La continuité psychologique selon Derek Parfit : examen critique d'un critère d'identité
The goal of this thesis is to have a critical overview of Derek Parfit’s vision of personal identity. While he tries to defend the thesis of the unimportance of personal identity instead of a particular positive thesis about identity, he admits the necessity, in his later writings, of having a minimal conception of identity since judging of its importance supposes having a certain conception of it. He will propose that the neo-lockean conception of identity, constituted by a psychological continuity embodied in enough of a brain to maintain it, is the best criterion that we have although it sometimes fails to determine the identity of a person over time, warranting his analysis of the unimportance of identity. If it happens that better thesis could replace the neo-lockean conception, perhaps we would have to rethink the unimportance thesis. Accordingly, we will consider the body thesis of Judith Jarvis Thomson, the animalist conception of Eric Olson and the narrativist thesis of Paul Ricoeur, Daniel Dennett and Charles Taylor to see if their critics against Parfit can be maintained and if you would have to replace the neo-lockean thesis. We will have to extend our analysis from time to time to explain and block certain critics such as when we will call on the supervenience thesis of Catherine Sutton to explain away the too-many-thinkers problem shown by Olson. We hope to show that the neo-lockean thesis is effectively the best that we have if we join it to a narrativist conception of the Self and that Parfit can maintain at each step his thesis of the unimportance of identity.
Parfit Olson Dennet Thomson identity person supervenience self