ABSTRACT
Discussions of personal identity typically take it for granted that the problem is easy to characterise and clearly intelligible and concentrate on explaining its various possible solutions. This chapter aims to get clearer about what the problem is and about its relation to problems about identity over time more generally. It examines the distinction between what D. Parfit calls the simple and the complex views. In addition to the problems of diachronic identity, there are also problems of synchronic identity, which can be stated similarly. The solution to the puzzle in general terms, then, is to deny that the genuine problems which philosophers are concerned with when they debate topics under the title of ‘problems of identity’ are problems about conditions of identity at all. The chapter discusses the difference between the distinction and the distinction between reductionism and non-reductionism about personal identity.
