De Se Modal Illusions

The importance ofJohnLocke's discussion of persons is undeniable.Locke never explicitly tells us whether he thinks persons are substances or modes, however. We are thus left in the dark about a fundamental aspect ofLocke's view. Many commentators have recently claimed thatLockean persons are modes. In this paperIswim against the current tide in the secondary literature and argue thatLockean persons are substances. SpecificallyIargue that whatLocke says about substance, power, and agency commits him to the claim that persons are substances.Iconsider the passages mode interpreters cite and show why these passages do not imply thatLockean persons are modes.Ialso respond to two objections anyone who thinksLockean persons are substances must address.Ishow that a substance reading ofLocke on persons can be sympathetic and viable.Icontend that with a clearer understanding of the ontological status ofLockean persons we can gain a firmer grasp of whatLocke's picture of persons looks like. Finally, once we are armed with a better understanding ofLocke on substance, mode, and personhood, we can pave the way toward a more nuanced description of the early modern debate over personal identity.

Personal Identity and the Methodology of Imaginary Cases

This Symposium Issue looks at how personal traits of international judges matter in their judging. The articles selected shed light on the ways that international judges’ personality, that is, their character differences and personal backgrounds, shape, control, or modify their conduct and their rulings. The articles in the Symposium reveal that individual international judges have different personal attributes and identities that affect: (i) different aspects of judicial reasoning, problem-solving and case management; (ii) the ways judges interact, deliberate and affect each other in collectively deciding cases; and (iii) the outcomes of international trials. This Symposium, therefore, looks beyond the traditional ‘legal formalistic’ understanding (prevalent also among international judges themselves) that judges – as impartial, rational, and mechanical decision-makers – simply apply existing, recognized rules or principles of law to the facts and questions before a court in the context of concrete cases without regard to any personal leanings and biases. It examines how and to what extent judges at international courts make their choices conditioned on their personal identity characteristics, and when such characteristics exhibit greater or lesser effects on their decision-making.

A main element in Richard Swinburne’s (2019) argument for substance dualism concerns the conditions of a person’s continued existence over time. In this commentary I aim to question two things: first, whether the kind of imaginary cases that Swinburne relies on to make his case should be accorded the kind of weight he supposes; and second, whether philosophers should be concerned to give any substantial theory, of the sort that dualism and its competitors are apparently meant to provide, to explain the conditions of personal identity after all. My suggestion, instead, will be that the concept of a person’s continued existence is better taken as philosophically unanalyzable.

In the Second Meditation, Descartes famously asks at one point, ‘But what then am I?’ – to which his immediate answer is ‘A thing that thinks.’ It is this question, or rather the plural version of it, that Eric Olson examines in this excellent book. He thinks that it is – today, at least – a rather neglected question. He points out that it is wrong to confuse the question with the much more frequently examined question of what personal identity consists in. In fact, he thinks that possible answers to the two questions, even if not entirely independent of one other, constrain each other only to a rather limited extent. It is important to appreciate that Olson is not inquiring into what persons in general are, but only into what we human persons are. Olson explores all the major, and some of the less well-known, answers that have been...