Word.ws English Dictionary

nonidentity problem

nonidentity problem noun: the philosophical problem involving our ethical obligations to future persons which derives from the observation that different courses of action will result in entirely different, or nonidentical, persons coming to be.

Noun

nonidentity problem

  1. the philosophical problem involving our ethical obligations to future persons which derives from the observation that different courses of action will result in entirely different, or nonidentical, persons coming to be.

Origin of nonidentity problem

The articulation of the problem is credited to Derek Parfit in his work Reasons and Persons.

Questions about nonidentity problem

What does nonidentity problem mean?
Nonidentity problem means the philosophical problem involving our ethical obligations to future persons which derives from the observation that different courses of action will result in entirely different, or nonidentical, persons coming to be.
What part of speech is nonidentity problem?
Nonidentity problem is a noun.

Words near nonidentity problem in the dictionary

  1. nonidentifications
  2. nonidentified
  3. nonidentifying
  4. nonidentities
  5. nonidentity
  6. nonidentity problem
  7. nonideological
  8. nonideologically
  9. nonideologized
  10. nonideologue
  11. nonideologues

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nonidentity problem (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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