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This chapter proposes an identity development (ID) account of object permanence that locates the origins and development of permanence in infants' notions of how to determine and trace numerical identity. The arguments and evidence generated from this approach suggest a number of conclusions: (a) object permanence understanding is not an all-or-none attainment; (b) permanence is understood for some disappearance transforms but not others; (c) the development of infants' spatiotemporal criteria for numerical identity provide the form and ordering of the disappearance transforms over which they understand permanence; (d) apparent violations of permanence can cause negative emotion; and (e) taking seriously the conceptual distinctions between representation, identity, and permanence offers considerable theoretical power. The chapter presents a mechanism of change to account for the transition from having no concept of permanence to having permanence.

Four central claims about the nature of identity are formulated. Identity is unitary, indefinable, fundamental, and it is a genuine relation. This general conception of identity is appealed to in later chapters when discussing other topics.

Discusses numerical identity, or being one and the same, qualitative identity, or being exactly similar, personal identity, or what is involved in our continued existence over time. According to the Physical Criterion, our identity over time consists in the continued existence of enough of our brain. According to the Psychological Criterion, our identity consists in overlapping chains of psychological continuity and connectedness. The chapter discusses how we are inclined to believe that, even in purely imagined cases, our identity must be determinate. When we ask – Would I still exist? Would that future person be me?, it seems that it must always have an answer.

This chapter argues, contra some commentators, that Berkeley can't avoid the absurd consequence that no two persons can perceive the same thing. It defends, and shows that Principles 140 concedes, the “no-shared-ideas principle”—that two minds can't perceive numerically the same idea. It argues that this principle can't be overturned by appeal to the view that God has all ideas (so that two finite minds can perceive the same idea since it is identical with one of God's ideas), because (a) God's omniscience requires only that he have ideas of our ideas, and (b) the claim that he has our very ideas leads to the un-Berkeleian consequence that a mind can have an idea that it doesn't perceive. It argues against the view that even if ideas are private, the objects that they constitute can be publicly perceivable. It criticizes the Dialogues’ attempt to defuse or refute the no-shared-ideas principle.

This chapter defends my answer to: The Why Question: What way of being related to a (conscious) person at a future time explains why that person will have (at that time) what matters in survival for you? My answer is numerical identity. That is, I say that your being numerically identical with a (conscious) person at a future time explains why that person will have (at that time) what matters in survival for you. This answer is controversial. For this answer implies that your being numerically identical with a person at a future time explains why it is appropriate for you to first-personally anticipate, and have future-directed self-interested concern with regard to, the experiences that that person will have at that time.

This chapter describes the overall line of argument of Self and Identity. It also introduces the two questions around which Self and Identity revolves. These are The What Question: What is it for a person at a future time to have (at that time) what matters in survival for you? And The Why Question: What way of being related to a (conscious) person at a future time explains why that person will have (at that time) what matters in survival for you? This chapter also argues that the What Question is distinct from the Why Question, and that these questions have different answers.

This chapter argues that Aquinas’s hylomorphism is best understood as a distinctive type of substratum theory—one according to which substrata are identified with portions of matter, forms are identified with properties, and hylomorphic compounds are identified with substratum-property complexes (i.e., concrete states of affairs or facts). The chapter begins by providing a framework for comparing Aquinas’s views with more familiar forms of substratum theory. It then turns to a detailed examination of an issue that has been of special concern to substratum theorists historically—namely, the relationship between predication and property possession.

This chapter examines Aquinas’s specific account of the two main subtypes or categories in terms of which all generation and corruption are to be understood—namely, substantial vs. accidental change. In addition to filling out the functional hylomorphism associated with Aquinas’s general account of change, this chapter highlights two important commitments of Aquinas’s views that his commentators have yet to appreciate—namely, (1) that hylomorphic compounds are best understood as concrete states of affairs or facts, and (2) that distinct hylomorphic compounds can bear to one another a form of numerical sameness that falls short of identity.

Chapter 12 explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR.

Partisan sports fans use their fandom to cultivate and reproduce their own identities as members of a larger, socially significant community—as an “I” who is part of a specific “we.” Yet, the “we” of sports fandom does not precede the practices of fandom. This chapter investigates the production of this “we” through one of the more prominent symbolic practices of sports fandom: the institution of mascots. Drawing on John Searle’s account of institutional facts, this chapter claims that mascots are better understood as contributing to the constitution of teams and the communities they represent than merely symbolizing them. By closely analyzing the Native American mascot controversy and the symbolic function of mascots more generally, this chapter shows that the usage of Native Americans as mascots by non-Native communities depends upon the concomitant instrumentalization and exclusion of non-Native persons by the “we” of the sports fan community. This theoretical conceptualization of mascots is important both because it shows the role of symbolic fan practices in social ontology, and because it offers a salient example of how white communities are produced via sports fan practices that explicitly racialize and subordinate nonwhite groups.