ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the notion of personhood as consisting in reflective self-control by examining in more detail the idea of taking responsibility for, or identifying with, one’s motivational states. It argues that diminished psychological connectedness does not imply diminished responsibility. The chapter examines cases of mental illness involving disconnectedness between earlier and later mental states and discontinuity between earlier and later selves. It also explores the implications of the mental disruptions for the way in which we excuse some persons from responsibility, but not others. Failure to critically evaluate the springs of action also may reinforce them, though in such a way as to preclude any sort of decisive identification. A person may undergo a single episodic manipulation of her brain or mind by a neuroscientist, but subsequently revise the externally induced psychological properties so that they align once again with the properties she had before the manipulation.
