Abstract
In contemporary metaphysics of personal identity, there are two main competing sets of philosophical positions: Reductionism and non-reductionism. The former set of positions claims that personal identity is reducible to some set of sub-personal facts, usually psychophysical facts of some sort, while the latter set of positions contests such a reductionist claim by instead maintaining personal identity to be something irreducible and distinct from those sub-personal psychophysical facts of experience. In his magnum opus, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 CE) provides a definitive argument against both reductionism and non-reductionism about personal identity. In this paper, I will argue that the argument set forth by Nagarjuna refutes non-reductionism because this view entails that personal identity must be distinct from psychophysical facts, a result that suggests rather absurdly that knowledge of personal identity could never be ascertained on the basis of the sorts of facts that we are privy to in our experiences of the world. Furthermore, I will suggest that Nagarjuna’s argument refutes two common forms of reductionism because both the psychological and bodily criteria of the person reduce personal identity to psychophysical facts, a reduction that implies the contradiction that personal identity is something unchanging and permanent and yet constantly changing and impermanent.