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Moral Goodness Is the Essence of Personal Identity

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 22; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.tics.2018.05.006

1879-307X

Julian De Freitas, Mina Cikara, Igor Grossmann, Rebecca J. Schlegel,

Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

Starmans and Bloom ([ 1 Starmans C. Bloom P. Nothing personal: what psychologists get wrong about identity. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2018; 22: 566-568 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (16) Google Scholar ]; henceforth S&B) argue that research on the centrality of morality in people's intuitions about personal identity does not reveal much about people's notions of personal identity (whether an individual is the same person at timea and timea+1), but only something about their notions of similarity (how much the person at timea shares properties with the person at timea+1). We agree with S&B that it is important to distinguish between these constructs but disagree with their conclusion. Here we briefly review evidence that judgments regarding personal identity following a change in moral character cannot be explained by a mere (dis)similarity account.