1. Personal Identity

2. A Somatic Approach
• A view about the ontology of persons:
Physical Thesis: People are their bodies.

3. A Somatic Approach
• This entails a principle about personal
identity:
Physical Criterion: x = y iff x’s body = y’s
body (variables range only over people)

4. Two Principles
• Physical Thesis: People are their bodies.
• Physical Criterion: x = y iff x’s body = y’s body.
• Thesis entails Criterion, but not vice versa.
• Should we be suspicious of a criterion of personal
identity that doesn’t have a close intuitive
connection to an ontology of persons? What does
the psychological approach say that a person is?

5. Death
• Usually, our bodies continue to exist after
our deaths (for a while at least).
• Is that a mark against this view?
• Is the person go while the body remains?
• Or is it just a dead person?

6. Psychological
Connectedness
• Psychological Criterion: x = y iff there are
times t and t’ such that y is at t’
psychologically connected with x at t.

7. A Hybrid View
• Psychological connectedness is the mark of
personal identity, and people are their
bodies.

8. Three Cases

9. Body-Switching
• Recall Locke’s story of the Prince and the
Cobbler.
• Locke took that story as support for the
memory criterion.
• Is the Prince and Cobbler story a reason to
resist the physical view?