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Ninth International Summer School on Mind, Brain and Education

2014 July 31 - August 03

Body, Brain and
Personal Identity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Directors: Antonio M. Battro, Kurt W. Fischer and Fernando Vidal
Program officer: María Lourdes Majdalani

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Abstract: Adina Roskies
Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College, USA

Decision-making, brain, and personal identity
A number of theories have been floated for establishing personal identity, including the bodily and brain criteria. Recent theories in cognitive science are reformulating our views about what the function of the brain is, and they have implications for understanding theories of personal identity. I will argue that a brain criterion that takes seriously the predictive function of neural representation and highlights the future-oriented functions of decision-making provides insight into how we should understand personal identity, and resolves some tensions in past debates.