Lecture: Personal Identity, Part III: Objections to the Personality Theory

Description

Lecture Description

The lecture focuses on the problems directly related to the personality theory as key to personal identity. The theory states that a person retains his or her individuality so long as he or she has the same ongoing personality. The main objection raised to this claim is the problem of duplication. The lecture explores cases in which the same personality has been transferred or exported to multiple bodies.

Course Description

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

from course: Death