PHIL640 FA20

Seminar in Metaphysics: Persons and Personal Identity
Patrick Dieveney
Mondays  ·  7:00pm–9:45pm  ·  LA1–304

In this course, we will be exploring issues concerning persons and personal identity. The central questions in this course are: What are persons? And, what makes a person the same person over time? While our primary focus is on various attempts to address these questions, given the cross-disciplinary nature of these issues, we will also be considering their impact on other areas of philosophy. Most notably, we shall consider the impact that answers to these questions have on important issues in normative ethics. Accordingly, students are expected to have a passable understanding of historically prominent theories in normative ethics (e.g., Virtue Ethics, Kantian Ethics, and Utilitarianism).