Tracking an individual over time requires some hefty insights: (a) that a thing can retain identity despite outward changes in appearance, and (b) that personal history is central to identity. For example, the changes in an animal or plant wrought by growth are enormous, and mean that tracking identity is not a matter of tallying outward features, but rather involves learning the historical path that an individual has taken over time (see also Kripke, 1971). Although this capacity seems straightforward and intuitive, it can sometimes go awry (e.g., Capgras syndrome, in which people believe that a loved one has been replaced by an identical imposter). This capacity seems implicated in reasoning about essentialism. Indeed, essentialism about kinds seems in some ways an extension of the insights about individual identity (see also Kripke, 1972; Schwartz, 1979). Just as an individual remains the same over outward variations, so too are members of a category the same as one another despite outward variations. Just as the identity of an individual is decided by consulting the historical record, so too is the identity of an animal decided by consulting its origins (namely, parentage), or the identity of a work of art decided by consulting its provenance. In this talk, I consider how concepts of authenticity emerge early in childhood and undergo developmental change.
