ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 is about how things would be worse for us if we were not selves as I define them, but rather certain of the various other entities that philosophers have called selves and have identified with us. I do not in this chapter have an eye on some additional and purely pragmatic argument for the conclusions of Chapter 1, but aim rather to counter discontent with what these conclusions say is true. The other entities that philosophers have called selves and whose relations I consider to selves as I define them include minimal conscious subjects lasting no longer than the specious present, brains or bodies, hylemorphic composites, and causally or mnemonically united sequences of mental events, none with an owner other than the whole sequence of which it is a member.
