Theo Todman's Book Collection (Book-Paper Abstracts)

Publisher’s Blurb

• What does your identity over time consist in? What makes you, now, the same person as the individual who read the first word of this page? Would you survive if all your psychological abilities were irreversibly lost but your body remained alive? Would you survive if your conscious brain was successfully transplanted¹ into another human body? Would you survive if your psychology was transferred from your brain to another entity?
• The author of this work discusses several of the contemporary philosophical theories about the nature of our diachronic identity. The book is based on the comparison of two views on what we essentially are.
  1. One, animalism², claims that we are essentially animals and that we exist as long as the human animal³ that we are goes on existing.
  2. The other, personalism, claims that we are essentially psychological beings or persons. According to personalism, psychological attributes, such as consciousness, are necessary elements of our persistence.
• The advantages and disadvantages of both animalism⁴ and the different personalist approaches are discussed in detail. The book is concluded with a discussion of how the problem of our identity over time relates to questions of value such as our concern about our future and the rationality of egoism.