I. Short answers
1. Qualitative identity refers to a relation that has a one to many relationship, and which the objects in question have the same properties but are not the same substance. Numerical identity is a one to one relation and refers to two things that are exactly the same substance. The ship of Theseus is a thought experiment illustrating this, in which a ship (S1) sets out to sea and over time each piece of the wooden ship is replaced by new, but identical pieces of wood (S2). The old wood is then saved and brought back to land to assemble a “new” ship (S3) using all of the pieces from the original one. Therefore, the original ship (S1) is qualitatively identical to both (S2) and (S3), but (S1) cannot be numerically identical to …show more content…
Their reasoning is that even if everything you do is determined by the laws of nature and past events, you still could have chosen otherwise. The grounds they use to back their proposal is the use of the phrase “could have done otherwise”. If someone can say they could have done otherwise, then they are saying that if they would have chosen otherwise, they would have done it. According the traditional compatibalists, there are two conditions which must be met in order for someone’s actions to be free: the action must be caused by her will, and must not be externally …show more content…
Animalism is the belief that personal identity resides in the physical body. That someone continues to exist as long as their body exists and retain a certain functional organization. Thus identical persons, are ones which possess identical bodies. Animalism is not consistent with the psychological continuity theory. This theory says that identical persons are those that are psychologically continuous (connected) with one another. The physical body has no grounds in this theory. For example, if someone’s psychological mind was transferred from body A to body B, then that someone would now be in body B. Body A would just be a “dead” body. Therefore, animalism and the psychological continuity theory are incompatible with one