246 NONMONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSPersonal identity
General criteria for theories of personal identity
A theory of personal identity should consist of elements, none of which is
itself self-contradictory, which are also logically consistent with one
another, each of which coheres with the others in such a way as to yield a
plausible account of what it is to be a person, which account is compatible
with and explanatory of the things we know about persons.
An exhaustive and exclusive disjunction
These are two basic sorts of views held regarding persons: persons are
simple or complex. If they are simple, they are substances.^10 If they are
complex, they are composed of substances or qualities or states or
whatever. If they are substances, they are either mental or physical. If they
are not substances, they are complex and composed of mental and/or
physical qualities or states or whatever. It is logically impossible that both
views be true. There are various substantival views about persons other
than the Jain view (for example, that persons are material substances, that
persons are mental substances whose essence differs from that proposed by
Jainism). There are other non-substantival views about persons other than
the Theravada view (for example, that rather than states or qualities, it is
events, processes, or the like that make up persons).^11 But the claims
Persons are simple substances, essential to Jainism, and Persons are not
simple substances, essential to Buddhism, are exhaustive as well as
exclusive. Thus one or the other is true, and the remaining view is false.
Can we tell which is true?
Bundle theory
A non-substantival view of persons
A complexity account of persons holds that (i) a person may be made of
elements that are not themselves persons, (ii) these elements, whatever they
are, exist only momentarily, and (iii) what makes a bundle of elements that
comprises a person at one time (part of) the same person as another bundle