摘要：The book starts by arguing that the problem of personal identity over time is often wrongly
put. The problem is usually stated like this: if you¡¯ve got a person existing at one time and
a person existing at another time, what has to be the case ¨C what is necessary and sufficient
¨C for them to be the same person? It asks what it takes for a person to persist as a person.
I objected that this assumes, without any argument at all, that a person has to persist as
a person. It assumes that if I exist at all at some time in the past or the future, I am a person
then. It rules out the possibility that I might start out as a merely potential or future person,
and that I might end up as a former person. This assumption is especially pernicious if
being a person implies having certain mental properties. In that case, the assumption that I
can only persist as a person amounts to the claim that I cannot exist in the past or future
without having any mental properties. It follows I cannot have been an embryo, and that I
could never end up in a persistent vegetative state. The principle that I can only persist as a
being with certain mental properties may or may not be true. But it is not an assumption
that we ought to build into the way we enquire about personal identity. It is something that
needs to be argued for.
