Personal Identity Over Time: Person,Persistence And Context

The problem of personal identity over time concerns the diachronic persistence of person.In this dissertation,my goal is to develop a critical and fuller understanding of personal identity over time.First,I shall examine the typical questions of personal identity,and reformulate two basic questions.The first one is metaphysical: whether personal identity exist or not;if it exists,does it consist in any further elements? The second one is epistemological: is there any criterion of personal identity over time?Second,based on answers to the basic questions,I shall make a critical survey of the mainstream theories and their flaws: the first one is eliminative view,which holds that there is no personal identity over time.Secondly,answer to the question of whether diachronic personal identity consists in something else fall into two broad categories: the simple view,according to which personal identity consists in nothing further,and the complex view that personal identity can be analyzed into more basic continuity,psychological or physical.Furthermore,I will briefly discuss a metaphysical approach,four-dimensionalism.In the end,combined with the critiques of the previous theories,I will spell out my own conclusion.I argue that the problem of personal identity over time is contextually sensitive: both of the ontological explanation of diachronic existence of person and the criterion of personal identity over time,depend on the context of the questions.There is no criterion,according to which we can have a determine answer without taking the particular context of problem into consideration.