Archive

Issues in Experimental Philosophy: Identity Over Time, Sameness, and Change (2025/2026)

The seminar examines ordinary intuitions about identity over time, sameness and change. Topics include personal and object identity, the effects of moral, functional and material changes on identity judgments, and the distinction between identity and continuity.

During the first semester and part of the second, participants study the foundations of experimental philosophy and discuss selected readings. The programme covers determinants of personal identity, methodological issues in studying identity, identity in language and the persistence of inanimate objects. The latter part of the second semester is devoted to designing and conducting team research projects.

Convenors: Katarzyna Kuś, Adrian Ziółkowski

Course code: 3800-PFE25-S. Language of instruction: Polish. Course description in USOS.

BLOCK 1. Determinants of personal identity

  1. Nichols S. i Bruno M. (2010). Intuitions about personal identity: an empirical study. Philosophical psychology, 23 (3), 293-312.
  2. Newman G. E., Bloom P. i Knobe J. (2014). Value Judgments and the True Self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40 (2), 203-216.
  3. Strohminger N. i Nichols S. (2014). The essential moral self. Cognition, 131, 159-171.
  4. Strohminger N. i Nichols S. (2015). Neurodegeneration and Identity. Psychological Science, 26 (9), 1469-1479.
  5. Tobia K. P. (2015). Personal Identity and the Phineas Gage Effect. Analysis, 75 (3), 396-405. + Molouki S. i Bartels D. M. (2017). Personal change and the continuity of the self. Cognitive Psychology, 93, 1-17.
  6. Prinz J. i Nichols S. (2016). Diachronic Identity and the Moral Self [w:] The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind Routledge. J. Kiverstein (red.). Routledge: 449-464.
  7. Gomez-Lavin J. i Prinz J. (2019). Parole and the moral self: Moral change mitigates responsibility. Journal of Moral Education, 48 (1), 65-83

BLOCK 2. Personal identity: methodological concerns and alternative measures

  1. Berniūnas, R. i Dranseika, V. (2016). Folk concepts of person and identity: A response to Nichols and Bruno. Philosophical Psychology, 29(1), 96–122.
  2. Dranseika, Dagys i Berniūnas (2020). Proper names, rigidity, and empirical studies on judgments of identity across transformations. Topoi, 39, 381-388.
  3. Starmans C., Bloom P. (2018). Nothing Personal: What Psychologists Get Wrong about Identity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences., 22 (7), 566-568.
  4. Everett, Skorburg i Savulescu (2020). The Moral Self and Moral Duties. Philosophical Psychology, 33 (7), 924-945.
  5. Finlay M. i Starmans C. (2022). Not the same same: Distinguishing between similarity and identity in judgments of change. Cognition, 218.
  6. Dranseika, V., Nichols, S., and Strohminger, N. (2023). “Which kind of sameness? Disambiguating two senses of identity with a novel linguistic task”. In: Cognition 238, p. 105545.
  7. Dranseika, V., Nichols, S., and Shoemaker, D. (2024). “The identity of what? Pluralism, practical interests, and individuation”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, pp. 1–17.

BLOCK 3. Identity in language, rigid designators and natural kinds

  1. Genone, J. and Lombrozo, T. (2012). “Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference”. In: Philosophical Psychology 25.5, pp. 717–742.
  2. Nichols, S., Pinillos, N. A., and Mallon, R. (2016). “Ambiguous Reference”. ́Mind 125.497, pp. 145–175.
  3. Tobia, K. P., Newman, G. E., and Knobe, J. (2020). “Water is and is not H2O”. Mind & Language 35.2, pp. 183–208.
  4. Haukioja, J., Nyquist, M., and Jylkk ̈a, J. (2021). “Reports from Twin Earth: Both deep structure and appearance determine the reference of natural kind terms”. In: Mind & Language 36.3.

BLOCK 4. Identity of inanimate objects over time

  1. Leonard, N. and Rips, L. J. (2015). “Identifying and counting objects: The role of sortal concepts”. In: Cognition 145, pp. 89–103.
  2. Rose, David. 2015. “Persistence Through Function Preservation.” Synthese 192 (1): 97–146. doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0555-6.
  3. Rose, D., Machery, E., and Stich P., S. (2020). “The Ship of Theseus Puzzle”. In: Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy. Ed. by T. Lombrozo, J. Knobe, and S. Nichols. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, pp. 158–174.
  4. Dranseika, V. (2024). “Two Ships of Theseus”. In: Synthese 203.6, pp. 1–14.
  5. Krawczyk J., Wultański B., and Zacharewicz P. (unpublished manuscript) Boats, proper names, and identity: an experimental study