Conceptualizing Alzheimer's patients : issues of autonomy and personal identity

Abstract

The standard view of people who get Alzheimer's disease is that, while remaining the same person throughout the progression of the disease, they gradually lose their autonomy (and only cease to be the same person when they eventually die from the disease). This thesis carefully examines that view and the concepts of autonomy and personal identity employed by the view. The thesis argues that there are considerable advantages to abandoning the standard view and replacing it with an understanding of Alzheimer's patients which has them lose their personal identity---cease to be the same person---at a stage of the disease prior to those in which they lose their autonomy.