Intentions and Personal Identity
Rory Madden
Oxford University
This paper explores the relationship between intentions and personal identity.
Specifically I aim show that there are ways in which intentions and personal
identity are related that may be problematic for a particular theory of personal
identity - for a neo-Lockean theory of personal identity. I will do this by presenting
two arguments, an argument from ‘belief-dependence’, and an argument
from ‘extrinsic causation’. Each aims to show that the neo-Lockean theory is
objectionably circular. Whether these arguments in the end succeed in this aim
depends in part upon some difficult methodological issues about the permissibility
of circularity in philosophical theory, issues that unfortunately lie beyond
the scope of the present paper. What I hope will be achieved in the scope of the
present paper is at least a fresh sense of the relevance to the personal identity
debate of some interesting issues in the Philosophy of Mind.