Personal borders

pp. 1-42

in: Daniel Kolak, I am you, Berlin, Springer, 2004

Abstract

Borders enclose and separate us. We assign to them tremendous significance. Along them we draw supposedly uncrossable boundaries within which we believe our individual identities begin and end, erecting the metaphysical dividing walls that enclose each one of us into numerically identical, numerically distinct, entities: persons.Do the borders between us merit the metaphysical significance ordinarily accorded to them? They do not. Our borders do not signify boundaries between persons. We are all the same person."How many persons are there in the world?" To ask this question is to acknowledge our borders. To answer "one," as I do, is not to deny our borders but merely to deny their significance—to deny that our borders are absolute metaphysical boundaries.