1 Personal Identity, Indeterminacy, and Obligation Ryan Wasserman Western Washington University It is the foundation of all rights and obligations, and of all accountable- ness; and the notion of it is fixed and precise .-Thomas Reid 1. Personal Identity and Indeterminacy In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit defends the Complex View of personal identity, which he formulates as follows: The Complex View: Facts about personal identity consist in other, impersonal facts. 1 2 More specifically, Parfit defends the view that facts about personal identity reduce to facts about psychological continuity or connectedness. 3 He then goes on to argue that this view implies the possibility of indeterminacy: The Indeterminacy of Personal Identity: It is possible for questions about personal identity to lack determinate answers. Parfit explains his reasoning as follows: 1 Where “impersonal facts” are those which do not presuppose the existence of a con- tinuing person. 2 In Reasons and Persons, Parfit’s focus is on what he calls Reductionism, but is clear that he takes Reductionism to be equivalent to the Complex View. See, for example, Parfit (1982, pp.227-8). 3 Parfit (1984, p.216).