Dilemma

What makes someone the same person over time?

When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.

Context

Personal identity has been a philosophical problem for as long as philosophy has existed, but it has become a practical one in our lifetimes. Dementia care raises it: is the late-stage Alzheimer's patient still the person their spouse married? Brain injury and coma raise it: when someone wakes up not recognizing themselves, is it still them? Mind-upload speculation, fueled by neural-interface research and the genuine progress in computational models of the brain, makes it concrete: if your connectome were perfectly copied into a new substrate and the original destroyed, would you have survived? Trauma and dissociation raise a softer version of the same question. None of these can be settled by neuroscience alone, because the question is not what changed; it is what you are, such that some changes preserve you and others end you.

Why it matters

The framework's least-used attribute — obs_time_instance — comes into its own here. Whether an observer exists at a single moment or across many shapes the entire range of answers. So does whether the person is essentially their body (which dies at one place and time), essentially a soul (which persists through bodily change), essentially a pattern (which can in principle be re-instantiated), or essentially a construction (which was never fixed in the first place). The partition this dilemma produces splits some schools that have grouped together elsewhere (Reformed and Eastern Orthodox; Dualism and Naturalism) and groups some that have split (Eternalism and Transhumanism; Buddhism and Postmodernism).

The coordinates that split the schools

Observer · Time Instance Whether the observer spans many moments or a single one Observer · Physicality Whether the mind is reducible to the body Information · Cosmic Conservation Whether information can be destroyed at the cosmic scale (cycles, thermodynamics) Information · Ontological Status Whether information is fundamental, relational, or emergent

The stances

You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity.

34 schools

On this view, the locus of identity is the embodied biological person. What persists through change — through dementia, through coma, through aging — is the body and what it does. What does not persist — a copy in a different substrate, however accurate — is not you. The intuition that uploaded-you would be 'the same person' is a metaphysical mistake; it is at best a similar person.

Why these schools land hereThese schools share obs_physicality=Embodied with obs_time_instance=Single and info_conservation=Conserved — the observer is the body, located in a single place and moment, and the information that constitutes the person is preserved by the body's continuity. The cluster combines strict materialists (Naturalism, Dialectical Materialism, Determinism, Realism) with embodied-resurrection traditions (Reformed / Calvinist, Catholic / Thomistic, LDS), which treat the body as essential to the person even though God's preservation guarantees bodily continuity through death. The schools differ enormously on what does the preserving, but agree that the body is what the person is.

Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism Analytic Philosophy Atomism Cosmopolitanism Critical Realism Deep Ecology Deism Determinism Dialectical Materialism Effective Altruism Empiricism Kantian Transcendental Idealism Logical Positivism Marxism Mechanism Modal Realism Naturalism Neutral Monism Nominalism Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) Phenomenalism Phenomenology Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Science Pragmatic Realism Pragmatism Process Philosophy Realism Relationalism Simulation Theory Social Contract Theory Social Democracy Stoicism Virtual Realism

Works: Fragments Tao Te Ching Nicomachean Ethics Meditations Ethics On the Origin of Species The Analects Metaphysics Leviathan On Liberty Utilitarianism The Communist Manifesto (Early) A Theory of Justice De Anima Politics Mencius Xunzi I Ching De Cive (Early) The Problems of Philosophy (Early) The Foundations of Arithmetic Relativity: The Special and General Theory The Selfish Gene The Open Society and Its Enemies A History of Western Philosophy (Late) Theory of Communicative Action Physics Theological-Political Treatise (Early) Political Liberalism (Late) Two Dogmas of Empiricism The Subjection of Women (Late) Categories Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors)) On Interpretation The Copernican Revolution (Early (Kuhn's first book)) The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Early (the most ambitious early work, before the Arcades Project)) Brave New World (Mid (Huxley's breakthrough novel)) Ideas and Opinions (Late (the most comprehensive single-volume collection)) Critique of Dialectical Reason (Late (Sartre's major late philosophical work)) Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Late (Berlin lectures of the 1820s, his mature mature)) Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures)) A System of Logic (Early (Mill's first major book, the foundation of his philosophical reputation)) De Providentia (Late) Prior and Posterior Analytics On the Heavens Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement)) Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Mid-late (Averroes's major systematic philosophical defence)) On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early) Parerga and Paralipomena (Late) Gravitation (Mid-late) Parmenides Sophist The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Early (Lévi-Strauss's breakthrough work; the foundation of structural anthropology)) Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (Late (Næss's mature statement; the systematic expansion of his 1973 "shallow vs deep ecology" essay)) The Conscious Mind (Early (Chalmers's breakthrough book, derived from his 1993 Indiana PhD)) Tool-Being (Early (Harman's breakthrough work, derived from his 1999 DePaul PhD)) On the Plurality of Worlds (Late (Lewis's mature systematic statement of the modal-realist programme)) Time and Modality (Early (Prior's first major synthesis of tense logic, derived from his 1955-56 Oxford Locke Lectures)) The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language (Early-to-middle (Carnap's most polemical statement of the verificationist programme)) Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Mature (Lanier's short polemical follow-up to Who Owns the Future?, 2013, and Dawn of the New Everything, 2017)) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Mature (Kripke's second major book after Naming and Necessity, 1980)) Convention: A Philosophical Study (Early (Lewis's first book, published at 28, the year he began at UCLA)) The Descent of Man (Mature) The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Mature) Letter to Herodotus (Mature) Principal Doctrines (Mature) The Poverty of Historicism (Mid-career) Objective Knowledge (Late) Plato's Dialectical Ethics (Early) Philosophical Hermeneutics (Late-middle) The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (Late) Reason in the Age of Science (Late) American Power and the New Mandarins (Early (political work)) Reflections on Language (Mid-career (linguistic work)) Manufacturing Consent (Mid-late (political work)) The Minimalist Program (Late (linguistic work)) Philosophy of New Music (Middle) Aesthetic Theory (Final) The Therapy of Desire (Middle) Women and Human Development (Middle-to-late) Not for Profit (Late) Contact (Late) On Nature (fragments) Paradoxes (fragments) Republic (fragments) (Early) Logical Investigations (fragments) (Mature) On Providence (fragments) (Mature) The Histories Hymn to Zeus Fragments (Reconstructed) On the Natural Faculties Arthashastra Thirukkural

Where this stance leads ⓘ

You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect.

44 schools

On this view, the body is one thing the person has; a soul or spirit is what they fundamentally are. Bodily change — even radical change — doesn't end the person; loss of body doesn't end the person. The soul provides the continuity the body cannot guarantee. Whether an uploaded copy is you depends, on this view, on whether the soul went with it — which is not the kind of question engineering can settle.

Why these schools land hereThese schools share obs_physicality=Both or Disembodied with obs_time_instance=Single and info_conservation=Conserved — a body-soul composite (or pure soul) located in a single moment, with personal information preserved. Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Lutheranism, Islamic Philosophy / Falsafa, Jewish Philosophy, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Bahá'í Faith treat the human as body-soul composite in this technical sense; Dualism (Cartesian), Jainism, Kabbalah, Neutral Monism, Platonism, Hermeticism share the structural commitment from non-religious starting points; Sāṃkhya (with Disembodied puruṣa) represents the pure-soul end of the cluster. They differ on what the soul is, but agree that something non-bodily carries identity.

Anglicanism Anti-Trinitarianism Arminianism Augustinianism Baha'i Faith Biblicism Cartesianism Catholic/Thomistic Catholicism Christian Existentialism Christian Mysticism Christian Personalism Confucianism Dataism / Information Ontology Dualism Dvaita Vedanta Eastern Orthodox Christianity Evangelical Protestantism Hylomorphism Islamic Philosophy / Falsafa Jainism / Anekantavada Jewish Philosophy (Maimonidean) Kabbalah (Lurianic) LDS / Latter-day Saint Theology Liberal Theology Liberation Theology Lutheranism Manichaeism Methodism Natural Theology Neo-Orthodoxy Newtonianism Occasionalism Philosophy of Religion Pure Land Buddhism Radical Reformation / Anabaptism Reformed / Calvinist Theology Samkhya Sikhism Southern Baptist / Baptist Tradition Thomism Transcendental Thomism Transhumanism / Posthumanism Zoroastrianism

Works: Timaeus (Late) Meditations on First Philosophy Critique of Pure Reason The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Late) The Varieties of Religious Experience A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Early) On the Nature of the Gods (Late) Two Treatises of Government (Late) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Democracy in America How to Make Our Ideas Clear The Human Condition Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Novum Organum After Virtue Opticks (Late) Theaetetus (Late) A Letter Concerning Toleration (Late) Pragmatism (Late) The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Early-to-late (he revised it throughout his life)) Gettysburg Address (Mature (Civil War)) Second Inaugural Address (Late (six weeks before assassination)) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Mid-late (the second of the After Virtue trilogy)) The Problem of Pain (Mid (post-conversion, pre-Narnia)) Discourse on the Method (Mid (1637, in mature middle age; preceding the Meditations of 1641)) Theodicy (Late) A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Mid (Northampton pastorate; the major work of evangelical reflection)) Divine Comedy: Inferno (Late (Dante's exile years)) A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Late) I and Thou (Mid (the foundational statement of dialogical philosophy)) Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Late (the mature systematic philosophy)) Works of Love (Late (after the pseudonymous works; the major direct theological work)) Essays: First Series (Mid (Emerson at the peak of his powers)) The Will to Believe (Mid (between Principles of Psychology and Varieties of Religious Experience)) The Nature and Destiny of Man (Mid-late (Niebuhr's major systematic work)) Dependent Rational Animals (Late (the explicit Thomist completion of the After Virtue trilogy)) Life Together (Mid (between the Cost of Discipleship and the prison theology)) The Sovereignty of Good (Mid (her major philosophical statement, alongside Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 1992)) The Epistle to the Romans (Early (the breakthrough work)) The Social Contract (Late (after the two Discourses; the political conclusion of Rousseau's mature thought)) Monologion (Early (Anselm's first major work, before the Proslogion)) Otherwise than Being (Late (the more radical successor to Totality and Infinity, 1961)) The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean Enchiridion Militis Christiani (Early (Erasmus's first major work)) Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Late (third volume of the After Virtue trilogy)) Letter from Birmingham Jail (Mid (the canonical theological-political document)) Strength to Love (Mid (the major collection of sermons)) The Need for Roots (Posthumous) Sanctorum Communio (Earliest (Bonhoeffer's dissertation at age 21)) Love and Responsibility (Early (his major pre-papal work; drawn from pastoral and academic teaching)) The Acting Person (Mid (his major academic-philosophical work, before his 1978 papal election)) Hind Swaraj (Early (the founding text of Gandhi's mature political-philosophical vision)) Mishneh Torah (Mid (the major legal work, between the early Commentary on the Mishnah and the late Guide of the Perplexed)) Sister Outsider (Mid (the major prose collection of Lorde's career)) Tales of the Hasidim (Late (Buber's mature engagement with the Hasidic tradition)) A Black Theology of Liberation (Early (the systematic founding text of the field)) The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Late (Cone's major late book)) Gitanjali (Mid (the Nobel-winning collection)) Sadhana: The Realisation of Life (Mid (the major philosophical prose statement)) No Future Without Forgiveness (Late (the major reflective work after the TRC)) Crime and Punishment (Mid (the first of Dostoevsky's great late novels)) The Idiot (Mid (after Crime and Punishment, before Demons and Karamazov)) Demons (Mid-late (the third of the four great novels)) Moral Man and Immoral Society (Early-mid (Niebuhr's breakthrough book that established Christian realism)) The Irony of American History (Late (Niebuhr's major Cold War political-theological book)) Liber Divinorum Operum (Late (the culmination of her visionary trilogy)) On Christian Doctrine (Mid-late (composed across three decades)) Time and the Other (Early (the breakthrough early work, before Totality and Infinity)) Difficult Freedom (Mid (alongside Totality and Infinity)) Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Late (Berlin lectures)) De Brevitate Vitae (Mid) Parisian Questions (Mid-late) Discourse on Metaphysics (Mid (Leibniz's breakthrough philosophical statement)) New Essays on Human Understanding (Late) Praise of Folly (Mid (Erasmus's most widely read book)) Adagia (Long (composed across Erasmus's entire mature career)) Psychological Types (Mid (the major systematic work after his 1912-13 break with Freud)) Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Mid-late (mature systematic statement)) Hamlet (Mid (mature middle period)) King Lear (Mid-late (the major tragedies)) Kitáb-i-Íqán (Mid (pre-declaration in 1863)) Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Late (the major late doctrinal-legal book)) What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (Mid (Douglass at the height of his oratorical powers)) Ninety-Five Theses (Early (the founding act of the Reformation)) On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Early (1520, foundational year)) Convivio (Mid (early years of exile, preceding the Comedy)) A Time for Choosing (Early (launched Reagan's political career)) Tear Down This Wall (Late (Reagan presidency at its rhetorical peak)) A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Early (preceding the more famous 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman)) Faust, Part I (Mid (composed across Goethe's career; Part I the major mid-career work)) The Power of the Powerless (Mid (Havel as principal Charter 77 dissident)) First Inaugural Address (Mid (the inauguration after twelve years of Republican presidency)) Provincial Letters (Late) Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early) Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Late) Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum (Mid-late) The Reasonableness of Christianity (Late) Creation and Fall (Early-mid) The Lion and the Jewel (Early) Answer to Job (Late) Peace with God (Early-mid) Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mid) Principles of Nature and Grace (Late) De Tranquillitate Animi (Mid-late) De Vita Beata (Mid-late) Eudemian Ethics Man's Search for Meaning (Mid-late) Systematic Theology (Mid) The Prophetic Faith (Late) Eclipse of God (Late) Commentary on the Mishnah (Early-mid) Anasakti Yoga: The Gita According to Gandhi (Mid-late) The Symbolism of Evil (Early) Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Early) Time and Narrative (Late) Oneself as Another (Late) Memory, History, Forgetting (Late) Theses on the Philosophy of History (Late) Truth and Method (Mid) The Philosophy of Loyalty (Late) Modes of Thought (Late) A Theology of Liberation (Early (Gutiérrez's breakthrough work; the founding text of the school)) The Avesta The Book of Mormon The Kephalaia Church Dogmatics (Mid) Foundations of Christian Faith (Late) The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Late) Jesus Christ and Mythology (Late) Theology of the New Testament (Late) A Community of Character (Mid) Theology of Hope (Early) Systematic Theology (Late) The Politics of Jesus (Mid) Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Late) The Visible and the Invisible (Late) The Prose of the World (Mid) Being Given (Late) The Essence of Manifestation (Early) Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Late) Finite and Eternal Being (Late) Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Mid) The Mystery of Being (Late) Philosophy (Mid) Philosophy of Existence (Late) Intention (Mid) Reflections on the Revolution in France (Late) The Federalist Papers (Mid) Sources of the Self (Mid) A Secular Age (Late) Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mid) Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt (Remarks and Admonitions) (Late) Mabādiʾ Ārāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila (Principles of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City) (Mid) Fī l-Falsafa al-Ūlā (On First Philosophy) (Early) Muqaddimah (Late) Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Mind's Road to God) (Mid) Ordinatio (Late) Summa Logicae (Late) De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (Late) The Divine Names (De Divinis Nominibus) (Late) The Life of Moses (De Vita Moysis) (Late) Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature) (Mid) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Late) Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Late) Ethics (Ethik) (Late) On Nature (Fragments) (Early) Discourses (Diatribai) (Mid) Enchiridion (Handbook) (Late) Moralia (Ēthika) (Late) On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei) (Early) On the Holy Spirit (De Spiritu Sancto) (Late) Theological Orations (Orations 27-31) (Mid) Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (De Fide Orthodoxa) (Late) Hymns of Divine Love (Hymnoi tōn Theiōn Erōtōn) (Late) Triads (Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts) (Late) Sic et Non (Yes and No) (Early) Didascalicon (On the Study of Reading) (Early) The Dark Night (La Noche Oscura) (Late) The Interior Castle (Castillo Interior) (Late) Ars Magna (Ars Generalis Ultima) (Late) The Mirror of Simple Souls (Le Mirouer des Simples Âmes) (Late) Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate) (Mid) Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à Due Nuove Scienze) (Late) The Sceptical Chymist (Mid) Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique) (Late) New Science (Late) Philosophical Letters (Lettres Philosophiques / Lettres Anglaises) (Mid) Utopia (De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia) (Mid) The Passions of the Soul (Les Passions de l'âme) (Late) Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Late) Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Early) Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Mid) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early) The Christian Faith (Der christliche Glaube) (Late) Biographia Literaria (Mid) Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Early) A Confession (Ispoved') (Late) Leaves of Grass (Late) Faust, Part Two (Faust: Der Tragödie zweiter Teil) (Late) Warranted Christian Belief (Late) Climate and Culture (Fūdo: ningengakuteki kōsatsu) (Mid) Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late) Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Mid) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Late) The Justification of the Good (Opravdanie dobra) (Late) The Destiny of Man (O naznachenii cheloveka) (Mid) Athens and Jerusalem (Athènes et Jérusalem) (Late) The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Essai sur la théologie mystique de l'Église d'Orient) (Mid) Freedom of the Will (Late) An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Mid) Orthodoxy (Mid) Mere Christianity (Mid) Notes on the State of Virginia (Mid) Common Sense (Mid) The Age of Reason (Late) The World and the Individual (Mid) Twenty Years at Hull-House (Late) A Theology for the Social Gospel (Late) The Long Loneliness (Late) Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late) Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late) Rerum Novarum (Late) Gaudium et Spes (Late) Laudato Si' (Late) The Voice of the Voiceless (Late) Church: Charism and Power (Igreja: carisma e poder) (Mid) Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims (Late) Paradiso (Divine Comedy, Cantica III) (Late) Paradise Lost (Late) An Essay on Man (Late) The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Mid) God in Search of Man (Late) Halakhic Man (Ish ha-Halakhah) (Mid) Long Walk to Freedom (Late) The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Late) Second Treatise of Government (Late) Confessions (Late) The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Late (Bergson's last major book, written after a long convalescence)) Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (Mature (the late translation programme Boethius announced and partly completed before his death)) Iggeret Teiman (Epistle to Yemen, c. 1172) and the responsa (Middle (between the Commentary on the Mishnah, 1168, and the Mishneh Torah, completed 1178)) Modern Moral Philosophy (Mature (the journal paper that reshaped Anglophone moral philosophy)) Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Late (Murdoch's longest and most ambitious philosophical book, published nine years after the Gifford Lectures)) The Bell (Early-mature (Murdoch's fourth novel, the first to establish her mature manner)) An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Late (Wollstonecraft's last completed major non-fiction work, three years before her death)) Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (Early (Wollstonecraft's first published book, written from her experience as a governess and a school proprietress)) Aion (Late (one of Jung's last and most ambitious works, written in his mid-seventies)) The Red Book (Middle (the personal experimental record from which all of Jung's later theoretical work emerged)) The Undiscovered Self (Late (one of Jung's last short works, written at 82)) De Officiis (Late (Cicero's last completed philosophical work, written in the months before his proscription and execution)) Tusculan Disputations (Late (composed in the year of Cicero's daughter's death, in his most intense period of philosophical writing)) Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Mature (after Mere Christianity and Screwtape; the most philosophical of Lewis's apologetic works)) Disputed Questions on Truth (Early-mature (Aquinas's first major work after the Sentences commentary)) On Evil (Late (Aquinas's mature treatment of evil and the passions, parallel to the Summa)) Compendium of Theology (Late (begun during the Roman regency, unfinished at Aquinas's death)) Colloquia (Mature (the work that grew through Erasmus's most productive decades and was repeatedly enlarged)) De Libero Arbitrio (Late (the treatise that publicly broke the Erasmus-Luther alliance, written after seven years of pressure for Erasmus to declare his position)) Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mature (the work that established Erasmus's international reputation and reshaped biblical scholarship)) On Learned Ignorance (Mature (the founding work of Cusa's philosophical career, composed at age 39)) The Vision of God (Mature (one of Cusa's most condensed and beautiful late works)) On Conjectures (Mature (the systematic epistemological development of the docta-ignorantia framework)) Anti-Pelagian writings (Late (Augustine's last great theological controversy, occupying the final two decades of his life)) The Dialogue of Divine Providence (Late (composed in Catherine's last two years, in the midst of her efforts to reform the Church and end the Avignon papacy)) Physica and Causae et Curae (Mid-mature (Hildegard's middle period, between her three major visionary works)) Against Marcion (Mature (Tertullian's longest and most systematic work)) On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Mature (one of Tertullian's longest and most carefully argued treatises)) Kyōgyōshinshō (Mature) Tannishō (Posthumous (the principal popular source for Shinran's teaching)) Al-Hikmat al-Muta'aliya fi'l-Asfar al-'Aqliyya al-Arba'a (Late (the synthesis of his entire mature philosophy)) al-Kashf ʿan Manāhij al-Adilla (Mature) Letters to the Son of the Wolf (Last (less than a year before his 1892 death)) Jōdo Wasan (Late) My Bondage and My Freedom (Mature (Douglass's second autobiography, written after his break with Garrison and the founding of his own newspaper)) Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Late (Douglass's third autobiography, covering his post-1855 political career)) Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Mature (composed at the height of the developing controversy with Rome)) Custer Died for Your Sins (Mature (Deloria's breakthrough book, written at 36)) The Metaphysics of Modern Existence (Mature (Deloria's most ambitious philosophical work)) Race Matters (Mature (the book that established West as a major public intellectual)) The American Evasion of Philosophy (Mature (West's major work of intellectual history, written before the Race Matters celebrity)) Democracy Matters (Late-mature (the post-9/11 sequel to the 1993 Race Matters)) Dictionnaire philosophique (Late (composed during the Ferney years)) Traité sur la tolérance (Late (the campaign-treatise of the Ferney period)) Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (Mid (the work that established Voltaire as a public intellectual of European reach)) Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Early (Spinoza's first major philosophical project, left incomplete as the Ethics took shape)) Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (Early (Spinoza's first published work)) Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (Early (the work that launched Rousseau's career)) Julie (Mature (the literary high-point of Rousseau's career, between Social Contract and Émile)) Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Late (Seneca's last completed major work, composed in retirement)) De Beneficiis (Mid-mature (composed during Seneca's most influential political-philosophical period)) Naturales Quaestiones (Late) De Otio (Late) De Constantia Sapientis (Mid) Pure Lust (Late-mature) Japji Sahib (Mature (Nānak's foundational devotional composition)) Asa Di Var (Mature) Veritatis Splendor (Mature) Evangelium Vitae (Late-mature) Theology of the Body (Mature (the major catechetical project of John Paul II's early pontificate)) Romans (Mature (Paul's most extensive and systematic letter)) 1 Corinthians (Mature) 2 Corinthians (Mature) Galatians (Mature) Philippians (Late) 1 Thessalonians (Early) Philemon (Late) Macbeth (Mature) The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play)) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Early-mature) The Maine Woods (Mature-late) A Plea for Captain John Brown (Mature) Slavery in Massachusetts (Mature) The American Scholar (Mature) Divinity School Address (Mature) Essays: Second Series (Mature) Representative Men (Mature) Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (Mature) The Christian Faith (Mature) Surprised by Joy (Late-mature) The Allegory of Love (Mature) The Discarded Image (Last) A Pluralistic Universe (Late) Purgatorio (Mature) De Vulgari Eloquentia (Mid-mature) De Monarchia (Late) The World as I See It (Mid-mature) Religion and Science (Mid-mature) Out of My Later Years (Late) Parable of the Sower (Mature) Parable of the Talents (Late-mature) Cur Deus Homo (Late-mature) On Truth (Mature) On Free Will (Mature) Faust I (Mature) Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature) The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last) Jesus and the Disinherited (Mature) Patriotism (Mid-mature) Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life (Late) The Gathering Storm (Late) Their Finest Hour (Late) A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Late) The Black Unicorn (Mid) Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Mature) Declaration of Independence (Early) Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (Early) A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Early) The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Late) You Learn by Living (Late) Shabuhragan (Mature) Living Gospel (Evangelium Vivum) (Mature) Treasure of Life (Mature) Book of Mysteries (Mature) Poor Richard's Almanack (Mid) Experiments and Observations on Electricity (Mid) Fīhi mā Fīhi (Discourses) (Late) Maktūbāt (Letters) (Mature) Majālis-i Sabʿa (Seven Sermons) (Mature) Kongi's Harvest (Mid) You Must Set Forth at Dawn (Late) New System (Mature) Correspondence with Arnauld (Mature) Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (Mature) Murder in the Cathedral (Mid) The Idea of a Christian Society (Mid) Approaching Hoofbeats (Mid) Quodlibetal Questions (Mature) Treatise on Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents (Mature) Dialogue on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor (Late) Commentary on the Sentences (Early) Original Stories from Real Life (Early) Evangelii Gaudium (Late) Laudato Si' (Late) Amoris Laetitia (Late) Fratelli Tutti (Late) Bal-i Jibril (Gabriel's Wing) (Late) An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Early) De Motu (Mid) Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (Mid) Siris (Late) Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Mid) Original Sin (Late) The End for Which God Created the World (Late) The Nature of True Virtue (Late) De Veritate (On Truth) (Mid) De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil) (Mid) De Processione Spiritus Sancti (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit) (Late) All About Love (Late) The Crisis of Western Philosophy (Early) Lectures on Divine Humanity (Mid) The Meaning of Love (Late) We Drink from Our Own Wells (Mid) The Power of the Poor in History (Mid) Dasam Granth (Mature) Zafarnama (Mature) Commentary on John (Mature) Commentary on Genesis (Mature) Commentary on Wisdom (Mature) Self-Made Men (Mid-Late) Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Mid) Living Faith (Late) Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Late) Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (Late) Doctrine and Covenants (Mid) The Pearl of Great Price (Mid) King Follett Discourse (Late) Articles of Faith (Mid) Commentaries on the Bible (Mature) Geneva Catechism (Mid) Ecclesiastical Ordinances of Geneva (Mature) Brief Instruction Against the Anabaptists (Mid) Kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Book of Healing) (Mature) Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mature) Ilāhiyyāt (Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ) (Mature) Principles of Philosophy (Mature) Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth (Late) Stride Toward Freedom (Early) Why We Can't Wait (Mid) Where Do We Go from Here (Late) The Drum Major Instinct (Late) Tablets to the Political Leaders (Mature) Tabernacle of Unity (Late) Words of Paradise (Kalimát-i-Firdawsiyyih) (Late) Edition of Jerome (Mature) Edition of Augustine (Late) Edition of Origen (Late) Edition of Cyprian (Mature) The Reagan Diaries (Late) Evil Empire Speech (Late) RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Late) Leaders (Late) All the Best (Late) Larger and Smaller Catechisms (Mature) Luther German Bible (Mature) Lectures on Galatians (Mature) Lectures on Genesis (Late) The Hidden God (De Deo Abscondito) (Mid) On the Beryl (De Beryllo) (Mature) On the Not-Other (De Non Aliud) (Late) Yuishinshō Mon'i (Mature) Kōsō Wasan (Mature) Mattōshō (Late) Standard Sermons (Mid-to-late) Notes Upon the New Testament (Mid) A Compendium of Natural Philosophy (Late) Spirit in the World (Early) Hearer of the Word (Early) On the Theology of Death (Mid) Deep Is the Hunger (Mid) Meditations of the Heart (Mid) The Search for Common Ground (Late) Crying in the Wilderness (Mid) Hope and Suffering (Mid) The Rainbow People of God (Late) God Is Not a Christian (Late) The Search After Truth (Early-to-mid) Treatise on Nature and Grace (Mid) Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (Mid-to-late) Treatise on Morality (Mid) On the Problem of Empathy (Early) Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (Early) The Science of the Cross (Late) Parimala (Mid) Tatparya Chandrika (Mid) Nyaya Mukura (Mid) Bhagavata Tatparya commentary (Mid) Zen and the Birds of Appetite (Late) Living in Truth (Mid) Sidh Gosht (Mid) Babar Vani (Mid) Der Ring des Nibelungen (Middle-to-late (career-spanning)) Parsifal (Late (final completed work)) On the Philosophy of Discovery (Late-career capstone) De Trinitatis Erroribus (Early) Dialogorum de Trinitate (Early) Edition of Ptolemy's Geography (Middle) Christianismi Restitutio (Late (final)) A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (Early-career) A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (Early-career) The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (Mid-career) Micrographia (Early-career (career-defining)) An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (Mid-career) Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva (Mid-career) The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke (Posthumous) Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei (Career-defining) De Potestate Summi Pontificis in Rebus Temporalibus (Late) Letter to Foscarini (Late) De Aeterna Felicitate Sanctorum (Late (devotional)) General Scholium (Late) Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (Posthumous) Alchemical and Theological Manuscripts (Career-spanning private work) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Late) Perpetual Peace (Late) The Metaphysics of Morals (Late) On the Prescription of Heretics (Pre-Montanist) On the Flesh of Christ (Mid-to-late (Montanist period)) Gödel's Ontological Argument (Late (private manuscript)) An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Mid-career) Collected Philosophical Papers (Late) The Religion of Man (Late) Gora (Middle) Chitra (Early-to-middle) The Adolescent (Late) A Writer's Diary (Late) Dogmatics in Outline (Late-middle) Evangelical Theology (Late) The Barmen Declaration (Middle) Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Early) Some Dogmas of Religion (Middle) The Nature of Existence (Late) On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (Late) The Aims of the Philosophers (Middle) The Niche of Lights (Late) The Analyst (Late) Prophesy Deliverance! (Early) Black Prophetic Fire (Late) Another Country (Middle) No Name in the Street (Late) If Beale Street Could Talk (Late) Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness (Middle) From the Acting to the Seeing (Middle-to-late) The Self-Identity of Absolute Contradiction (Late) The Origin of Russian Communism (Late) The Beginning and the End (Late) Self-Knowledge (Posthumous) The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Middle) The Serenity Prayer (Middle) Gaudete et Exsultate (Late-middle (papacy)) Let Us Dream (Late-middle) Sonnets (Career-spanning) Between Man and Man (Middle-to-late) Two Types of Faith (Late) The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (Early) Bāng-i-Darā (Early-to-middle) Redemptor Hominis (Early (papacy)) Memory and Identity (Final) Journal of Discourses (Career-spanning) The Church and the Second Sex (Early) Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (Late-middle) Outercourse (Late) Act and Being (Early) What Is Art? (Late) The Moment (Final (year of death)) Factory Journal (Middle) Letter to a Priest (Final) Three Conversations (Final (year of death)) Loaves and Fishes (Middle-to-late) Martin & Malcolm & America (Mid-to-late) On the Soul (Mid-to-late (Montanist period)) Decision Points (Late (post-presidency)) Sermons (Career-spanning (Geneva preaching)) On the Creation of the World On the Life of Moses Against Celsus On Abstinence from Animal Food Stromateis (Miscellanies) Against Heresies Hexaemeron (Late) Life of Moses (Late) Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew De Officiis Ministrorum (Late) The Consolation of Philosophy Sayings and Legal Rulings

Where this stance leads ⓘ

You span moments — identity is a pattern that need not be located at a single now.

17 schools

On this view, the observer is not bound to a single present. Identity is something that exists across moments — as a pattern, an ancestral line, a trans-temporal structure. Uploading, in this picture, is not a metaphysical impossibility but an engineering question; ancestors are real participants in present life; future selves are not merely descendants but real continuations. The 'you' is wider than a moment can hold.

Why these schools land hereThese schools share obs_time_instance=Multiple with obs_number=Plural — the observer occupies many moments, and those observers are genuinely distinct individuals (rather than aspects of one). The cluster is striking for what it brings together: Eternalism (block-universe self), Multiverse Theory and Quantum Realism (selves across branches), Panpsychism, Transhumanism / Posthumanism (mind upload literally on the table), Dataism / Information Ontology (pattern as substrate-independent), and the ancestral-temporal worldviews of Animism, African Traditional Religion, Ubuntu, and Afrofuturism / Black Quantum Futurism. The schools disagree about what kind of thing the pattern is, but agree the pattern is not confined to a single moment of bodily existence.

African Traditional Religion / Yoruba-Ifa Animism / Relational-Indigenous Worldview Energetic Wellness Worldview Eternalism Gnosticism Hermeticism Multiverse Theory Panpsychism Platonism (Classical) Process Theology Pythagoreanism Quantum Realism Theosophy Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism Ubuntu / African Communal Ontology Vedanta Western Esotericism

Works: The Bhagavad Gita The Republic Confessions (Early) Summa Theologiae On the Bondage of the Will Institutes of the Christian Religion (Late) Pensées Phenomenology of Spirit (Early) Fear and Trembling (Early) Mere Christianity The New Testament The Quran Phaedo City of God (Late) The Consolation of Philosophy Proslogion The Guide of the Perplexed Yoga Sutras Process and Reality (Late) Letters and Papers from Prison (Late) The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Late) Metaphysics of The Book of Healing (Late) An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Late) Symposium Monadology (Late) Fides et Ratio (Late) Apology (Early) Phaedrus (Late) On the Trinity (Late) Summa Contra Gentiles (Early) The Mystical Theology Revelations of Divine Love The Imitation of Christ Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Late) The Incoherence of the Philosophers The Zohar Critique of Practical Reason (Late) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Critique of Judgment (Late) The Sickness Unto Death (Late) Either/Or (Early) Totality and Infinity (Early) Concluding Unscientific Postscript On Free Choice of the Will (Early) Meno (Early) The Courage to Be The Abolition of Man Commentary on Romans (Early) The Brothers Karamazov (Late) Crito (Early) Laws (Latest) Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Late) On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Early) The Cost of Discipleship (Early) Cur Deus Homo (Late) The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Late (post-crisis)) Adventures of Ideas (Late (Whitehead's last major book)) The Perennial Philosophy (Late (Huxley's mature spiritual-philosophical synthesis)) The Doors of Perception (Late) Science and the Modern World (Mid (the major statement of philosophical-cultural critique, preceding the technical metaphysics of Process and Reality)) The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925)) On Nature (Fragments) Mrs Dalloway (Mid (the first major modernist novel of Woolf's maturity)) To the Lighthouse (Mid (Woolf at the height of her powers)) Tristes Tropiques (Mid (Lévi-Strauss's most widely read book)) Death and the King's Horseman (Mid (the major play of Soyinka's career)) The Savage Mind (Mid (the systematic statement of structural anthropology)) Structural Anthropology (Mid (the methodological consolidation)) The Waste Land (Mid (the canonical modernist poem)) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Late (the mature systematic statement of archetypal psychology)) It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late) A Cyborg Manifesto (Mid) Staying with the Trouble (Late) Beloved (Mid (the Pulitzer-winning major novel)) The Sea of Fertility (Late (the major late work, completed the day of his 1970 ritual suicide)) Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid) Psychology and Alchemy (Late) Island (Late) Symbols of Transformation (Early (the 1912 break-from-Freud book; revised in 1952 as the mature statement of analytical psychology's mythopoeic register)) Guru Granth Sahib The Odu Ifá Corpus Reality+ (Late (Chalmers's major popular-and-technical synthesis on virtual reality and the simulation hypothesis)) Snow Crash (Mid) The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Mid) Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics (Early) Black Quantum Futurism: Theory and Practice (Late) More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Mid) Space Is the Place (Mid) Food of the Gods (Late) Realms of the Human Unconscious (Mid) An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solution to Einstein's Field Equations (Mature (the Princeton period — Gödel's only published paper in general relativity)) De Re Publica (Mid-mature (Cicero's political philosophical synthesis, composed during the breakdown of the late Republic)) Against Praxeas (Late (composed in Tertullian's Montanist period but with orthodox Trinitarian content)) Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work)) Orlando (Mature) The Black Prince (Mature) Eyeless in Gaza (Mid-mature) Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Mid-mature) Faust II (Last) Go Tell It on the Mountain (Early) Death and the King's Horseman (Mid) Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid) Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya (Mature) Mahābhārata-Tātparya-Nirṇaya (Mature) Viṣṇu-Tattva-Nirṇaya (Mature) Tattvodyota (Mature) A Dance of the Forests (Early) Atlantis (Mid) Lanquidity (Late) The Magic City (Mid) Sun Ra Discography (Late) Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (Late) Essays on the Gita (Mature) Javid Nama (Book of Eternity) (Late) The Ancestor's Tale (Late) Isis Unveiled (Early) The Secret Doctrine (Mature) The Arminian Magazine (Late) Theological Investigations (Mid-to-late) Essays on Woman (Mid) Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer (Early) The Fabric of Reality (Mid) The Beginning of Infinity (Late) Janamsakhi traditions (Post-Nānak transmission) Euthyphro (Early) Statesman (Late) Critias (Late) De Institutione Musica (On Music) (Early) De Institutione Arithmetica (On Arithmetic) (Early) Theological Tractates (Opuscula Sacra) (Mid-to-late) The Human Cycle (Middle) The Secret of the Veda (Early-to-middle) Shibun Yōryō (Early) Naobi no Mitama (Middle) Kojiki-den (Late (career-spanning)) Etz Chayim (Posthumous (transmission)) Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim (Posthumous (transmission)) Brahma-siddhi (Mature) Vidhi-viveka (Mature) Bhāvanā-viveka (Mature) Viṃśatikā (Mature (post-conversion to Mahāyāna)) Triṃśikā (Mature) Essence of Eloquence on the Interpretable and Definitive Meanings (Late-mature) In Praise of Dependent Origination (Early-mature) Kitāb al-Mashāʿir (Mature) Al-Shawāhid al-Rubūbiyya (Mid-to-late) Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb (Late) Mind-Energy (Middle) You Are Not a Gadget (Early (public-philosophical career)) Who Owns the Future? (Middle (public-philosophical career)) Dawn of the New Everything (Middle-to-late) The Arcades Project (Career-spanning (unfinished)) Berlin Childhood Around 1900 (Middle (composed during exile)) The Sacred Pipe (Late) The Sixth Grandfather (Posthumous (testamentary materials)) Letters (Career-spanning) Vulgate (Latin Bible translation) (Mature) Ramayana

Where this stance leads ⓘ

There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose.

21 schools

On these views, what we call a self was always a stream of experience, a constructed narrative, a process — never a thing whose continuity could be the question. Dementia, upload, transformation, death are stages in a process, not events that either preserve or destroy a substrate. The practical question of how to care for someone whose body or memory is changing is real and pressing; the metaphysical question of whether they are 'still the same person' presupposes a fixed answer that, on this view, was never there.

Why these schools land hereThese schools share info_conservation=Non-conserved — the information that constituted the person is not preserved across change — combined with either an embodied single-moment self (Existentialism, Presentism, Phenomenalism, Absurdism, Buddhism), a body-soul composite in flux (Occasionalism, Wellness, Psychedelic), or a self that spans moments as a process rather than a substance (Process Philosophy, Postmodernism, Relativism, Yogācāra). Constructivism, Nihilism, Pyrrhonism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Taoism arrive at the same conclusion by their own routes. None of them denies that personhood matters; they deny that the right way to think about it is as a fixed substance whose preservation is the issue.

Works: The Dhammapada Zhuangzi — Inner Chapters Letter to Menoeceus An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Late) Thus Spoke Zarathustra Being and Time (Early) The Myth of Sisyphus Being and Nothingness Philosophical Investigations (Late) Capital, Volume I (Late) The Second Sex Mūlamadhyamakakārikā Letter on Humanism (Late) Outlines of Pyrrhonism Abhidharmakośa Visuddhimagga The Heart Sutra A Treatise of Human Nature (Early) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Late) Theses on Feuerbach (Early) Experience and Nature (Late) What Is Metaphysics? (Early) Phenomenology of Perception The Order of Things Of Grammatology On Certainty (Latest) Physics and Philosophy The Structure of Scientific Revolutions On the Genealogy of Morality (Late) Discipline and Punish (Late) Existentialism Is a Humanism The Natural History of Religion (Late) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Early) Beyond Good and Evil (Late) The Birth of Tragedy (Early) The Ethics of Ambiguity (Early) The Rebel (Late) The Question Concerning Technology (Late) Why I Am Not a Christian (Mid-late) The Gay Science (Middle (between Daybreak and Zarathustra)) The History of Sexuality (Late (his last major project)) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Mid (the breakthrough book)) Zhuangzi Madness and Civilization (Early (Foucault's breakthrough work, his doctoral dissertation)) The Birth of the Clinic (Early-mid (between Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things)) The Archaeology of Knowledge (Mid (methodological transition between archaeological and genealogical phases)) Essays in Zen Buddhism (Mid (Suzuki's major early period of Western dissemination)) Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early (Suzuki's first major book; preceding the Essays in Zen Buddhism by twenty years)) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Mid) Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (Late) Zen and Japanese Culture (Late) Mystics and Zen Masters (Late) Speech and Phenomena (Early) Margins of Philosophy (Middle (one of three 1972 volumes)) Limited Inc (Middle-late) Specters of Marx (Late) Outlines of Pyrrhonism Han Feizi On the Sacred Disease Memorabilia Antidosis

Where this stance leads ⓘ

All apparent selves are aspects of one — particular identity is conventional.

13 schools

On non-dual views, the apparent distinctness of selves — and the apparent boundary between this-moment-you and next-moment-you — is itself a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. The question of whether the uploaded copy is you is malformed at the same level the question of whether yesterday-you is today-you is malformed: both presuppose a separation the underlying reality doesn't honor.

Why these schools land hereThese schools share obs_number=Singular — what appear as distinct selves, across persons and across moments, are perspectival distinctions within a single underlying reality. Advaita Vedānta, Sufi waḥdat al-wujūd, Idealism, Solipsism, Neo-Platonism, Rationalism, and Transcendentalism each express this in their own vocabulary. The practical implication is mild: ordinary care for the apparent self of someone in dementia, in transformation, or in mortal transition is appropriate at the conventional level, where most of life is lived.

Advaita Vedanta British Idealism Idealism Latin Averroism Neo-Platonism Rationalism Romanticism Solipsism Spinozist Pantheism Structuralism Sufism / Wahdat al-Wujud Transcendentalism Zen Buddhism

Works: The Upanishads Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Early) Cartesian Meditations (Late) The Enneads The World as Will and Representation Brahma Sutra Bhāṣya The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch The German Sermons (Late) Mathnawi (Late) System of Transcendental Idealism (Early) Deliverance from Error (Late) The Concept of Anxiety (Mid (the productive year of 1844 — Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, etc.)) Walden (Mid (Thoreau's major prose statement)) Science of Logic (Mid (the central work of the mature Hegelian system)) Émile (Late) The Logical Structure of the World (Early (Carnap's breakthrough work)) The Stranger (Early (the breakthrough novel)) Gravity and Grace (Posthumous (Weil died in 1943 at age 34)) Waiting for God (Posthumous) The Seven Storey Mountain (Early (Merton's breakthrough book; the spiritual autobiography of his conversion)) Seeds of Contemplation (1949) / New Seeds of Contemplation (Mid-late (Merton's mature contemplative theology)) An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Late-mid (looking back over the formative years)) Nausea (Early (Sartre's first novel, before Being and Nothingness)) Notes from Underground (Mid (the transition into the great late period)) The Fall (Late (Camus's last completed novel; the Nobel followed in 1957)) Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Mature (the most comprehensive single-text statement of the system)) Scivias (Early (the first of her three major visionary works)) Philosophical Fragments (Mid (the same productive 1844 as Concept of Anxiety)) Practice in Christianity (Late (the last major pseudonymous work; preceding the attack on the Danish state church)) Repetition (Early-mid (the same explosive 1843 as Either/Or and Fear and Trembling)) Existence and Existents (Early (the first major book, before Time and the Other)) Liber Vitae Meritorum (Mid (the middle volume of the visionary trilogy)) The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness)) Confessions of a Mask (Early (the breakthrough novel that established Mishima's literary reputation)) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Early (the first of Douglass's three autobiographies)) The Freedom of a Christian (Early (1520 is Luther's most productive year of foundational treatises)) Four Quartets (Late (Eliot's mature Anglo-Catholic period)) Vita Nuova (Early (Dante's first major work)) Why Not the Best? (Mid (pre-presidential)) The Sorrows of Young Werther (Early (the 25-year-old Goethe's breakthrough work)) Six Crises (Mid (pre-presidential, post-1960 defeat)) Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) / Counsels on Discernment (Early) The Hidden Words (Early) Aké: The Years of Childhood (Mid) The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Mid) Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late (the major autobiographical work)) Runaway Horses (Late) An American Life (Late) My Life (Late) Promises to Keep (Mid) Trump: The Art of the Deal (Early) No Man Is an Island (Mid) Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Late) Letters to Olga (Mid (composed during Havel's 1979-83 imprisonment)) The Cancer Journals (Mid) Long Commentary on De Anima (Late) Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) (Early) On Nature (Peri Physeos) (Early) Opus Tripartitum (Late (Eckhart's most ambitious Latin project, undertaken in the years before the 1326 trial)) Reden der Unterweisung (Early (Eckhart's first major vernacular work, written before the trials of his last decade)) Vom Edlen Menschen (Mature (probably from the Strasbourg years before the trial)) Seven Valleys and Four Valleys (Early (composed before the 1863 proclamation)) Short Treatise on God (Early (Spinoza's first systematic presentation of his metaphysics, predating the Ethics)) Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Last (composed in Rousseau's final two years, after he had retreated from public life)) Essays: First Series (Mature) Soliloquies (Early) The Inward Journey (Late-mature) Slavery and Freedom (Late-mature) The Meaning of the Creative Act (Early-mature) The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (Late) My Early Life (Mid) Coal (Mid) Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Late) Song of Solomon (Mid) This Is My Story (Mid) Autobiography (Late) Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (Early) Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī (Mature) A Confession (Mid) What I Believe (Mid) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Late) Resurrection (Late) Freedom in Exile (Mid) My Land and My People (Early) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Early) Ash-Wednesday (Mid) Just As I Am (Late) How to Be Born Again (Mid) The Journey: How to Live by Faith in an Uncertain World (Late) On Cheerfulness (Mature) Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Late) The Synthesis of Yoga (Mature) Asrar-i Khudi (Secrets of the Self) (Mid) Sun and Steel (Late) The Decay of the Angel (Late) Jaap Sahib (Mature) Akal Ustat (Mature) Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) (Mature) Dreams from My Father (Early) Conversations with Myself (Late) The Conquest of Happiness (Mid) Ecce Homo (Late) Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late) Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World (Late) From East to West (Late) Tablet of Ahmad (Mature) Where's the Rest of Me? (Early) In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal (Late) Looking Forward (Mid) Promise Me, Dad (Late) Trump: The Art of the Comeback (Mid) De Apice Theoriae (Late) The Voice of the Silence (Late) Wandering (Panghuang) (Mid) Wild Grass (Yecao) (Mid) With Head and Heart (Late) The Sign of Jonas (Mid) The Asian Journal (Late (final)) To the Castle and Back (Late) Quaestiones in Tertium De Anima (Early-to-middle) De Anima Intellectiva (Middle (post-Aquinas-attack)) De Aeternitate Mundi (Middle) Quaestiones super Librum de Causis (Late) On Vision and Colors (Early) On the Will in Nature (Middle) The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Late) West-östlicher Divan (Late) Conversations with Eckermann (Late) Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya (Career-defining) Upadeśasāhasrī (Mature) Journal (Career-spanning)

Where this stance leads ⓘ

Schools the coordinates don't place

These schools don't satisfy any stance's coordinate pattern strongly enough to be assigned — either because they decline to commit on the question (Confucianism is famously silent on what comes after; Pyrrhonian and pragmatist traditions suspend judgment), or because their attribute signature crosses categories in a way the five buckets don't capture.