What makes someone a person—and what underlies their persistence over time? Philosophical debates about personal identity have long been divided between psychological and physical approaches, each seeking to ground identity in different mental or biological facts. Yet this familiar dichotomy has led to a theoretical impasse, with neither side securing decisive support.
In response, a growing body of work proposes an alternative framework, holding that facts about personal identity depend, at least in part, on our person-directed attitudes and practices. This view is commonly known as conventionalism about personal identity.
This volume presents the first comprehensive examination of this novel perspective. Bringing together some of the most influential philosophers in the field, these original essays explore conventionalism’s metaphysical and ethical dimensions, its relationship to neighbouring views, and the challenges it must address as it continues to gain prominence in the personal identity literature.
Conventionalism About Personal Identity provides a timely and accessible guide to this increasingly influential approach. It will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students of philosophy, especially those working on both traditional and emerging theories of personal identity.
Featuring both defenders and critics of conventionalism, Conventionalism About Personal Identity will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars studying personal identity, metaphysics and ethics.
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introducing conventionalism about
personal identity Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera Part 1: Metaphysics
1. What should
conativists say about belief sensitivity? David Braddon-Mitchell and Kristie
Miller
2. Person conativist animalism Hugo Luzio
3. The case for
conventionalism about personhood Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera
4. Death by 1000
endings Marya Schechtman Part 2: Ethics
5. Arbitrariness and conventionalism
about personal identity: In support of pro-arbitrary views Daniel Weltman
6.
Signed, sealed, but still me? The conventionalist challenge to prospective
autonomy Thomas Schirmer and Nils-Frederic Wagner
7. Social narrativity,
dementia, and conventionalism Katherine Cheng Part 3: Delimitations
8. Are
Buddhists conventionalists? Mark Siderits
9. Homeostasis and human evolution:
A social yet non-conventionalist argument on the persistence of persons
Marcia Villanueva
10. Personal identity au naturale Shaun Nichols and David
Shoemaker Part 4: Criticisms
11. Why we are unconventional Simon Beck
12.
There is no such thing as conventionalism about personal identity Eric T.
Olson. Index
Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. His primary research interest is personal identity, with a focus on narrative and conventionalist approaches. He also works on the philosophy of fiction, particularly the metaphysics of fictional characters and the nature of our emotional engagement with them.
Nils-Frederic Wagner is a research associate at the University Medical Centre Mainz, Germany. He has published at the intersection of medical ethics and empirically-informed philosophy of mind. His recent work focuses on the ethical implications of medical AI and on questions of agency and personhood. He coauthored a forthcoming textbook on medical and nursing ethics.
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