What am I? What does that mean for how my life would best be lived, that is for answering the philosophical question of welfare: what is it for someone’s life to go well for her? I address these problems by exploring the space of possible selves and their welfare, using work both in philosophy and in science fiction novels. I have three main aims: 1) To show the distinctive contribution of science fiction as philosophy of the self. 2) To map the space of possible selves, so as to better understand ourselves by contrast with imagined others. 3) To develop and defend a distinctive self-realization account of the self and its welfare. The book will investigate significant pairings between possible kinds of self and their welfares, including passive selves and experiential welfare; agentic selves and desire-based welfare; species selves and perfectionism; individual developmental selves and self-realization. It will respond to major criticisms of the last pair, including Buddhist and other no self views; arguments for self-creation and for self-definition of welfare; and worries from the possibility of artificial and designed selves. The book will engage both with philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Christine Korsgaard, Philippa Foot, Monima Chadha, and others; and with science fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ann Leckie, Ken MacLeod, C. J. Cherryh, and others.
In this special subject module, we will read my book draft together and discuss its arguments and topics.
Assessment is by 5,000 word essay