2 th - century theories of personal identity reason for prudential concern about our future experiences, then we cannot say that Brownson must be Brown because Brown has reason for prudential concern about Brownson’s future experiences During the past two decades, the interest in reductionism and its practical significance has waned considerably It is easy to suspect that this has largely to with the elusiveness of the issue One unclarity concerns the content of reductionism and non-reductionism One might have thought that, when Parfit says that on reductionism, facts about a person’s identity over time “consist” in facts about certain continuities, whereas on non-reductionism, facts about a person’s identity over time are “further facts,” he simply means that reductionism identifies these facts, whereas non-reductionism regards them as numerically distinct (so that “further facts” simply means “other facts”) But this is evidently not what he means, for he emphasizes that, on his preferred version of reductionism, facts about personal identity stand to facts about the relevant continuities in the way that a bronze statue stands to the numerically distinct lump of bronze with which it coincides He says: If we melt down a bronze statue, we destroy this statue, but we not destroy this lump of bronze So, though the statue just consists in the lump of bronze, these cannot be one and the same thing (1995, 295) This analogy is not very helpful, however The lump may be able to exist without the statue, but if the “reduction base” for personal identity obtains, then so does personal identity over time After all, the “reduction base” must be a (necessary and) sufficient condition for personal identity over time – for example, nonbranching psychological continuity Moreover, if we not identify facts about personal identity with facts about certain continuities, it is hard to see why the former should be taken to inherit the supposed unimportance of the latter (Merricks 1999; see also Johnston 1997) Surely something can depend in very intimate ways on something else while still meriting very different attitudes than it (think of non-natural moral facts versus the natural facts on which they depend, for instance) Yet another obscurity concerns Parfit’s idea that non-reductionism does not leave prudential concern unjustified It is difficult to see exactly what it is about my sharing an immaterial soul with a future individual that is supposed to make it reasonable for me to care about his experiences (Johansson 2007; Whiting 1986, 547; Wolf 1986, 707) 9. The animalist challenge While many think that the aforementioned problems for the psychologicalcontinuity view (sects 2, 4) reveal a need for some substantial adjustments to it – such as the inclusion of a non-branching clause – few have seen them as a reason 137