The Ockham Society

Abstract: Derek Parfit introduced an influential distinction between two different kinds of view about personal identity – the complex view and the simple view. Eric Olson, however, has cast doubt on whether any such distinction can be adequately formulated. He concludes that all the formulations of the distinction he can think of either misclassify obviously simple views as complex or obviously complex views as simple. I argue, contra Olson, that we can adequately formulate the distinction between complex and simple views. I argue that the reason Olson thinks that we can’t do this is that he misunderstands the nature of the paradigmatically simple views – and, in particular, the Cartesian view of personal identity – which he thinks get misclassified as complex by attempts to articulate the distinction. I end up defending a characterization of the complex-simple distinction on which it corresponds to criterialism versus anti-criterialism about personal identity. That is to say, the simple view holds that there are no conditions on personal identity other than those that are either trivial or synchronic, while complex views hold that there are necessary and jointly sufficient non-trivial, diachronic conditions on personal identity (with possible hybrid views that give necessary but insufficient conditions).

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Ockham Society Convenors: Jack Tristani, Yuxin Tang and Meredith Ross-James | Ockham Society Webpage