The Personite Problem and the Stage-Theoretic Reply

Noonan, Harold

Abstract

Personites are shorter-lived, person-like things that extend across part of a person’s life. Their existence follows from the standard perdurance view of persons. Johnston argues that it has bizarre moral consequences. For example, it renders morally problematic spending time learning a difficult language in anticipation of going abroad. The crucial thought is that if persons have moral status so do personites. Johnston argues for this claim. Kaiserman responds, on behalf of stage theory, that this only works on a perdurantist account. This is a conservative response to the problem. It seeks to show that retaining the ontology of perdurantism one can resolve the difficulty by a semantic change. I show that the personite problem can be reworked as an argument against stage theorists. The stage theorist can respond by rejecting an assumption of the reasoning. But if it is acceptable for him to do so the perdurantist can reject this assumption too, which is enough by itself to block Johnston’s argument. Thus, for all it helps with the personite problem, stage theorists might as well be perdurantists.

Citation

Noonan, H. (2022). The Personite Problem and the Stage-Theoretic Reply. Organon F, 29(2), 275-282. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29206

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 15, 2021
• Online Publication Date: May 29, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-05
• Deposit Date: Oct 18, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: May 29, 2022
• Journal: Organon F
• Print ISSN: 1335-0668
• Electronic ISSN: 2585-7150
• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 275-282
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29206
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/6500448
• Publisher URL: https://www.sav.sk/index.php?lang=sk&doc=journal-list&part=article_response_page&journal_article_no=28367
• Related Public URLs: https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1044178