In his book (2021) Trueman attempts to provide a solution to the problem of the concept horse, which according to Frege’s published writings is an object, not a concept. In the course of doing so Trueman rejects Wright’s response (1998) according to which some objects are also concepts, for example, the concept horse, so the categories are not exclusive. Trueman’s argument for exclusivity (Chapter 4) is the heart of the book, and as he says, it is his response to holders of differing views, like Wright. I think that there is a gap in Trueman’s argument which needs to be filled if Wright is to be considered refuted.
Personites are shorter-lived, person-like things that extend across part of a person’s life. Their existence follows from the standard perdurance view of persons. Johnston argues that it has bizarre moral consequences. For example, it renders morally problematic spending time learning a difficult language in anticipation of going abroad. The crucial thought is that if persons have moral status so do personites. Johnston argues for this claim. Kaiserman responds, on behalf of stage theory, that this only works on a perdurantist account. This is a conservative response to the problem. It seeks to show that retaining the ontology of perdurantism one can resolve the difficulty by a semantic change. I show that the personite problem can be reworked as an argument against stage theorists. The stage theorist can respond by rejecting an assumption of the reasoning. But if it is acceptable for him to do so the perdurantist can reject this assumption too, which is enough by itself to block Johnston’s argument. Thus, for all it helps with the personite problem, stage theorists might as well be perdurantists.