Who Are You. Personal Identity, Brains, and the Selves University of Tartu

Overview

On-site in Tartu 27 July - 31 July 2026

This intensive summer school explores the metaphysics, psychology, and phenomenology of the self through four interconnected themes: the nature of persons, the metaphysical status of the “remnant person,” disruptions of selfhood in depersonalisation and derealisation, and the idea of extended minds and selves. The course approaches these topics through the lens of contemporary debates in personal identity, including animalism, emergent personhood, the distinction between biological and ontological identity, and the developmental and cognitive requirements for being a person.

Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and moral psychology, participants will examine how persons emerge from organisms, how phases of personhood can fragment or cease, how pathological alterations of consciousness reveal the structural conditions of selfhood, and how cognitive offloading and environmental scaffolding challenge traditional boundaries between mind, body, and world. By integrating metaphysical analysis with empirical findings on consciousness, brain function, and psychopathology, the course aims to offer a unified framework for thinking about who we are, what we are, and how our self-experience can extend, divide, or collapse.

By the end of this short course, students will:

Accreditation

Every seven years, all Estonian higher education institutions must undergo external evaluation – institutional accreditation. The latest assessment took place in 2022. The assessment council of the Estonian Quality Agency for Education decided to accredit the University of Tartu for the next seven years (2023-2029).