Locked-In Syndrome: a Challenge to Standard Accounts of Selfhood and Personhood?

Abstract

A point made repeatedly over the last few years is that the Locked-in Syndrome (LIS) offers unique real-life material for revisiting and challenging certain ingrained philosophical assumptions about the nature of personhood and personal identity. Indeed, the claim has been made that a closer study of LIS will call into question some of the traditional conceptions of personhood that primarily highlight the significance of consciousness, self-consciousness and autonomy and suggest the need for a more interpersonal account of the person. I am skeptical about these claims and will in the following argue that the theoretical relevance of LIS for an understanding of selfhood and personhood has been exaggerated.