presentperson

Presentperson is a term used in philosophical and ethical discussions to denote the person who exists in the present moment. It is not a standardized or widely adopted label in major reference works, but rather a neologism that appears in some analyses of temporal identity and personhood. The concept is often introduced to distinguish the individual who currently experiences life from their past and future selves.

In its typical usage, the presentperson refers to the currently living, consciously experienced self whose mental states constitute the present moment. This notion helps frame questions about how a person persists or changes over time, and how moral considerability or rights apply to the self as it exists now compared with past or future iterations of that person. The term is commonly discussed in the context of debates on personal identity, psychological continuity, memory, and the impact of temporal indexicality on selfhood.

Interpretations of presentperson vary. Some writers tie it to psychological or bodily continuity that extends through time, while others emphasize the indexical information we have about the "now." The concept is sometimes invoked in thought experiments involving teleportation, cloning, or branching timelines, where distinguishing the present self from altered future selves is central to the analysis.

Critics argue that presentperson may be redundant with established discussions of the subject of experience and temporal indexicality, and that it risks ambiguity. It remains an informal or occasional term rather than a canonical category in philosophy of time or ethics.

See also: presentism, personal identity, psychological continuity, indexicality, temporal logic.