PART ONE

AN EXPEDITIOUS IF PRECIPITATE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

If the thesis of the Sortal Dependency of Identity (D) is correct, then a simple expectation arises: namely that, in the case where A and B are persons, the content of the sentence ‘A is the same as B’ may be elucidated, through the equivalence of ‘A = B’ and ‘A is the same something as B’, as requiring for its truth that A should coincide with B under the concept person. This can scarcely be wrong. But, since the question that it pushes into immediate prominence, of what sort of thing persons are, leads into a thicket of philosophy, anyone who has been once through the thicket may wonder whether it can be skirted.

One way round seems to be to reflect that, if A and B are the kind of creature that we take ourselves to be – the kind of creatures writing or reading this book, I mean – then an equally good answer to the same what? question ought to be ‘human beings’. For if A and B are persons and human beings, then A could never be the same person as B and not the same human being as B; or the same human being as B and not the same person.