356 | book reviews

Personal Identity: Complex or Simple?

Edited by GEORG GASSER and MATTHIAS STEFAN
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 pp. £55.00

Since John Locke first set the agenda, contemporary philosophical discussions on
diachronic personal identity focus on one key question. That is, what makes a

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person 1 at t1 the same person as a person 2 at t2? This question in turn presupposes
a criterion of personal identity, which can be described as: ‘necessarily, if x is a human
person at time t and y exists at another time t*, x=y if and only if . . .’ (p. 47). In short,
is there a criterion for personal identity over time? According to the complex view of
personal identity, there is an informative, non-circular and non-trivial criterion for
personal identity over time. On the contrary, defenders of the simple view of personal
identity claim that there is no informative, non-circular and non-trivial criterion of
personal identity at all, since nothing grounds personal identity other than itself.
The debate on this front still continues. But the specific aim of this volume is to
raise the profile of the simple view (p. 1). The motivation for doing so was due to Eric
Olson (one of the contributors in this volume), who once remarked that the simple
view is poorly understood and needs to be given the attention it deserves. In this
regard, the book contains excellent essays by some of the major personal identity
theorists. The essays are worth the time and the attention of readers interested in the
metaphysics of human persons.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part contains four essays which
focus on framing the question. David Barnett’s essay begins with nicely crafted
Socratic-style dialogue and focuses on two core questions, namely (i) what sort of
thing am I?; and (ii) what kinds of alterations could I survive? Eric Olson’s essay raises
difficulties for the traditional boundary drawn between the complex and the simple
views of personal identity. Olson explores and critically examines some of the reasons
(e.g. criterialism, anti-criterialism, empiricist theories) traditionally used to justify
such a distinction and finds them all wanting. He ends his essay by claiming that
the simple view continues to be elusive (p. 62). Ryan Wasserman’s essay looks at why
we intuitively think that personal identity cannot be indeterminate. Wasserman
explores the basis for such an anti-indeterminacy intuition linking indeterminacy to
obligation, moral dilemmas, epistemicism and subjectivism. By pulling the
threads together, Wasserman aims to provide a better understanding of the standard
arguments against the complex view (p. 64). In his essay, Harold Noonan, echoing
David Lewis’s dictum, argues that there is no problem of identity. Although given
some puzzle cases, there can be indeterminacy in personal identity, the source of
such indeterminacy itself can hardly be located in identity itself. Hence, indeterminacy
in personal identity should be linked to conditions of personhood. Noonan
takes the concept of a person as indexical in light of which he defends the psycho-
logical continuity account against the animalist’s too many minds objections.
Noonan’s essay ends with a brief discussion of the possibility of vagueness in personal
identity.

Analysis Reviews Vol 74 | Number 2 | April 2014 | pp. 356–357 doi:10.1093/analys/ant114

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Part two contains four essays and one reply. Arguments are given for and against
the simple view. The section begins with Richard Swinburne’s novel and interesting
essay in which he analyses logical possibility and a posteriori metaphysical possibility.
Swinburne connects this discussion to his widely known view of a human soul. In his
essay, Sydney Shoemaker argues for the thesis that personal identity should not be
treated any differently than the identity of other sorts of things such as trees, ships, etc.
For Shoemaker, personal identity like the rest of the identity of other things is further

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analysable. In light of this, Shoemaker argues that there are constitutive criteria of
identity of persons. Of course, Shoemaker’s claim here does not sit well with defenders
of the simple view. In this regard, there is a brief exchange between Shoemaker and
E.J. Lowe. In his essay, Lowe gives interesting arguments for the substantiality of
persons as well as whether or not there is any non-circular and non-trivial criterion
of personal identity, Lowe’s own view being that there are no constitutive criteria of
personal identity. Lowe also argues that defenders of the complex view are nowhere
near meeting the circularity objection. Finally, Martin Nida-Rümelin’s essay deals
with whether or not there can be a non-descriptive individual nature of things.
When it comes to non-conscious things such as tables, mountains and other concrete
material objects, Rümelin thinks that there is not a non-descriptive individual nature.
But in the case of conscious individual things, there is a non-descriptive individual
nature. Rümelin harnesses such claims to defend the simple view.
Part three consists of four essays all of which, in their own way, defend the simple
view. The section begins with Lynne Rudder Baker’s essay in which she argues for the
view she describes as ‘a not-so-simple simple’ view. On this view, a person is a being
with an essentially first-person perspective and persists as long as her first-person
perspective is exemplified (p. 182). In his essay, Christian Kanzian grapples with
the question of whether or not a ‘person’ is a sortal term. He weighs and evaluates
two proposals: (i) a ‘person’ is not a sortal term and (ii) a ‘person’ is a sortal term.
Kanzian’s own view being that the notion of a person is semantically an incomplete
term, which must depend on other full-fledged sortal terms like a human being for its
functionality. The remaining two articles are Dean Zimmerman’s and Hud Hudson’s.
In his essay, Zimmerman discusses materialism, dualism and simple view theories,
ultimately favouring dualism. Finally, Hudson discusses diachronic personal identity
by relating it to various accounts of time and defends the simple view as better suited
to make sense of such an account compared to complex views.
In summary, this volume is a nice addition to the existing literature on personal
identity. The essays leave a lot of room for disagreement. But in line with the purpose
of the anthology, the editors have succeeded in helping raise the profile of the simple
view. So those who rush to dismiss the simple-view out of hand are now given some-
thing to work on!

MIHRETU P. GUTA
Durham University
Durham DH1 3HN
m.p.guta@durham.ac.uk