Marek Gurba

Some authors, including E. Olson and D. Shoemaker, argue that our numerical identity over time is irrelevant to practical issues such as moral responsibility or self-concern. In this way, they protect positions on personal identity against the charge of potentially controversial implications. I claim that their strategy is implausible. Since the debate is about conditions of our identity, it is about the identity conditions of those individuals to whom we refer first-personally. However, first-personal reference plays special roles in our practical thinking; in particular, our intentions to do something presuppose that we will be the doers of the intended acts. Therefore, the subject of the intention also has a good reason to be concerned about the future performer of the intended action. The problem of personal identity, in general, is a question of the identity of subjects of intentional (then also rational and moral) action. As a result, this is why adequate answers to it cannot explain our persistence in terms of a practically irrelevant relation.

(This is an early draft; an expanded and substantially revised version is published in "Philosophical Psychology"). Eric Olson and David Shoemaker argue that our numerical identity over time is irrelevant to such practical issues as moral responsibility or self-concern. Being the same individual at different moments in time may, in our case, can be seen as the preservation of the relevant biological processes (e.g., according to Olson), while psychological continuity, independent of these processes, may be crucial for such issues. I will defend the view that, contrary to the above authors, any conception of our diachronic identity has ethical implications, at least with regard to the aforementioned issues. My argument has two basic assumptions. (1) The dispute over identity of persons is a dispute over the conditions of our persistence in time as the same individuals, whether we consider being a person as our essential property or not (e.g., Olson maintains the latter). The question is under what conditions I am the same as a particular earlier or later individual. (2) The pronoun “I,” on the other hand, is an essential component of practical reasoning, so also of ethical one. Thus, the debate on the persistence of persons concerns the identity conditions of the individuals to whom/which we refer when planning our future actions, formulating our intentions. My rational self-concern or my moral responsibility for past actions regards the individual to whom the pronoun refers. An additional result of my argument is to undermine the influential strategy of defending positions on our diachronic identity against the charge of controversial ethical implications. It cannot be argued in the case of every such controversy that a given ethical issue only apparently involves our identity, while in fact what is relevant to it is a different relation binding persons at different moments in time.

The article discusses Nicholas Rescher’s metaphilosophical view of orientational pluralism. In his essay "Philosophical Disagreement: An Essay towards Orientational Pluralism in Metaphilosophy" Rescher explains a substantial difference between philosophy and science—namely, that philosophers—differently than scientists—continuously propose and undermine various solutions to the same old problems. In philosophy it is difficult to find any consensus or convergence of theories. According to Rescher, this pluralism of theoretical positions is caused by holding by philosophers different sets and hierarchies of cognitive values, i.e. methodological orientations. These orientations are chosen in virtue of some practical postulates, they are of axiological, normative, but not strictly theoretical character. Different methodological orientations yield different evaluations of philosophical theses and arguments. This article shows that Rescher’s account does not determine clearly acceptable cognitive values. If there are no clear criteria of evaluation of methodological orientations, then the described view seems to be identical to relativism adopting the 'everything goes' rule. In addition, accepting orientational pluralism it is hard to avoid the conclusion that discussions between various philosophical schools are futile or can be reduced to non-rational persuasion.