Philosopher Martha Nussbaum talks about the split among the ancient Greeks between those, like Aristotle, who thought the body was an essential part of the self, and those like Plato, who believed that the body was merely "...a prison house for the ...
Philosopher John Searle explains that when the body (including, of course, the brain) dies, the mind and the self die at the same time. He rejects the notion that there is something else, what some would call the soul, that endures despite the death...