Lorenzo Marsili S2090457

Supervisor: Stephen Harris

Philosophy: Global and Comparative Perspectives (BA Thesis) - Leiden University

Academic year 2021-2022

Personhood as a Linguistic Condition

How Parfit’s metaphysics of persons play a role in our lives.

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 Introduction:

Derek Parfit’s reductionism with regards to persons leads to a discussion about the metaphysical state
of the world and the indubitability of entities we call persons. My aim is to retain the explanatory force
of Parfit’s thesis as metaphysical, while re-interpreting metaphysics about persons as explanatory of
actions in our everyday lives.

I claim that metaphysical models about persons are applicable, and only explanatory of the
world for individuals that actually act upon and believe them. These are explanatory insofar as they are
necessitated by the actions we already partake in, such as showing love for persons as opposed to
showing love for featherless bipeds. I propose we cannot propositionally agree on metaphysical
models as their function is that of an indubitable condition for the actions we already perceive to be
meaningful. They are therefore for us not truth-apt but certain, as we believe in them and act upon
them, which is consistent with these beliefs being false. The truth or falsity of a metaphysical
proposition accordingly does not change the conditions we already accept. The way we partake in the
world already necessitates our belief in certain metaphysical entities, making metaphysics about
persons not about our relation to the world, but our relation to a common linguistic structure we have
already accepted as meaningful and necessary.

Following Peter Geach’s treatment of identity, I describe Parfit’s conclusion that reductionism
is true of the world, as the predicates relative to a set-definition, which is an applicable and not a
necessary statement about the real constitution of the world (Geach 1967, 5). My consequent treatment
of the fission thought experiment in Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, Part three: Personal Identity (1984),
leads me to conclude that he cannot prove personal identity does not matter with the argument he
proposes. If non-reductionism is never proven to be false, Parfit’s thesis, “Personal identity doesn’t
matter” becomes one among the many applicable descriptions of the world.

Wolf’s suggestion that Parfit’s arguments entail a change in the way we ought to act (Wolf
1986, 711), discounts Parfit’s thesis from being a descriptive endeavour. I propose this cannot be the
case unless we misread Parfit. More strongly, theses about personhood in general have to be
metaphysically explanatory if we are to believe them and act as if they were true.

Tang Junyi’s treatment of human nature (xing) as a situation-dependent disposition (Ames

2010, 146), gives the vocabulary to state that while we can accept any set of metaphysical entities, the
ones we do accept are an outcome of an intersubjective necessity for grounding the actions we see as
meaningful in our lives (Ames 2010, 147). If this is true I conclude that, at least I, cannot feel any
different about personhood as it is valuable and meaningful for me to talk about concepts related to
persons.

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 Chapter 1: Reductionism and the fission experiment

Parfit tells us a reductionist account of personal identity means that personal identity just consists in
the certain propositions being true of some entity and that the description of these facts does not
presuppose the existence of persons, but rather a person’s existence is solely this set of propositions
being the case(Parfit 1984, 209). In particular, the set of propositions which are to be held in order to
pick out a person, are about the “existence of a brain and a body” and a “series of interrelated physical
and mental events” (Parfit 1984, 210).

Parfit tells us direct memory connections with a person x at a time in the past, provide the
continuity of personhood over time, which in addition to other kinds of direct psychological
connections such as intentions, desires and beliefs, mean that x is one and the same person at time T1
and at time T2, if there are continuous chains of overlapping direct psychological connections (Parfit
1984, 204). For Parfit, certain facts about the continuity in psychologically connected events are the
basic composition of a person’s existence over time; these events are for Parfit not only descriptively
applicable to an entity over and above these events, they are the basic composition of one’s existence
over time. Whenever those events are occurring, a person is existing over time as those events
unfolding. Parfit terms the relation between overlapping chains of mental and physical events
“Relation R” (Parfit 1984, 214). Parfit’s aim is to convince the reader that for survival over time, what
matters is whether Relation R holds and in contrast, what doesn’t matter for survival is personal
identity as a fact over and above a reductionist account of a continued existence over time (Parfit 1984,
214).

The Fission thought experiment describes the strange case where three identical twins have an
accident. The first twin (let us call them A) has a completely functioning brain but a badly damaged
body, to the point of no repair. The two other twins (let us call them A1 and A2) suffer irreparable
brain damage, but have functioning bodies. A undergoes a double brain transplant; half of his brain is
given to A1, and the other half is given to A2 (Parfit 1984, 254). Parfit tells us that one brain
hemisphere is sufficient to be “the brain of a living person”: while many stroke survivors have motor
and speech impairments and have to learn basic functions again, they are often capable of achieving
the complete expanse of human actions solely with one brain hemisphere. Parfit consequently assumes
that like in cases concerning actual people, both hemispheres of A are enough for survival and a
complete recovery. A1 and A2’s bodies after the operations are therefore healthy and function
normally. A1 and A2 have all the memories of A, all of A’s intentions, and all of A’s desires. They will
exhibit the same character traits, and bring A’s projects to completion. Parfit tells us that both A1 and
A2 will be therefore psychologically continuous with A (Parfit 1984, 254).

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 If we were non-reductionists about personal identity, we would believe that upon all the
standard conditions for survival obtaining, a further fact called “personal identity” must obtain (Parfit
1984, 238). As non-reductionists, we would be forced to claim that both A1 and A2 are the same
person as A, given that they both in equal measure contain what matters for A’s survival. Identity
however, is a transitive relation, meaning that if A is identical to both A1 and A2, it is necessary that
A1 is also identical to A2. This clearly seems false to Parfit, as A1 and A2 are two distinct people so
they cannot both be the same person as A. Additionally, it would be unmotivated to claim that only A1
or only A2 is the same person as A, because A bears the same relation to both A1 and A2. Claiming
the survival of A in only A1 or only A2 would be arbitrary. The only remaining option is that A does
not survive the operation at all, meaning that neither A1, nor A2, are the same person as A. This
however, cannot be a case of ordinary death as both resulting individuals will have the same
memories, desires, intentions and beliefs as A. Parfit tells us that indeed it will be just as good as if I
had survived, for Relation R still holds between A, and both A1 and A2 (Parfit 1984, 255).

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 Chapter 2: Identity never mattered

Parfit, as a reductionist, delineates a set of statements which give a metaphysical description of events
in the world. In being tentative when entering the realm of metaphysics, I do not assume that it is
possible to be certain about our metaphysical models in such a way that reductionism is true of the
world. Less strongly, I want to claim that we act as if our metaphysical models are true, in order to
function in the world. Based on the actions and attitudes we have with regards to the world around us,
there seem to be some set of propositions about persons (or about R-Relations) which we cannot
legitimately call into question without changing the way in which we approach the world.
Metaphysical statements about persons are therefore grounded in indubitability insofar as we have no
reasons to doubt their truth, not insofar as the statement itself is indubitable. Our incapacity to doubt
these beliefs is functional to our actual use of them, such that it is a psychological incapacity of
changing the attitudes and beliefs which are functional to our life, rather than a necessary metaphysical
one. People can indeed change their metaphysical views once these are not explanatory given new
information, or once we are forced to act in a way which necessitates different beliefs about the world.

Geach gives me the grounds to state that the predicability of a statement is what determines its
set-theoretical identity. This means for Geach, that the conditions for the identity of an entity or object1
which we determine linguistically are what allows us to pick it out (Geach 1967, 4). In other words,
our capacity to talk metaphysically is only our ability to fit objects within a given set-theoretical
definition (Geach 1967, 5). I therefore assume that:

If P is a set, this is to determine the conditions for which any x is a member of P.

Consequently, if P and Q are sets, and P is identical to Q, then if x is an element of P, it is also an
element of Q (Geach 1967, 4)

Parfit’s fission experiment, tells us that for identity to obtain in the fission case, the two
bodies, A1 and A2, resulting from the operation, would have to both be identical to A, but this cannot
be the case as A1 and A2 would also have to be identical to each other given the transitivity of identity
(Parfit 1984, 205). Parfit can argue against this claim in two ways: firstly, he can state that personal
identity is transitive, secondly, if it is not transitive, that A1 and A2 are the same object entirely. We
will see that both fail.

Peter Geach believes that statements such as “x is identical to y” (let us call these unrestricted
identity statements), are incomplete and should be supplied with extra information about the linguistic
structure under which x and y are indistinguishable. “x is identical to y” thus becomes “x is the same

1
I use these terms interchangeably throughout this text.

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A as Y”, where “A” performs the role of some noun or predicate (let us call these restricted identity
statements) (Geach 1967, 3).

A person at T1 cannot be in an absolute equality2 relation with themselves at T2, even if they
are said to have survived from T1 to T2 as the same person, given that they are qualitatively different.
Parfit tells us that while qualities can change, we want to be able to say that x is numerically the same
person at time T1 and time T2 independently of the qualitative change they undergo (Parfit 1984, 206).
It however cannot be the case that two objects which have different characteristics are the same object,
nor would we want to describe persons via their qualitative identities and lose their numerical identity
over changes in time. The theory we construct to define personal identity relation (PI relation), cannot
at once describe the difference between objects and also group them together in a transitive relation
where they are equal among each other. If we have a theory which is rich enough to describe
qualitative differences over time, we cannot also have a theory which is descriptively poor enough to
neglect these changes such that these different objects are identical (Geach 1967, 5). PI is therefore
non-transitive.

The remaining option is that A1 and A2 are wholly the same object or are unrestrictedly
identical. In agreeing with Geach, I claim that unrestricted identity statements are out of place in
Parfit’s fission case, and that notions of unrestricted identity should be replaced with notions of
restricted, or using Geach’s terminology, “relative” identity (Geach 1967, 3). Unrestricted identity or
equality, seems to point to a “real”3 of the world, where equality between two objects is predicated
independently of a set-theoretical definition (Geach 1967, 5). Parfit would thus conflate set-rules about
unrestricted identity with set-rules for the identity of an object as described in a given set. Rules about
unrestricted identity apply to all sets, but rules from smaller sets or restricted identity statements do not
apply necessarily to unrestricted identity statements4.

Let us assume I construct a theory in which I have a set of predicates to describe what I call
“people”. This theory is capable of describing persons only insofar as they have physical
characteristics. When I then talk about the identity (or the conditions under which two objects are
equal) in this set, I will say something like x is identical to y if x has the same physical characteristics
as y. This is different to saying x is identical to y without specifying the conditions under which this
identity obtains, as with no specified conditions we would apply the rules for unrestricted identity
statements. In this second larger set, if x is identical to y, then everything that is true of x is true of y,
independently of the possible set-theoretical definitions which might describe the two objects. If I

2
Or unrestricted identity, I will use these terms interchangeably.
3
Whatever this may be.
4
Just like different individual set-theoretical definitions don’t necessarily apply to each other. For example, the set of objects
which are persons and the set of objects which are apples will have different conditions for set membership.

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know that x is a person with the same physical characteristics as y, there is nothing necessary which
tells us to apply the rules for unrestricted identity, unless x and y are precisely the same object, which
A1 and A2 are clearly not.

If absolute equality or identicalness is a requirement for personal identity, personal identity

fails to account for changes in a person over time. Over time, a person is qualitatively different at T2
from T1 but retains their numerical identity. The predicate “is the same person over time”, for Parfit,
therefore includes some types of qualitative change (Parfit 1984, 206). This means set membership for
the set of things which are persons is accordingly constructed as continuity across these changes5. In
the analysis of the relation between A, A1 and A2, identity statements of the unrestricted kind are
clearly inapplicable in the same way as these are inapplicable to statements about personal identity;
nothing can be predicated about A, A1 and A2 which would make them unrestrictedly equal if we
have already placed them in a smaller set, and in the smaller set being the same object qualitatively
cannot be a requirement for identity over time.

To maintain a uniform description of persons over time, we construct a theory to describe this
object insofar as we predicate identity over changes in time. If this is the case, the terminological
capacity of the theory in place to identify this object, needs to be blind to those characteristics which
do indeed change (Geach 1967, 5, 9). For otherwise reflexivity6 and transitivity cannot be predicated
of the objects within our theory. Consider the relation of any person to time itself: If I construct a
theory in which I describe objects over time, this object’s description in the theory I constructed will
remain unchanged even when the relation (X, T1) changes to (X, T2), for if this did change the
theory’s description of the object, X at T1 would be a different object to X at T2, discounting them
from being members of the same set. Both explaining and neglecting these changes with the same
theoretical baggage is not possible (Geach 1967, 5, 9).

What relates person at T1 and person at T2 is therefore only positively argued for by Parfit
with a reductionist account of personal identity consisting in a set of facts holding (Parfit 1984, 209).
His line of argument does not prove that A1 and A2 are not PI-related as PI never was transitive and
the lack of unrestricted identity between A1 and A2 gives us no information to infer that the PI
relation does not hold. These two relations simply have different set-theoretical requirements. If this
line of argument thus never shows anything about the PI relation not holding, it says nothing about
non-reductionism being false.

5
For Parfit, set membership for the set of objects which are persons, would just be constituted by (or reducible to) a set of
facts about Relation R holding over time.
6
Reflexive identity is the property of an object being identical to itself.

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 If we use Geach’s nomenclature, we should state that A is the same person as A1 or that A is
the same person as A2, and not that A is identical to A1, for there are statements which are true of A
which are false of A1 (Geach 1967, 3). Personal identity or “being the same person over time” is a
more restricted predicate than “being identical to”, but nonetheless creates set membership by virtue of
a set of predicates about Relation R. A person is reducible to having a psychologically continuous
chain of overlapping strong psychologically connected events differing in degrees. Relation R is
therefore posited by Parfit non-transitive (Parfit 1984, 205), and can be unified as a whole across
differences. The identity of the set called “R-related mental and physical events” is positively given to
us by Parfit as an account of what set membership looks like for such entities but never tells us why
non-reductionism is wrong.

I can construct any set identity I desire as a description of the world, and if it is an applicable
description, it will contain set members, but if Parfit cannot provide proper grounds to say that
personal identity is transitive, he never discounts the rival school of non-reductionism. What he
provides is therefore not a necessary metaphysical thesis about how reductionism is explanatory of
personhood but a linguistic analysis of the world in terms of set membership, which is only one among
many applicable ones. The fission experiment does not tell us why identity does not matter, nor why
non-reductionism is wrong, it solely provides an applicable descriptive alternative. However, because I
do conceive his positive argument for reductionism to be indeed applicable, I do agree that if I was one
of the resulting bodies from the operation (A1 or A2), what matters for survival would be retained. I
simply have some serious doubts about why it doesn’t matter who this person surviving would be.

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 Chapter 3: What if Parfit is right?

Intuitively, if I listen to my gut and don’t question it, I would not want to be A1 or A2. The fact that
my gut tells me this situation is problematic means I cannot in good conscience say that being
R-related is as good as survival, because at the very least my feeling attached to it is a negative one. If
I was presented the choice of ordinary survival or R-relatedness without identity obtaining I know I
would choose ordinary survival, so at least in terms of my felt attachment to personal identity, it
cannot be a situation where these two states are as good as each other. The way I feel and approach the
world, seems to necessitate my metaphysical model’s inclusion of entities called persons.

Let us assume I am person A, and let us also assume I am aware that my division is about to
occur. I am also, as person A, an avid reader of Derek Parfit, who has succeeded in convincing me
about reductionism concerning persons, meaning I am completely aware that what matters for survival
will be retained after my division. If ordinary survival bears any resemblance to the way in which we
live our lives after a fission case, it would seem emotionally problematic to me that A1 is now the one
that greets my wife with a kiss on their way back from work. I would be jealous of this being which is
almost exactly like me, for even if my wife were to notice no difference (which seemingly is as good
as my ordinary survival), I could not help but feel a knot in my stomach when thinking that it won’t be
me doing that. I would feel sad about leaving my friends and I would be both puzzled and scared about
what it would mean for my brain to be in a different skull. I want that person to be me, I want that
person to feel like me and I want to feel the warm embrace of my wife. I don’t only care that my wife
is happy and the situation is metaphysically equivalent to what it was before, I want myself to be there
and myself to be happy, not some other person almost exactly like me.

While this scenario might count as “as good as survival” for Parfit, the fact that it would not
be our own survival could be problematic in terms of the felt attachment to entities we call persons.
When Parfit states that identity does not matter, he is in some way telling us that concern over identity
is misplaced given the survival of the identity-less A1 and A2 after fission would be as good as that of
a normal, non-split person and retains what matters (Wolf 1986, 706). If we are misguided about what
sort of entity we place our interests in, we should actually care about our future selves solely on the
grounds that we will be strongly psychologically connected in a continuous way7. These don’t seem
like grounds to care about ourselves at all, as an adequate description of personhood gives us no
reasons for why we should care about ourselves. It tells us what we are, rather than why we are
important or why things are important to us. This is in no way meant to be an argument which tells us
what we ought to care for rationally, but given the actual and current way in which I live my
attachment to persons, which to some degree I cannot change as I actually feel it, I seem, at the very

7
Or we should care about our future selves only insofar as they are R-related to us now.

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least in how I approach the world, committed to entities called “persons”. I cannot decide to not care
about this as it would mean I would have no horrible feeling in my gut when thinking about some
person exactly like me kissing my wife, but I do, and it seems that I cannot do anything about it.

Susan Wolf in “Self-interest and Interest in Selves”, tells us that arguments which purportedly
give the justification for a more rational interest that isn’t based on selves might lead us astray. Some
particular theory showing us that our interest in selves is actually based on a misconception of the
nature of persons should shatter the very basis of this interest, but Wolf suggests it might be these
theories that “foster this illusion” (Wolf 1986, 707).

Wolf asks us to imagine a situation in which we care not about persons, but about R-related
beings. She tells us it would be difficult to identify any difference at all if the world itself has not
changed, and people do not normally undergo fission, only our description of it changed (Wolf 1986,
710). Wolf suggests that Parfit wants us to care about ourselves insofar as our parts are connected by
Relation R. Parfit, Wolf tells us, seems to confuse the question “Does personal identity matter?”, with
the question “Should I care that some future person will be me?”, by saying that one’s interest in
oneself “amounts to an interest in the non-branching psychologically connected and/or continuous
entity of which my present consciousness is a part” (Wolf 1986, 708).

If a reductionist position tells us the previous position we accepted and were attached to is
nonsense, the justification of our attachment to an entity which we cannot rationally believe in
becomes difficult (Wolf 1986, 707). Love8 for an individual insofar as they are an R-related being
would mean love for a different psycho-physical unit to that of a person, and the repugnant conclusion
we would be forced to accept is that we feel love towards a string of psychologically connected events
rather than a person as an aggregate over and above these events. We would be forced to love a person
as they are those events, rather than who they are independently of them. Our love for them would
only survive if the changes that happen to take place in a person, happen to still warrant what we felt at
an earlier time. This, Wolf tells us, means any change in personality has the possibility to drastically
diminish the strength of our attachment towards another R-related being as we are no longer attached
to who the person is but to what this person is in fact like or what psychologically connected and
continuous events indeed happen (Wolf 1986, 711).

Wolf tells us we would be faced with a number of unattractive consequences for relationships.
Parents would now love only the child they have in front of them and not the very far-off adult which
might not be psychologically connected to the child at all at all. We would act in very different ways:
why curb the happiness of the child we love so dearly in the name of the possibly

8
I use love as an example in this discussion as it is a strong sentiment people are familiar with. The word love can be
replaced with any other feeling, be it a positive or negative one.

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non-psychologically-connected adult we don’t necessarily love? Relationships in general could fade
dramatically as soon as changes in character occurred and love across personal characteristics seems
more likely to be lost (Wolf 1986, 710-712).

Love for a person insofar as they are constituted by Relation R seems to therefore, in placing
emphasis on the string of psychologically connected events, necessitate a degree of episodic
attachment based on the contingent characteristics of an R-entity at a given time. Describing love for
R-entities in this manner seems, however, to problematize the fact that an R-entity is nothing more
than a reduction of persons to a set of facts in which R-entities consist. The applicability of a
descriptive statement to the world, need not change said world other than in the way we describe it.
Wolf indeed seems not to be investigating love for an R-related being insofar as it is an R-related being
but rather insofar as some types of R-relations enable love contingently for an individual. If I were to
care about someone insofar as they are R-related to a future version of themselves, I do not see how a
change in what this R-entity contingently happens to consist of bears any weight on my caring for this
R-entity itself as a continuous whole across time.

Wolf states that Relation R holds to different degrees, such that I can be more or less R-related
to my future self depending on the degree of contingent changes such as remembering less or changing
goals. This is in fact not what Parfit states. An R-entity is an R-entity irrespective of the particular
content it contains, such that it does not seem necessary to love only one part of what constitutes
relation R over time. There are varying degrees of psychological connectedness and continuity within
Relation R, but relation R itself allows for these varying degrees in being the name for these differing
relations. Unlike PI, psychological connectedness doesn’t necessitate a transitivity requirement (Parfit
1984, 205), such that Parfit can indeed construct a set called “Relation R” which includes these
differing states as continuous in time. If I love someone only insofar as they are psychologically
continuous to a certain degree, then wolf would prove to be right. If instead I can love someone insofar
as they are an R-entity or their parts are R-related, then I would seem committed to all the differing
degrees of psychological connectedness and continuity that an R-relation can entail, independently of
how much these might change the person in question. If I can love a person as a whole, and an
R-entity is simply a more fundamental description9 of what being a person actually entails, I do not see
how I cannot love an R-entity as a totality of its parts and the varying degrees to which psychological
continuity and connectedness hold.

Parfit’s thesis as presented by Wolf, morphed from an adequate description of the world into a
thesis that is explanatory about why we care/love, which is not what Parfit intended. If I read Parfit
correctly, he tells us (as Wolf correctly identifies), that it is rational to ought to care about R-Related

9
Or another applicable description depending on what shade of metaphysics we subscribe to.

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beings rather than persons, but only because reductionism about persons is convincing, not because
this would entail that it is rational to develop care and love as an outcome of our connection to
individual psychologically continuous and connected events.

If an R-entity is defined as an entity over time, the qualitative changes of this entity in time do
not vary their status as R-entities with R-related parts. The description of persons as R-entities in fact
includes and warrants these changes. This does in no way present an R-entity as a non-reductionist
further fact over and above the totality of the events that constitute it or as a transitive identity relation,
it simply presents an R-entity as these facts, all of these facts. It would be arbitrary to select some and
not others as being constitutive of Relation R, which is what Wolf does in claiming attachment to an
R-entity entails attachment to only some episodic parts of it. Attachment to contingent changes in the
expression of Relation R would mean Parfit’s reductionism no longer is solely a metaphysically
applicable description of the world; It implies we rationally should change the way in which we form
attachments and feelings. According to Wolf’s reading of Parfit, love ought to be expressed in a totally
different manner (Wolf 1986, 712), or at least should not be expressed across characteristics, which is
not a purely descriptive statement but one about the way we should act. If instead we love whole
R-entities, we only change the description of the entities we love.

Furthermore, even in stating that a change in character would lead to, for example, falling out
of love, Wolf is not giving us a metaphysically necessary statement about love across changes in
characteristics being impossible, but a contingent one about falling out of love if we do indeed not like
the changes in character our loved one underwent. If it happens to be the case that we feel certain
things, this is in no way necessitated by Relation R or personal identity. Any applicable description of
the world, should not tell us what we ought to do in the world or it risks not being purely
metaphysical. These have to be purely descriptive statements if we use them as conditions for actions
we already partake in; it is not metaphysical statements which tell us how to act but how we act which
tells us which metaphysical statements we already accept. Metaphysical statements about personhood
in fact do not tell us about the world, but about our relation to it. Our actions necessitate these as
conditions which we truly believe in, which is nonetheless completely reconcilable with these
statements being false.

Feelings are therefore contingent insofar as we do indeed have that feeling for that R-entity.
The possibility of falling out of love given a change in character does not seem impossible even if we
admit the possibility of loving persons as a unitary entity across these changes. I can love someone
because of who they are, but I doubt my feelings would remain unchanged if they decided to take an
axe to my best friend’s head or torture my mother. This is of course an extreme example, but it seems
bizarre to think that love for persons across changes in character makes the love for episodic

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contingent facts about these people impossible.10 If we commit to Wolf’s view, we are forced into the
territory of ethics, which I think amounts to a misreading of Parfit’s purportedly metaphysical project.

10
And vice versa, it seems bizarre to think that love for episodic psychologically connected states makes love for a unitary
entity over time impossible. I can love a characteristic of a person such as their generosity and not love the person as a whole
across all other characteristics.

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 Chapter 4: Persons as conditions for attitudes and actions.

Both Wolf and Parfit seem to think that the applicability of language or the formation of set
membership based on a given definition is true about a world out there in such a way that events just
consist of characteristics and predicates. “Persons exist” contra “Persons don’t exist” seems to be a
real debate where the winner gets to decide what sort of entities we care about and how we do just
that.

I think that to some degree there is an impossibility to change what we care about. What I
mean, is not for example, that it is impossible to discover new hobbies or to get rid of old ones, but
rather that when we discover a new hobby we can’t help but be overcome by joy, excitement or
boredom when we discover we don’t like it. I cannot think of a way in which I can at once be happy
and excited about my new hobby and immediately decide of my own accord to not be excited about it
while also retaining the same information regarding this hobby.

Whatever metaphysical description we may choose to adhere to has to operate within a set of
constraints which we cannot change, such that metaphysics is indeed only descriptive rather than
prescriptive about our actions, wants or psychologically connected events. This means metaphysical
reductions do not change our relation to the world in any way other than by changing the way we form
set membership for restricted identity predicates like “is a person”. Our terminological capacity to
describe the world around us is different once we are convinced of a new metaphysical theory, but the
world itself has remained unchanged and we have not changed what we contingently care about11, as
we already know very well what we care about.

If we already know what we care about given that we cannot help but feel and act upon this,
like in the case of developing a new hobby, then any change in descriptive statements about these
attitudes will only be a linguistic vehicle to explore, express, and share these feelings and attitudes in a
new way. If the predicate “being a person” identifies an entity towards which we can express care,
love, hate or any other of a long list of attitudes, then this predicate is a linguistic condition for the
expression of a series of practises which already were part of our lives.

I want to suggest that if we trivially already care about what we care about, and if we use the
agreement about what the expression “I care about persons” is constitutive of, to show what we care
about, we are not claiming persons are a real metaphysical category. Whether this is a rationally
warranted type of care or a truth apt statement about how we care is not what is given to us by
metaphysical statements about persons.

11
Except for maybe caring about metaphysics as we may have discovered a new interest.

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 The entity called “person” is an entity we have to implicitly agree upon in order to perform all
those actions which are entailed by the notion of person. Showing love towards persons says nothing
about the composition of the world. We have already agreed upon what a person is, and how this is an
applicable description, given that we do indeed act upon it (such as for example claiming we love such
and such a person). Personal identity, or the predicate “being R-related”, are no more than the
necessary linguistic conditions for all those actions entailing these concepts. The notion of person
needs to simply be agreed upon insofar as this is instrumental to our expression of what kind of things
we can do with these entities called “persons” and what kind of interactions these entities can entail.

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 Chapter 5: Intersubjectivity and personhood as disposition

Confucianism, and in particular Tang Junyi as presented by Roger Ames, provide a model, which is
capable, without denying the unity over time over a person, of expressing the creative force and
possible changes in a person by appealing to the relation between an individual and their surroundings.
By surroundings I refer to all the possible entities (abstract or empirical) that a person can interact
with. Tang himself says that “human nature (xing) is nothing but the unfolding of the natural and
cultural processes themselves” (Ames 2010, 145) .

What this sentence refers to is the determination of xing as a relational characteristic to what
we interact with, such that we are the person we are, only by virtue of our surroundings and the things
we do in interacting with these surroundings. For Tang, xing is the human capacity for “growth,
cultivation and refinement” (Ames 2010, 146). For Confucians, Heaven (Tien), gives humans natural
inclinations or dispositions that are expressed in a “creative… spontaneity” (Ames 2010, 147).

What Confucians describe as being who we are in virtue of our surroundings, seems to amount
to those sets of metaphysical statements which we need to believe in order for us to act in a certain
way in the world we know. No distinction is made by Confucians between the indubitability of a
metaphysical model itself and the actions we partake in necessitating belief in a metaphysical model,
but the difference is negligible as the result is still our beliefs necessitating some actions.

It is for Tang only via intersubjectivity, or an interaction between individual humans, that we
are capable of reflexivity and self-consciousness of conduct (Ames 2010, 147). This means that while
we cannot help but spontaneously have the feeling of, for example, liking a hobby; it is through our
interaction with the world and others (or in this case the hobby itself) that we care and are actually
capable of expressing this. As stated above, the actual composition of the world is unchanged by our
interaction with it insofar as it is in some sense a given to us, but through our capacity for interaction
with it we can creatively advance and grow. Interaction with other humans as intersubjectivity, means
we have to agree on a common, but nonetheless not objectively true set of conditions for us to act in a
way which is understood by all members of this group.

Personhood is, for Tang, a cultivated phenomenon capable of inexhaustible change, rather than
an objectively analysable phenomenon with given metaphysically true characteristics (Ames 2010,
148-149). Our capacity to maintain metaphysically reductionist facts as being just what this
phenomenon consists of, decreases greatly. If it is also true that metaphysics is a descriptive
endeavour, what I want to propose is an understanding of human nature or personhood as a condition
for our actions, such that whatever metaphysical description of personhood we contingently happen to

16
accept does not vary our capacity to act, it only varies the type of accepted entities we can interact
with.

Personhood as a disposition to act cannot be reduced to any set of facts without limiting its
capacity to change expression. It seems equally to be the case that rigid set membership for
personhood as capacity for change is both warranted and possible. Personhood in this dual state seems
to necessitate both being something which language does not have the syntactical capacity to create set
membership for (or a disposition as Tang would say (Ames 2010, 146)), and at the same time being
something which we are capable of observing in a lucid manner, from our own experience, that of
others and from similarities among these. I want to suggest that it is not the metaphysical definitions
we choose for personhood which have primacy over personhood as disposition, but the disposition to
act in such a way that we necessitate given metaphysical definitions which has primacy. These
metaphysical statements need to be (for us individually) explanatory of the situation we perceive in
such a way that we can act in the way we normally act, and these have to be intersubjectively
pre-agreed. Unless we are constantly living our lives by figuring out what sorts of metaphysical
statements we should act upon before actually acting, we seem already committed to some
metaphysical statements.

Were these propositions to be tested as true or false, we would not be certain about them in
such a way that we could base actions on it, as we would need tests before all actions. Indubitability or
certainty is required when we simply act in the world; If I partake in a situation in which the
individuals I interact with, act a certain way, or for example, care about people in a certain way, we are
already certain about what counts as a person insofar as we care about one in a specific way, and what
counts as care insofar as we can give it to a person. This sort of statement about persons cannot ever be
taken to be a propositionally truth-apt; it forms the condition which I already accept in order to partake
in a situation where this condition creates meaningful interactions. In terms of our capacity to use the
concept, it is for us a metaphysically indubitable one.12 Metaphysical statements about persons are
about our relation to our understanding of the world, and not about truth in any way which is about a
real world. Personhood is in my mind to be seen as something akin to an axiom, which cannot be
questioned if I want to use the theoretical system which the axiom implies.

If I want to show love for other persons insofar as they are R-entities, I would need a common
agreement on what it means to be an R-entity in order for me to show that I indeed do care for one. Let
us imagine a world constituted by R-entities and not persons. Everyone in this world agrees implicitly
on what counts as an R entity. This is a world in which Wolf is right about how R-entities show love

12
At least tentatively, until we discover a new way of expressing our attitudes which convinces us for some reason, we are
forced to use said concept if we want to partake in said actions entailing the concept.

17
insofar as they are psychologically continuous and connected to differing degrees. Imagine now that I
am the only person in the world which does not understand what R-entities are and I am therefore
unaware how showing love differs to a world in which we show love towards persons. In this
situation, if I showed love for persons, as opposed to the psychologically continuous states in which
R-entities consist of, my expression of love would be incommensurable with the expression of love
which is commonly accepted in this world. We would be speaking a different language with different
conditions. My way of showing love would look so different that in all likelihood nobody would
understand what I am trying to convey.

If it is true that statements about personhood are preconditions for relations to the world and
the individuals in it, then all these statements do is provide common ground for other persons I interact
with to truly understand me, independently of the metaphysical accuracy of my description of personal
identity. I can for example conceive of a world in which our description of persons is completely
wrong but we are unaware of our error. Let us assume that persons are accepted in this world to be just
constituted by a set of facts about featherless bipeds. Showing love towards a person insofar as they
are a featherless biped, might mean we confuse plucked chickens with humans and fall in love with
them, but if in this world everyone surrounding us was convinced that plucked chickens were indeed
human, this bizarre behaviour for us would be accepted as completely normal. In this world, people
would still show love in such a way that the other inhabitants of the world understand it or they would
be showing no love at all, or at least no love at all for the other inhabitants of the world.

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 Conclusion:

Metaphysical statements about personal identity retain their descriptive truth value, albeit only for
individuals. What this means is that our capacity to create statements, which in being descriptive of the
world are indubitable, only ranges over the role these have in determining our actions. We do not
constantly battle our way through metaphysical statements about the world to find a way to test their
truth-aptness, rather we act as if these statements are metaphysically explanatory. Being a person or
being an R-entity enables actions we already partake in (such as loving people or loving featherless
bipeds).

Geach’s treatment of the difference between unrestricted and restricted identity statements
shows that Parfit either conflates the two or is committed to a non-transitive version of PI. There are
two ways in which A1 and A2 being equal can be counter argued: either personal identity holds as a
transitive relation across changes, which it cannot; or A1 and A2 are posited as unrestrictedly identical
after the operation, meaning he conflates restricted and unrestricted identity. Being identical in such a
way that the transitivity requirement between A1 and A2 is broken was never possible. Parfit cannot
therefore counter argue the statement “A1 is identical to A2” with the fission case. The thesis that
reductionism is true, is therefore not proven negatively as the fission experiment does not prove that
non-reductionism is false; the fission thought experiment cannot prove that personal identity does not
matter.

If I am right, then Parfit’s statement is only one among the multiple adequate metaphysical
descriptions of continued existence of persons over time. It is furthermore, in being a metaphysical
statement, only accepted by us as indubitable if we actually acted upon it. Our agreeing with it a
posteriori would make it a propositional truth-apt statement, which we cannot claim with any degree
of real13 metaphysical necessity.

If we however do assume that Parfit is right in saying that Relation R is what matters, Wolf
tells us we seemingly commit ourselves to a type of episodic relationship which eliminates feelings
across character changes. Parfit can, I think, respond purely as a metaphysician and state that an
R-entity, as the description of a psycho-physical unit of continued existence over time, does not limit
which type of R-relations are to be preferred. In describing attachment to an R-entity insofar as it is an
R-entity, we are not committed to only some of the individual parts of an R-entity but to the totality of
its parts as all equally constitutive of Relation R. If this were not the case we would swiftly move into
the territory of ethics, which cannot be the case if metaphysical statements are descriptions of the
world and not prescriptions for our actions.

13
Whatever this may mean.

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 With reference to Parfit’s brand of reductionism, I would say intuitively that Relation R is not
as good as survival as in a fission case it would not be me kissing my wife. When every inch of my
jealous gut tells me that it would be wrong for me emotionally to want a being almost exactly like me
to kiss the love of my life, I cannot ignore this as I cannot help but feel this. If one assumes that an
R-related being which does not yield my personal identity is indeed as good as my ordinary survival, I
instinctively would assume myself to have no issue in choosing any of the two outcomes. In terms of
my feeling towards this situation, this is not the case. I cannot change what my attitudes towards the
world are, nor the way I act in accordance with these attitudes if I truly believe these to be meaningful.
The indubitability of our metaphysical statements are grounds for actions, and insofar as we do act, we
necessitate these statements’ certainty; if it were otherwise we would not be able to act. If we did not
agree on what counts as a person, we would not agree on how to show love towards one, and because
we do often agree that we love, and we love people, these statements are for us, indubitable.

Notwithstanding, identifying a metaphysical statement as descriptive of personhood is

problematic as shown by Tang. We should be wary of complete descriptions of personhood for they
confound an objectively identifiable self and its characteristics with something that is ever changing
and situated in an ever changing world. The structure of language is simply such that restricted identity
creates set membership based on certain predicates. This means there is a necessary way in which the
propositions “being a human” or “being an R-entity” are applicable, at least given the statements we
have already accepted to be indubitable. Statements about our human dispositions are generally
warranted, but these should not make metaphysics necessarily constitutive of the truth about persons,
other than in being some among many forms of these metaphysically indubitable statements we
necessarily must accept to act.

Change in the world around us and change in ourselves, is for Tang both boundless and an
occurrence given one’s relation to one’s surroundings (Ames 2010, 149). I think the manner in which
the steadfastness of our surroundings interacts with our linguistic agency is important for how we look
at metaphysics. The creation of set membership for metaphysical propositions about persons seems to
be instrumental to express what we mean by personhood. A reflexive capacity for change instead,
points to the varying conditions for interaction we contingently happen to accept as metaphysically
explanatory. Metaphysics is therefore not a realm of propositions which need to be proven beyond
doubt, but a non truth-apt set of statements we already accept. Atheists would think that a belief in
God is not rational, while a religious person might think the opposite and propositions seem unlikely
to change any of these two stances, but both act according to their metaphysical views.14

14
The religious person goes to mass every sunday because of an implicit belief in the indubitability of their metaphysical
view, which shows through their actions (for example going to mass every sunday to achieve liberation).

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 This means our statements about personhood need not be tested in the world such that we are
certain these are right; our certainty about personhood is given by interaction in the world such that
when we do indeed interact, we can only a posteriori tell what concept of personhood we were using
based on how we treat these entities we call persons (or R-entities or featherless bipeds or what have
you).

As a concluding statement, I would like to suggest that personal identity does matter, it
however does not matter because of some further fact, rather it contingently matters as a precondition
for the expression of many valuable emotions, interactions and attitudes towards the world we live in
and its inhabitants. While it is contingent that this type of personal identity is the one that matters,
what we can seem to say in a stronger way, is that our interaction in the world necessitates a series of
metaphysical constraints that we have already accepted as indubitable by acting that particular way
with regards to those particular entities. I in particular, cannot feel any different about personal identity
as I will continue loving my wife as who they are and claiming that it needs to be me to kiss her
forehead on the way back from work. I can’t help but feel like this.

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 Bibliography:

Ames, Roger T. 2010. “Achieving Personal Identity in Confucian Role Ethics: Tang Junyi on Human
Nature as Conduct”. Oriens Extremus 49: 143-66.

Geach, Peter T. 1967. “Identity”. The Review of Metaphysics 21 (1): 3-12.

Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wolf, Susan. 1986. “Self-Interest and Interest in Selves”. Ethics 96 (4): 704-20.

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