Who Are You? Personal Identity, Brains, and the Selves

About

This intensive summer school explores the metaphysics, psychology, and phenomenology of the self through four interconnected themes: the nature of persons, the metaphysical status of the “remnant person,” disruptions of selfhood in depersonalisation and derealisation, and the idea of extended minds and selves. The course approaches these topics through the lens of contemporary debates in personal identity, including animalism, emergent personhood, the distinction between biological and ontological identity, and the developmental and cognitive requirements for being a person.

Course leader

Uku Tooming Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Tartu Course leader Sadaf G. Zaki Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Tartu

Target group

bachelor’s, master’s and PhD students, lifelong learners

Course aim

- Understand the difference between what we are (human organisms) and who we are (persons), and how personhood functions as a phase stemming from a cluster of certain mental abilities rather than an identity.
- Analyse cases of fragmented or minimal selves, such as remnant persons, depersonalization, and derealization, to see what they reveal about the structure and limits of personhood.
- Evaluate the role of the brain in generating and sustaining personhood, including how cognitive abilities emerge, decline, or divide.
- Assess whether the self or mind can extend beyond the organism through tools, technologies, or social environments.
- Integrate biological, metaphysical, and psychological insights into a coherent framework for understanding the self and its boundaries.

Fee info