K A Wallace

Relational Persons is a work in progress.

Philosophers are drawn into analyses of persons and personal identity through different interests, an interest in practical concerns on the one hand, or an interest in the nature and identity of objects on the other. Among contemporary views of identity, the approach that I find the most interesting is the temporal parts, or four dimensionalist theory, according to which a self is a temporal spread. Among contemporary practical concerns, for example, about the nature of agency, and autonomy among feminist philosophers, a general theme that emerges is the idea of a relational or intersectional self.

A social view of the self arises from objections by feminists, communitarians and others to an atomistic view of the self that ignores the extent to which the self is a product of and constituted by its social relations and cultural or community locations. Four dimensionalism arises from problems in analytic metaphysics of identity of physical objects that change over and persist through time.

The two ideas that I distill from the approaches just mentioned are of the self as a temporal spread and as relational to develop what I call a relational process self. The self is a network of traits (hence, relational) and a temporal spread (hence, a process). I have an expansive view of relations constitutive of a self and don't equate "relational self" solely with "social self." Rather, a self is relational throughout; it is a complex, relationally constituted process not just socially, but biologically, physically, psychologically, in every respect; relationality, complexity is "all the way down" or "all the way up," whichever perspective one wants to take.

I argue that my approach to a relational process self can avoid some of the problems attributed to a view of the self as a "social self," namely that it lacks individuality, agency, and uniqueness. My goal is to present a plausible approach to understanding selves, an approach that is able to connect up with characteristic functions, capacities, and experiences of selves. A self changes, has a history or biography, is capable of agency, autonomy and responsibility, has the capacity for communication and perspective-taking, and for internalizing social and cultural roles and values in ways that do not necessarily undermine autonomy. At the same time, my view will address some of the traditional philosophical puzzles about identity, continuity and persistence.