Ontologies of Personal Identity

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Jörg Noller
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; Practical Philosophy
• Term: from 2018 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392884996

The current debate on personal identity is mainly dominated by three different approaches: (1) Ontological approaches that focus on the complex substantial condition of persons and their spatio-temporal structure. (2) Mentalistic or psychological approaches that focus on the structure of personal subjectivity and the continuity of memory. (3) Agent-oriented approaches that take into account the practical identity of persons in moral actions, narrativity, and biographic life forms. Whereas ontological approaches tend to ignore questions concerning the practical life form of persons and their normative status, practical approaches, by contrast, tend to ignore their ontological status. Likewise, mentalistic approaches often exclude ontological questions or tend to endorse a reductionist view that cannot do justice to the practical and normative existence of persons. However, an elaborated concept of personal identity demands taking into account both ontological and practical dimensions. For that purpose, the scientific network aims at making explicit the implicit ontology of prominent contemporary conceptions of personal identity in order to connect the different approaches. Thereby the relationship between underlying ontology and specific forms of personal existence such as selfconsciousness, structure of the will, and normativity shall be analyzed. Of special importance will be the ontological commitments of current practical and narrative approaches, as well as the practical implications of current ontological theories. Thus, the aim of the scientific network consists in identifying the systematic coordinates of the current debate on personal identity and to define an ontological map within which the different practical and mentalistic approaches can be situated. The research network will also consider the problem of equivocation concerning the concept of personal identity. It aims to develop a integrative concept of personal identity that can be used in an unambiguous way by equally considering all three dimensions.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks