ABSTRACT
What accounts for the distinctive nature of the agency of persons, as compared to simpler forms of agency? On one picture, the key lies in the possibility of identifying with some of one’s attitudes and actions: the elements of the psychic economy of a person are not all on par, but rather a person owns some of these elements more deeply, that is, they truly represent her. I show that these notions must be made more precise by distinguishing two significantly different, albeit related, concepts of identification: identification in the participant sense and identification as agential stance. The competing accounts of identification proposed in the literature are best interpreted as elucidating one, but not the other, of these two concepts. Sorting out the debate into the corresponding two strands helps to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the existing proposals, but also reveals the need to explain the relationship between the two senses of identification.
