This is Philosophy Bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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You'd imagine that people who believe the self to be constantly changing

might worry less about their own death than other people do.

After all, they believe they probably won't have much in common with the self that eventually

dies.

Sean Nichols, a philosopher and moral psychologist,

has conducted empirical research on death anxiety

and the view of the South.

He's come up with some surprising findings.

Sean Nichols, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you, the pleasure to be here.

The topic we're going to talk about today is death and the self.

Most people know what death is. Tell us a bit about the

philosophical background to questions about the self. Well there is a long

tradition of work in philosophy in different traditions that challenges

the idea that there's some consistent self that stays the same across time.

So the idea is that most people think that there's one self that they have from

the beginning that they retain throughout their biological life but in Buddhism

...