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LIT-1308: Folk concepts of person and identity: A response to Nichols and Bruno

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StatusUnavailable — filed 2026-10-21 from the abstract only; no lawful full text was reached on 2026-10-21, so it is not read and no NOTE is filed. Where the reader looked: OpenAlex and Unpaywall (both "closed", no repository copy); Semantic Scholar (openAccessPdf "CLOSED"); Europe PMC (no record); tandfonline.com (403 to this client, and paywalled); PhilPapers and PhilArchive (record BERFCO, 403 to this client, so whether PhilArchive holds an archived copy is unsettled); PhilPeople profiles of both authors (403); the second author's personal site, www.dranseika.lt, linked from his Jagiellonian University (INCET) staff page (the publications page lists the paper with no link to a copy); the INCET staff page itself (no copy); the Lituanistika database record (content/101037: abstract and keywords, no file); web and Google Scholar searches for a PDF, a preprint or an accepted manuscript in the Vilnius University repository (none found; Scholar returned no version of the paper itself). ResearchGate was not relied on. A failure of access for PhilArchive, which should be rechecked from a client it does not refuse, and of availability elsewhere. It stays Unavailable until a copy is supplied, not on merit.
Tagspersonhood, individuation, cognition, epistemology, metaphysics

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Berniūnas, R. & Dranseika, V. (2016). Folk concepts of person and identity: A response to Nichols and Bruno. Philosophical Psychology 29(1), 96–122. DOI 10.1080/09515089.2014.986325.

Not read: no lawful full text was reached (see the status note). Every point below is drawn from the abstract, and a reading should check it first.

Key takeaways

From the abstract only.

  • A reply aimed at one conclusion. Nichols & Bruno (LIT-1269, NOTE-996) concluded that the folk judge psychological continuity necessary for personal identity. This paper disputes that claim.
  • Three concepts, not one. The authors argue that in “hypothetical cases of transformations” the folk “rely on different concepts of ‘person’, ‘identity’, and ‘individual’”, and that “identity can be ascribed even when post-transformation individuals are no longer categorized as persons”.
  • New data against necessity. They report evidence “suggesting that the folk do not consider psychological continuity to be necessary for an individual to be categorized as a person or for ascribing identity over time and through transformations”.
  • A shared measure, and a doubt about it. Like Nichols & Bruno, they assume “folk judgments about identity can be read off the use of proper names”. They also doubt that current designs can “adequately distinguish between qualitative and numerical identity judgments”.
  • A sceptical conclusion. They take these points as “a good reason to be skeptical about the prospects of using folk intuitions in philosophical theorizing about personal identity”.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-21 at the owner’s request, as the published reply to Nichols & Bruno 2010, which NOTE-996 lists under its open questions as known only from a record and a snippet. That remains true: the reply is Unavailable. What the abstract allows the record to say is limited to which holdings a reading would test.

It bears on none of the rubber hand THEORYs. THEORY-766, THEORY-769, THEORY-767 and THEORY-768 concern a body felt as one’s own now. This is a survey of judgements about persons over transformations, filed under personhood by ADR-024.

What a reading would test:

  • The person/identity distinction (THEORY-417, NOTE-374, ADR-024, TERM-045). The abstract’s central claim is the folk counterpart of distinctions the record already keeps. THEORY-417 separates the personhood question (what a person is) from the persistence question (what it takes for one to persist). The paper says the folk separate them too: they can judge that the same individual persists while denying it is still a person. ADR-024 keeps individuation apart from personhood, and the paper’s third concept, “individual”, sits there. NOTE-996 found that Nichols & Bruno use “self” and “person” interchangeably and run TERM-045’s senses together; this reply, as abstracted, makes the parallel objection from the folk side. The paper’s doubt about qualitative against numerical identity is the distinction THEORY-417 draws between characterization and persistence. NOTE-996 raised the same worry about Nichols & Bruno’s abstract probe. If the full text bears this out, it is convergent evidence that ordinary usage marks these distinctions. It is not evidence that the distinctions are correct, which THEORY-417 holds on conceptual grounds.
  • THEORY-531’s version 2 addition (ordinary verdicts do not follow the person of the telling). The abstract says nothing about first- and third-person versions, so it is not known whether this paper retests that point. Nothing here supports or weakens the addition until the paper is read.
  • THEORY-546 (psychological continuity). The paper reports that the folk do not treat psychological continuity as necessary for identity. Like the Nichols & Bruno result it disputes, that is a finding about a folk concept, not about what persistence is. THEORY-546’s promote_when already says imagined cases “cannot settle it”.
  • What folk judgement can establish (QUESTION-048, LIT-451). The authors’ own conclusion is the record’s caution: a survey shows how a population applies a concept, and getting from that to the fact needs a further premise that the concept is reliable about it. QUESTION-048 keeps the parallel distinction for reports of experience; the parallel is mine. A folk split between “person” and “identity” would also fit Hume’s verdict (LIT-451) that the hard cases are “grammatical rather than philosophical”; that pairing is mine too.

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