Merrick's Argument Against Criterialism False?

Introduction In Trenton Merricks article, “There is no identity over time,” he argues that criterialism is false and that if there isn’t enough reason to support criterialism, then it should be rejected. He uses example of his daughter being duplicated and DNA of a cat in order to show why criterialism is false. I will be arguing that his argument is too strict and that the absurdity of his argument lies in his anti-criterialism argument. I will also argue that this view is contradictory. I will be using the his own logic for the argument the criterialism is false and include the example of the prince and the cobbler as well as citations of hypothetical examples of fission and fusion. Lastly, I will present a possible objection against my own argument.
II. Summary
Criterialism is the doctrine that states that there are necessary and sufficient conditions that contain information for identity over time. Therefore criterialists believe that there is personal identity over time or identity that persists over time. This …show more content…
His reasons are that if one is to analyze one’s kind membership, it does not mean that the fact that it is analyzable that it generates criteria of identity over time. He argues that “being a member of a certain kind and lasting over time are disparate features of an object” (113). This means that in looking criteria of identity over time, it will not be found in the process of analyzing kind membership because they are two completely separate things. He gives an example of a mountain and fingerprints that state that just because a mountain has the criteria that it cannot survive underwater, does not mean that its identity over time should follow from that statement or fact. Merricks argues that there isn’t enough informative necessary and sufficient information to make makes such a