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Cheng, Chieh-Ling

University of British Columbia

Can metaphysical facts about personal identity, understood as the diachronic identity of a person, be defined without making reference to our social practices? In this dissertation, I argue that personal identity is socially constructed, and therefore that metaphysical facts about personal identity cannot be defined without making reference to our social practices. I develop this argument by critically engaging with Buddhist-informed theories and social constitution theories about personal identity in the philosophy of mind. Specifically, Buddhist-informed theories suggest that personal identity is socially and conceptually constructed based on our psychophysical continuity. Nevertheless, they claim that facts about our psychophysical continuity, which are metaphysical facts about personal identity, can be defined independently of our social practices. However, I suggest that claiming this only makes meaningful social practices impossible. Building upon social constitution theories of personal identity, I argue that our psychophysical continuity is inextricably connected to our social practices, such that whether an individual meaningfully preserves their psychophysical continuity in part depends on whether there are social resources and support available for self-understanding, self-development, or recovery. For this reason, I suggest that personal identity is socially constructed, and metaphysical facts about personal identity cannot be defined without making reference to our social practices. This argument implies that the identity of a person is not only a fact to be determined but also something to be facilitated through our collective effort, including our effort to provide better resources and support in our society. I illustrate the implication by discussing the relation between narrative identity and personal well-being with examples of the imposter phenomenon and rationalization. In the end, I suggest two potential research directions for future work. The first research direction concerns how we may better facilitate personal identity to promote personal well-being. The second research direction concerns how our social infrastructure shapes our cognitive dispositions (such as memory and attention) and emotional identification (such as attachment), and thereby affects our sense of personal identity and well-being.

Text

2023-01-11

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/83634

Philosophy

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/