Abstract

Challenging the idea of personal identity, Derek Parfit has argued that persons are replicable and that personal identity does not really matter. In a recent paper Parfit again defends the idea of personal replicability. Challenging this idea in turn, I explain why persons are absolutely not replicable. To prove this I rely on two arguments—the Author Argument and the Love Argument. The irreplicability of persons relies upon the singularity of each person and thus entails that personal identity is irreducible and that it really does matter.