ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the core arguments of the impersonal theory. An important consequence of the impersonal theory is that personal identity can be indeterminate. According to the advocate of the impersonal theory, a thorough analysis of the reduplication thought experiment leads to the conclusion that personal identity is not relevant to survival. The chapter briefly discusses the reductionist revision of the normal image of the self and the normal existential attitudes, in particular the attribution of moral responsibility. For, on closer inspection, the impersonal solution to the analytical problem of personal identity ultimately leads to a serious distortion and even complete destruction of the personalist descriptive metaphysics and the personalist moral and emotional reactive attitudes of 'every man of common sense'. Radical empiricists — in particular Parfit and Perry — subtly avoid the dramatic situation into which the standard debate about personal identity has become mired.
