Personal Identity through Time: Some Consequences of Essentialism

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to formulate some consequences of the metaphysical doctrine of mereological essentialism (ME) and the assumption that persons persisting through time remain identical in the strict and philosophical sense (Chisholm, following Butler and Reid). Those consequences are substantiality, non-constitutivity, constantiality, anti-identism (non-bodility), and simplicity of persons. The author tries to show that although the above stance has a great theoretical appeal, it leads to the many further difficulties, which remain without reasonable answers.