Staying Alive - Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life

Marya Schechtman offers a new theory of personal identity, which captures the importance of being able to reidentify people in our daily lives. She sees persons as loci of practical interaction, and defines the unity of such a locus in terms of biological, psychological, and social functions, mediated through social and cultural infrastructure.

About the author

Marya Schechtman is a professor of philosophy and member of the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of The Constitution of Selves (Cornell University Press 1996) as well as numerous articles on personal identity, bioethics, and philosophy of mind. She also has interests in practical reasoning and Existentialism.

Summary

Marya Schechtman offers a new theory of personal identity, which captures the importance of being able to reidentify people in our daily lives. She sees persons as loci of practical interaction, and defines the unity of such a locus in terms of biological, psychological, and social functions, mediated through social and cultural infrastructure.

Additional text

Schechtman's book is enjoyable to read, and highly original and interesting. It deserves to be investigated very carefully.

Product details

• Authors: Marya Schechtman, Marya (University of Illinois At Chica Schechtman
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 13.03.2014
• EAN: 9780199684878
• ISBN: 978-0-19-968487-8
• No. of pages: 224
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body, Metaphysik und Ontologie, PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy, PHILOSOPHY / Metaphysics, Philosophy