Individuation is the process of picking out individuals. We do this all the time in ordinary life. For example, if we were in a parking lot, we could individuate the cars in the lot. That is, from the group of objects in the lot, we could distinguish the individual cars. We wouldn’t have a difficult time figuring out, for example, whether there are five cars, or two cars or one car. We could distinguish each individual car. (Of course I haven’t said how we would do it, but it shouldn’t be hard to tell that story.) So there isn’t a problem of individuation for cars, at least in ordinary circumstances. Your excellent question is how we individuate, that is distinguish, beliefs. Fred’s belief that the combined landmass of French Polynesia is roughly equivalent to the landmass of Rhode Island is a different belief from his belief that the total area (including the sea) of French Polynesia is roughly equivalent to the total area of Europe. Here we have individuated the beliefs by reference to the...

The person centered approach to psychotherapy is a widelyused methodology. (See, for example, www.person-centered.org ) In contrast with some other methods, theperson centered approach leverages the patient’s own resources in therapy,rather than relying on the authority of the therapist. As your questionsuggests, this approach may seem problematic for patients with dementia. Suchpatients have diminished cognitive (and possibly affective) resources. To whatextent can such patients with contribute to their own psychotherapy? Clearly this is a matter of degree. As one’sabilities to reason, remember, and use language diminish, any form of therapywill be difficult to carry out. Person centered therapists who work with suchpatients are trained to take such limitations into account. In philosophy there is the synchronic problem of personhood,namely what makes someone a person at a time, and the diachronic problem ofpersonal identity, or what makes someone the same person at two differenttimes. ...