2 th - century theories of personal identity similar to me I could have been F just in case there is a modal counterpart of me who is F Note that the counterpart is not the one who could have been F; I have that modal property Similarly, on the stage view, claims about what I have been and will be like (as well as “tenseless” claims about what I am like at various times) should be understood in terms of properties of temporal counterparts of me: stages located at other times who are related to me in a suitable way I was or will be F just in case there is a temporal counterpart of me who is F Thus I really am going to eat lunch, so long as there is a future temporal counterpart of me who eats lunch Note that the lunch-eating stage is not the one who is going to eat lunch; I have that temporal property Different theorists can of course disagree on which is the “suitable way” required for a stage to be a temporal counterpart of me But one obvious candidate is psychological continuity Given this proposal, the stage theorist has a neat solution to the fission problem (Sider 1996; 2001, 201–202) Like the cohabitation theorist, and unlike the non-branching theorist, the stage theorist can say that there is a pre-fission person who is going to have Henry’s left hemisphere after fission and a pre-fission person who is going to have Henry’s right hemisphere after fission Unlike the cohabitation theorist, the stage theorist can say that the former person is identical to the latter person For it is open to her to hold that something (in this case, Henry) can have two temporal counterparts located at the same time (in this case, a post-fission time) Moreover, she does not thereby commit herself to the absurdity that, after fission, Henry will (for instance) both have and lack his left hemisphere For none of Henry’s post-fission counterparts (and, of course, no other object) both has and lacks his left hemisphere It is arguable that this approach preserves the intuition that personal identity is what matters Again, what matters seems to obtain between Henry and Lefty, and between Henry and Righty: if we were to torture Lefty and give Righty a present, Henry would have prudential reason for fearful anticipation of the torture and for delightful anticipation of the gift On the stage view, Henry himself would be going to experience the torture, and Henry himself would be going to receive the present It is not obvious that the intuition that personal identity is what matters requires more than this In any event, if it does, then this is presumably because persistence over time, or having properties at different times, requires more than the stage view offers In other words, the stage theorist’s solution to the fission problem probably stands and falls with the stage view itself By contrast, as we saw, the cohabitation theorist’s solution to the fission problem is problematic even on the assumption that the cohabitation approach is true 8. Reductionism Before we turn to further problems for the psychological-continuity view, we shall briefly consider a related, but more obscure issue of which there was quite a lot of discussion in the years that followed the publication of Parfit’s Reasons 135