The traditional formulation of the identity problem presupposes a single standard of persistence. This paper argues that the presupposition compresses several distinct problems into one. Judgments of identity are not a search for a single standard of persistence. They are adjudications, under specific task conditions, of the constitutive attributes required by the object of interpretation for that task. Different tasks track different properties. When those properties no longer converge, what collapses is not the concept of identity but a way of posing the question that compresses multiple objects of interpretation into a single problem. This paper takes highly autonomous artificial agents as its central case. Their emergence systematically pulls apart conditions that, in human life, are usually co-located in the same bearer: memory, behavioral style, relations of commitment, and institutional authorization. As a result, the real structure of identity problems becomes visible in a clearer form. Branching cases place this framework under its greatest pressure. The task of first-person continuation and the task of third-person adjudication differ fundamentally in their constitutive conditions. Tasks themselves also have identity conditions. Once the constitutive conditions of the task are no longer satisfied, the task collapses and triggers reconstruction. On that basis, this paper argues that an equal division of accounts is not a practical compromise, but a theoretical result that follows after the reconstruction of the task.
Chenghao Qian (Sun,) studied this question.