Synopses & Reviews
What makes me the same person today that I was yesterday or will be tomorrow? In Plato's Symposium, Socrates observed that all of us are constantly undergoing change--physical as well as changes in our "manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, [and] fears." Aristotle theorized that some underlying "substratum" remains constant even while we undergo these changes. John Locke rejected Aristotle's view and reformulated the problem of personal identity in his own way. These essays--written by prominent philosophers and legal and economic theorists--offer valuable insights into the nature of personal identity and its implications for morality and public policy.
Synopsis
Essays offering valuable insights into personal identity and its implications for morality and public policy.
Table of Contents
Introduction; Acknowledgments; Contributors; 1. Experience, agency, and personal identity Marya Schechtman; 2. When does a person begin? Lynne Rudder Baker; 3. Persons, social agency, and constitution Robert A. Wilson; 4. Hylemorphic dualism David S. Oderberg; 5. Personal identity and self-ownership Edward Feser; 6. Self-conception and personal identity: revisiting Parfit and Lewis with an eye on the grip of the unity reaction Marvin Belzer; 7. The normativity of self-grounded reason David Copp; 8. Rationality means being willing to say you're sorry Jennifer Roback Morse; 9. Personal identity and postmortem survival Stephen E. Braude; 10. 'The thing I am': personal identity in Aquinas and Shakespeare John Finnis; 11. Moral status and personal identity: clones, embryos, and future generations F. M. Kamm; 12. The identity of identity: moral and legal aspects of technological self-transformation Michael H. Shapiro.