Personal Identity and Surviving Death

Abstract

Could we survive our own death? Let us call the view that answers this question in the affirmative survivalism. This paper examines the prospects of survivalism. According to the dominant view of personal identity (known as the psychological continuity view), we continue to exist as long as we maintain appropriate psychological states and capacities. In endorsing this view, one might hope that we can survive death by transferring our psychology to a new, different body. Drawing upon an animalist counterargument to the psychological continuity view, I argue that this is not a possibility. Survivalists may respond in two ways. First, they may rely on the viewpoint that we can continue to exist as a corpse posthumously. Second, they may argue that we can survive our deaths as a functioning brain as opposed to the whole organism. In this paper, I show that neither of these is successful.