Are persons like you and me brains? The short answer is no, but I think I owe you a longer answer. I want to set out some of the reasons why it is wrong to regard people as being identical with their brains and a mistake to talk about brains when we should be talking about people. First, I shall list some of the ways in which persons are identified with their brains. Ten I will suggest why so many people are inclined to do this: indeed, see it as plain common sense, validated by neuroscience. After these preliminaries, I shall give some reasons for denying that persons are brains (or their brains). This will take up the bulk of this essay. Finally, I shall say something about the challenges that have to be met if we establish that brains and persons are not identical: “Where do we go from here?”

There are many ways of identifying brains with persons, such that personal identity is brain identity and personal history is brain history: persons are all of their brains; persons are parts of their brains; persons are software implemented in the hardware of the brain; and persons are “connectomes” – how their brains are wired up.

The notion that the person is identical with all of the brain was first adumbrated by Hippocrates 2,500 years ago.