As you are reading this course description, you are thinking. In order to do this, you just need to use your brain. But then, what prevents your upper body from also thinking about the course? After all, your upper body also contains your brain and has everything it needs to think. Moreover, if it can think, how do you know that you are not an upper body – something enclosed in a human being that is not itself a human being? This is one of the many “overcrowding problems” discussed in the literature on the metaphysics of persons. In this course, we will consider a number of similar overcrowding problems: what makes it the case that you are a full-fledged human being and not merely the head or the upper body of a human being? What makes it the case that you are a college student and not merely a short episode of a college student’s history, one that only began yesterday? These puzzles are closely connected to the problem of personal identity: what makes it the case that a person at a time is identical to some person at a later time? We will explore the relation among overcrowding puzzles, the problem of personal identity, and their various ethical consequences.

Pre-requisites: Any class in analytic philosophy. If you are not sure whether you have enough background for the class, consult me.

Assessment: a final paper

Grade components: 65% exam, 35% attendance and participation