Personal Identity and the Self

This Element raises the questions What are we? What owns our thoughts and experiences? Are we anything at all? It also assesses a 'no-bearer' theory of experience, discusses the challenge to animalism and surveys a 'thinking parts' problem.

---

What are we? What owns our thoughts and experiences? Are we anything at all? After an introduction, Section 2 assesses a 'no-bearer' theory of experience, and the 'no-self' contention that our self-representations are about no real entity, before introducing a positive hypothesis about the objects of our self-representations: the 'animalist' claim that we are biological organisms. Section 3 discusses the classic challenge to animalism that brain transplantation is a situation which we could survive but no animal could survive. The challenge serves to introduce some positive alternatives to animalism, as well as animalist responses, including a response which questions the assumption that psychology is irrelevant to organism persistence. Section 4 surveys a 'thinking parts' problem and cases of conjoined twinning and commisurotomy, also considered problematic for animalism. The interpretation of these cases revisits questions about bearers of experience, objects of self-representation, and the relation of biology and psychology.