounted? This will obviously depend on the TE⁸, which would need spelling out.
  5. Take the case of a half-brain⁹ transplant¹⁰. In this TE, a person’s psychology is supposed to be duplicated¹¹ within two idempotent half-brains, one of which stays in the donor’s head, the other being transplanted into the empty skull of a recipient. In this TE, the psychological view¹² of personal identity is assumed. We start off with one locus of psychology, and end up with two. This is the standard problem of fission¹³ – which successor is identical to the original person? We seem to want both to be, but – in the absence of perdurantism¹⁴ – the logic of identity¹⁵ forbids it. Perdurantism¹⁶ helps us out, at the cost of there being more pre-fission persons than we thought.
  6. What about other fall-out? Are the earlier stages of the “recipient” patient – viewed as an animal – spatially distributed – so is such a distributed¹⁷ thing a human being at all?
  7. What is the core of humanness – is this always the brain¹⁸, so that the human goes along with the half-brain, and the body¹⁹ is just like any other transplant, only bigger?
  8. Problems with counting persons also allegedly arises in the context of:-
     → Multiple Personality Disorder²⁰, and
     → Commissurotomy²¹
     While the latter is a precursor for the half-brain transplant described above, both are at least actual situations that are less open to the charge of under-description often alleged against TEs.
  9. Finally, for now at least, and maybe most importantly – the issue of counting arises in Eric Olson’s Thinking Animal Argument²², and the various conundrums involving (partly) coincident objects²³.

References

• Relevant Works cited above: No items to list.
• For a Page of Links²⁴ to this Note, Click here. Not of any use.
• Works on this topic that I’ve actually read²⁵, include the following:-
  • General:
    1. "Olson (Eric) - Material Coincidence and the Indiscernibility Problem", 2001, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Being in Two Minds", 2003
    3. "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Fugues, Hypnosis, and Multiple Personality", 2003
• A further reading list might start with:-
  • General:
    1. "Baxter (Donald L.M.) - Many-One Identity", 1988
    2. "Gallois (Andre) - Counting Amoebas", 1998
    3. "Hawley (Katherine) - Parts and Stages", 2001
    4. "Hershenov (David) - Merrick's Identification of the Person and Organism", Undated, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 5%
    5. "Lowe (E.J.) - Material Coincidence and the Cinematographic Fallacy: A Response to Olson", 2002, Internal PDF Link
    6. "Olson (Eric) - Lowe's Defence of Constitutionalism", 2003, Internal PDF Link
    7. "Parsons (Terence) - Counting Objects", 2000
    8. "Pinillos (N. Ángel) - Counting and Indeterminate Identity", 2003, Internal PDF Link
    9. "Snowdon (Paul) - Multiple Personality Disorder", 2014, Read = 33%
    10. "Thomson (Garrett) - Counting subjects", 2008, Internal PDF Link, Read = 8%
    11. "Williams (Bernard) - Identity and Identities", 1995, Read = 8%

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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-holder²⁶.

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In-Page Footnotes:

Footnote 4:

1. No doubt if this fanciful event could be planned or anticipated we would count differently.

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Table of the Previous 8 Versions of this Note:

Date	Length	Title
20/09/2022 11:24:00	3923	Counting Persons
01/05/2022 18:20:10	3542	Counting Persons
09/02/2021 21:59:02	3348	Counting Persons
18/09/2020 21:24:29	3103	Counting Persons
07/02/2018 19:42:14	4325	Counting Persons
18/12/2010 19:58:05	687	Counting Persons
26/11/2007 23:25:26	591	Counting Persons
12/08/2007 10:17:46	565	Counting Persons

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Note last updated	Reading List for this Topic	Parent Topic
06/07/2023 00:43:12	Counting Persons	Logic of Identity

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Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Awaiting Attention (Personal Identity)	Body	Brain	Brain Transplants	Coincidence
Commissurotomy	Concepts	Duplication	Fission	Human Beings
Logic of Identity	Multiple Personality Disorder	Note Links Explanation	Perdurantism	Person
Plug Note Apologia	Psychological View	Scattered Objects	Thinking Animal Argument	Thought Experiments
Transplants	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

Dicephalus	Lewis	Olson - What Are We? Animals	PID Note, Book & Paper Usage, 2, 3	Research - Proposal
Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?), 2, 3, 4, 5	Thesis - Chapter 08 (Arguments against Animalism)	Thesis - Chapter 12 (Conclusion)	Thesis - Current Stance
Thesis - Personal Identity, 2, 3, 4, 5	Unity of the Person	Website Generator Documentation - Functors, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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?
Olson (Eric)	What Are We? Animals	Paper		Yes
Tammet (Daniel)	N/A	Author	2
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 01 (Introduction)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?)	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 08 (Arguments against Animalism)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 12 (Conclusion)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Current Position	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Dicephalus	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Lewis	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Personal Identity	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Unity of the Person	Paper		Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Baxter (Donald L.M.)	Many-One Identity	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Papers 17, 1988, 193-216	No
Catterson (Troy), Ed.	Synthese Special Issue on Personal Identity	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Catterson (Troy), Ed. - Synthese Special Issue on Personal Identity	3%
Gallois (Andre)	Counting Amoebas	Paper - By Subtopic	Gallois - Occasions of Identity, 1998, Chapter 4	No
Gallois (Andre)	Occasions of Identity : a Study in the Metaphysics of Persistence, Change, and Sameness	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Gallois (Andre) - Occasions of Identity : a Study in the Metaphysics of Persistence, Change, and Sameness	No
Harris (Henry)	Identity - Essays Based on Herbert Spencer Lectures Given in the University of Oxford	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Harris (Henry) - Identity - Essays Based on Herbert Spencer Lectures Given in the University of Oxford	4%
Hawley (Katherine)	How Things Persist	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Hawley (Katherine) - How Things Persist	5%
Hawley (Katherine)	Parts and Stages	Paper - By Subtopic	Hawley - How Things Persist, Chapter 2	No
Hawley (Katherine)	Persistence and Determination	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophy 83 supplement 62 (2008), 197-212 (special issue on Being: Developments in Contemporary Metaphysics)	60%
Hershenov (David)	Merrick's Identification of the Person and Organism	Paper - By Subtopic	Australasian Journal of Philosophy. (Resubmission Requested).	5%
Lowe (E.J.)	Material Coincidence and the Cinematographic Fallacy: A Response to Olson	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Quarterly; Jul2002, Vol. 52 Issue 208, p369-372, 4p	No
Olson (Eric)	Material Coincidence and the Indiscernibility Problem	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Quarterly 51, No. 204, July 2001	Yes
Olson (Eric)	Papers on Identity Boxes: Vol 13 (Olson)	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	16%
Parsons (Terence)	Counting Objects	Paper - By Subtopic	Parsons - Indeterminate Identity, 2000, Chapter 8	No
Parsons (Terence)	Indeterminate Identity	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Parsons (Terence) - Indeterminate Identity	6%
Snowdon (Paul)	Multiple Personality Disorder	Paper - By Subtopic	Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, Ourselves - Chapter 7	33%
Snowdon (Paul)	Persons, Animals, Ourselves	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, Ourselves	21%
Sytsma (Justin), Ed.	Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Sytsma (Justin), Ed. - Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind	2%
Thomson (Garrett)	Counting subjects	Paper - By Subtopic	Synthese, Vol. 162, No. 3 (Jun., 2008), pp. 373-384	8%
Tierney (Hannah), Howard (Chris), Kumar (Victor), Kvaran (Trevor) & Nichols (Shaun)	How Many of Us Are There?	Paper - By Subtopic	Sytsma - Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Mind, Chapter 7	No
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Counting Persons	Paper - By Subtopic		Yes
Wilkes (Kathleen)	Being in Two Minds	Paper - By Subtopic	Wilkes - Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments, Chapter 5	Yes
Wilkes (Kathleen)	Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Wilkes (Kathleen) - Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments	Yes
Williams (Bernard)	Identity and Identities	Paper - By Subtopic	Harris - Identity - Essays Based on Herbert Spencer Lectures Given in the University of Oxford	8%

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Text Colour Conventions

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

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