The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 156 of 254
Person is not a robust sortal
I’m happy to bite both Noonan’s bullets. In fact, I chew them with relish. ‘Person’ is not best thought of as a robust sortal concept and so ‘personal identity’ is strictly speaking non-existent. The idea that ‘person’ is not a sortal concept may seem bizarre. How could we possibly have a concept of person that did not allow us to count how many there are in the room? But this only seems radical if one assumes that the choice is between a strict sortal and a totally vague mass noun. This is just another false dichotomy created by putting logic first and the reality of language and the world second. Person is not a sortal in the strict sense for reasons that should by now be obvious. The boundaries of the self are not precise, and there may be times, real and imaginary, when it really is not possible to say how many there are or whether they are identical with past or future selves. But for practical purposes we can usually say how many persons are in a room, or whether I am the same person as I was yesterday.