Persistence without essence

Abstract

Abstract Questions of persistence and change are central to metaphysics. There is almost always a role for sortal or essential properties to play in theories of persistence. However, one might reasonably be suspicious of many of the claims about sortal properties and essential properties on which so many accounts of persistence conditions rest. The aim of this paper is to think through what persistence looks like if we don't help ourselves to these assumptions. In so doing, we shall uncover a deep and difficult problem when it comes to identity facts and their relation to qualitative facts. Towards the end of the paper, I sketch a potential line of response that builds upon our seeming awareness of a genuinely persisting self.