Mortal Objects
Identity and Persistence through Life and Death

Clarifies what persons, species, organisms, and material objects are, what it is to be alive, and the significance of extinction.

Steven Luper (Author)

9781108833721, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 February 2022

230 pages
23.5 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

'Luper's writing is admirably engaging and unpretentious. He doesn't shrink from tackling the hardest problems about the metaphysics of ourselves and other material things. There's no other book like it.' Eric Olson, University of Sheffield

How might we change ourselves without ending our existence? What could we become, if we had access to an advanced form of bioengineering that allowed us dramatically to alter our genome? Could we remain in existence after ceasing to be alive? What is it to be human? Might we still exist after changing ourselves into something that is not human? What is the significance of human extinction? Steven Luper addresses these questions and more in this thought-provoking study. He defends an animalist account, which says that we are organisms, but claims that we are also material objects. His book goes to the heart of the most complex questions about what we are and what we might become. Using case studies from the life sciences as well as thought experiments, Luper develops a new way of thinking about the nature of life and death, and whether and how human extinction matters.

1. Introduction
2. Material Objects
3. Conformism
4. Organisms
5. Incregratism
6. Selves
7. The Cogito
8. Living and Dying
9. Welfare and Nonexistence
10. What We Can Become
11. (Re)making Ourselves
12. The Meaning of Life and Death.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ], Philosophy [HP], Humanities [H]