Personal Identity
Eric T. Olson · 2023 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This source is used as context evidence across 5 linked claims and 8 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
What makes a person the same person over time — the criterion problem at the heart of survival, reincarnation, and uploading debates.
How this source is used on the map
Any claim about surviving death or being reincarnated presupposes a theory of personal identity. This entry sets the terms.
Citation record
- Authors
- Eric T. Olson
- Year
- 2023
- Publication
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Source type
- Philosophy reference
- Map role
- context
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
Decades of cases of young children making specific, verifiable claims about a deceased stranger's life — across many cultures, with reproducible sub-patterns (≈70% violent deaths, family-rebirth clusters).
If past-life cases are taken seriously, reincarnation is the most economical narrative — but several other models also fit the data.
A New Age doctrine that pre-birth agreements — sometimes elaborated into detailed 'life plans' — explain difficult relationships and life events. No empirical basis beyond suggestible regression.
Drawn from regression-based literature. Comforting frame, not an evidence-based claim.
NDEs, past-life cases, terminal lucidity and mediumship cluster suggestively. Each line is contested; together they earn a hearing.
Related evidence hubs
Children's past-life memories, birthmark cases, and the rebirth interpretation.
Past-life memories, karma, soul contracts.
Whether anything of mind continues.
World religions and traditions, scored as systems.
Growth, suffering, synchronicity, calling.
Determinism, free will, destiny.
Life purpose, growth, synchronicity, soul groups, destiny.
Evidence around dying, near-death experience, and what (if anything) continues.
Related research reports
A comparative guide to the strongest survival-adjacent evidence: NDEs, terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, past-life memories, mediumship, and after-death communication.
A source-linked synthesis of past-life memory cases, birthmark claims, reincarnation interpretations, and skeptical alternatives.
A careful synthesis of free will, determinism, compatibilism, fate, soul contracts, karma, life purpose, suffering, and the claim that everything happens for a reason.
What NDE studies support, what they do not prove, and why the phenomenon remains one of the strongest spiritual-adjacent evidence clusters.
Related sources
The leading academic group publishing on cases of children claiming past-life memories and on Greyson's NDE work.
Direct background for any claim about whether something of the person survives death, and a useful guardrail against treating survival as a single simple proposition.
Reference for claims about postmortem destinations within Christian frameworks; it clarifies the conceptual options before any evidential claim is assessed.
Use this as the conceptual guardrail for destiny and 'it was meant to be' claims. It separates fatalism from causal determinism, which popular spirituality often blends together.
The reference for what mind-body dualism means and why most contemporary philosophers reject it.
Companion to the UVa DOPS institutional page; covers the case-study methodology and the major sceptical objections.