Why Derek Parfit claims that reductionism gives the explanation on questions about Personal Identity

Essay aus dem Jahr 2020 im Fachbereich Philosophie - Philosophie der Gegenwart, Note: 1,0, Universität Mannheim, Veranstaltung: Hauptseminar Ethics and Personal Identity, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: With help of several imagined scenarios by Derek Parfit, this essay aims to explain how Parfit comes to the conclusion that in cases about persistence across time whether the resulting person will be me is merely a verbal question. It starts off with giving general background knowledge about different criteria of personal identity and distinct forms of reductionism, applied on two ranges of cases given by Parfit. This will lead to his conclusion that we should regard questions about our identity as merely questions about language. In the end, the reader should understand why identity relation doesn’t matter, but what matters has to consist in psychological continuity and/or connectedness.