A comprehensive introduction to the nature of the self and its relation to the body, this title places the problem of personal identity in the context of more general puzzles about identity, and discusses the major related theories.

This essay proposes that Hume’s non-substantialist bundle account of minds is basically correct. The concept of a person is not a metaphysical notion but a forensic one, that of a being who enters into the moral and normative relations of civil society. A person is a bundle but it is also a structured bundle. Hume’s metaphysics of relations is argued must be replaced by a more adequate one such as that of Russell, but beyond that Hume’s account is essentially correct. In particular it is argued that it is one’s character that constitutes one’s identity; and that sympathy and the passions of pride and humility are central in forming and maintaining one’s character and one’s identity as a person. But also central is one’s body: a person is an embodied consciousness: the notion that one’s body is essential to one’s identity is defended at length. Various concepts of mind and consciousness are examined - for example, neutral monism and intentionality - and also the concept of privacy and our inferences to other minds.

Going beyond the controversy surrounding personhood in non-philosophical contexts, this book defends the need for a credible philosophical conception of the person. Engaging with John Locke, Derek Parfit and P.F. Strawson, the authors develop an original philosophical anthropology based on the work of Charles Hartshorne and A.N. Whitehead.

This book offers a novel analysis of the widely-used but ill-understood technique of thought experiment. The author argues that the powers and limits of this methodology can be traced to the fact that when the contemplation of an imaginary scenario brings us to new knowledge, it does so by forcing us to make sense of exceptional cases.

The Diachronic Mind makes an original contribution to current philosophical debates on the nature of personal identity and the reducibility of the mind. It traces traditional problems facing psychological continuity theories of personal identity to the ease with which theorists of personal identity adopt and apply a sometimes naive physicalism about the mind. This novel diagnosis opens that way to new solutions to traditional problems in the debate on the psychological criterion of personal identity. Through these solutions, an unorthodox version of nonreductive physicalism about the mind-brain relation is developed that avoids the recurrent epiphenomenalism objection to such positions. The book is written in a crisp style that presupposes no more than an elementary knowledge of philosophy. It is intended for students and professional philosophers alike.