Chapter One
The Old Photograph
You can recognise yourself in the photograph without liking the person you were. That fact is so ordinary it is easy to miss its philosophical weight. The face is younger. The hopes are different. Perhaps there is even a sentence on the back that now makes you wince. Still, you do not point to the image and say, in earnest, that this is another human being with whom you happen to share features. You say, That was me.
The sentence does several jobs at once. It identifies a continuing individual. It claims a past experience as part of your life. It may also suggest that you should answer for something that person did. The jobs are related, but they are not identical. A person can correctly recognise herself in a picture while being wrong about what she felt that day. She can admit an old action without believing she must repeat it. She can have changed so much that an acquaintance barely recognises her manner, while there is no doubt who stood for the photograph.
Philosophers distinguish the question of persistence from the question of character. Persistence asks what makes a person at one time the very individual who exists at another time. Character asks which beliefs, loyalties and habits feel central to who that person is. The first question can be answered yes while the second receives a complicated answer. A former friend may say, You are not the person I knew. Taken literally, that would make the reunion impossible. What the friend means is that some qualities once familiar are absent, and perhaps their absence hurts.
