Let's exist again (like we did last summer)

Abstract

This paper is a defence of a psychological view of personal identity against the attack Peter Unger launches against it in his Identity, Consciousness and Value. Unger attempts to undermine the traditional support which a psychological criterion of identity has drawn from thought-experiments, and to show that such a criterion has totally unacceptable implications—in particular, that it allows that persons can go out of and come back into existence. I respond to both aspects of this criticism, arguing that the relevant thought- experiments (and the support they appear to offer) survive Unger's attack intact, and that he does not establish his case against intermittent existence.