ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides the psychological-continuity account of personal identity and attempts to demonstrate its superiority to the ‘best-candidate’ approach. He aims to comparing it with R. Nozick’s closest-continuer theory of personal identity, which is by far the most sophisticated and strongly defended version of the ‘best-candidate’ approach in the literature. The author argues that the alternative theory he favour can explain everything Nozick’s theory can explain, can explain some things Nozick’s theory cannot explain, and does not have the implausible consequences of Nozick’s theory. The explanatory power Nozick claims for the closest-continuer theory turns out on investigation to be illusory. Given the author’s account of continuant identity, then, a solution can be found to the puzzle about fission which Nozick states but himself fails to solve. But a final attempt may be made to defend the claim of the closest-continuer theory to superior explanatory power.
