NOEMAA philosophical identity study

The perfect copy

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, 1984), the discussion of teletransportation in the chapters on personal identity.

Parfit uses teletransportation to ask whether identity is what matters in survival, or whether psychological continuity matters even if strict identity fails. The questionnaire does not reproduce his argument or his conclusion. It asks whether you think observable continuity settles the question of who continues.

The case sits on the reality axis and the knowledge axis because it asks both what a person is and what kind of evidence would show it. There is no clever answer.