Self-Concern

Each of us identifies with himself in the past and in the future in a way in which normally we do not identify with anyone else. We identify with ourselves in the past primarily by remembering having had experiences and having performed actions. We identify with ourselves in the future primarily by anticipating having experiences and performing actions. Ordinarily we remember or anticipate having only our own experiences and performing only our own actions. That's because ordinarily our options include only those we have in real life.

As we have seen, there are hypothetical situations in which many of us would anticipate having the experiences and performing the actions of continuers of ourselves who, apparently, we do not think are ourselves and who, on many of the criteria of identity to which philosophers subscribe, are not ourselves; and we would anticipate having these experiences and performing these actions in pretty much the same ways we currently anticipate having our own experiences and performing our own actions. In other words, there are hypothetical situations in which, apparently, many of us have identificatory surrogates. As we have also seen, for those who are three-dimensionalists about persons the case that many of us have identificatory surrogates can be made by appeal to fission examples; but the case itself, whether it is being made for three- or for four-dimensionalists, does not depend on fission examples. It can be made without them.