Peter van Inwagen - What Does it Mean to be a Person?

Free access to Closer to Truth's library of 5,000 videos: http://bit.ly/376lkKN What does it mean to be a ‘person’? How do persons differ from other living things? Must all human beings be persons? Always? When does personhood start—during childhood, at birth, in the womb? Are you a person when asleep? Are people with severe mental deficiencies still persons? Severe brain injuries? What’s the importance of persons, anyway? Watch more interviews on persons and selves: https://bit.ly/3R9MZVP Register for free at CTT.com for subscriber-only exclusives: https://bit.ly/3He94Ns Peter van Inwagen is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Support the show with Closer To Truth merchandise: https://bit.ly/3P2ogje Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.