Description
Book SynopsisAs persons, we are importantly different from all other creatures in the universe. But in what, exactly, does this difference consist? What kinds of entities are we, and what makes each of us the same person today that we were yesterday? Could we survive having all of our memories erased and replaced with false ones? What about if our bodies were destroyed and our brains were transplanted into android bodies, or if instead our minds were simply uploaded to computers?
In this engaging and accessible introduction to these important philosophical questions, Amy Kind brings together three different areas of research: the nature of personhood, theories of personal identity over time, and the constitution of self-identity. Surveying the key contemporary theories in the philosophical literature, Kind analyzes and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. As she shows, our intuitions on these issues often pull us in different directions, making it difficult to develop an adequate
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: The Nature of Persons
Chapter Two: The Psychological Approach to Personal Identity
Chapter Three: The Problem of Reduplication
Chapter Four: The Physical Approach to Personal Identity
Chapter Five: From Reidentification to Characterization
Chapter Six: Narrative Identity
Bibliography
