Physical and Animalist Theories Of Personal Identity

În acest eseu evidențiez principalele aspecte psihologice și filosofice desprinse din filmul Solaris regizat de Andrei Tarkovski, precum și tehnicile cinematografice utilizate de regizor pentru a-și transmite mesajele spectatorului. În ”Introducere” prezint pe scurt elementele relevante din biografia lui Tarkovski și o prezentare generală a romanului Solaris a lui Stanislav Lem și filmul Solaris în regia lui Andrei Tarkovsky. În ”Tehnica cinematografică” vorbesc despre ritmul specific al scenelor, mișcarea radicală declanșată de Tarkovsky în cinematografia modernă, rolul elementelor simbolice și iconice, (...) , și afinitățile cu zona fantastică a literaturii ruse. În ”Aspecte psihologice” analizez problema comunicării într-o societate umană a viitorului considerată de Tarkovsky ca rigidă, obsesia casei, și evoluția personală a lui Kris, Hari, și a relațiilor dintre ei. În ”Aspecte filosofice” se analizează filmul prin prisma filosofiei minții (dualismul cartezian, reducționismul și funcționalismul), a problemei identității personale, a teoriei spațiilor heterotopice dezvoltată de Michel Foucault, și interpretările semantice care se pot deduce din film. De asemenea, se analizează problema identității personale prin prisma filosofiei lui Locke. ”Concluziile” expun ideile generale rezultate din acest eseu, respectiv că Tentativele omului de a clasifica și de a păstra forme de interacțiune cu entități necunoscute vor fi întotdeauna condamnate la eșec și vor reflecta o greșeală majoră în lumea panoptică în care trăim. În acest cadru de analiză a filosofiei minții, funcționalismul pare a fi cel mai intuitiv. Solaris este, totuși, un film care începe ca o căutare a răspunsurilor și ajunge să ofere aceste răspunsuri împreună cu o serie de întrebări cu totul diferite. (shrink)

I argue that it is possible for a human animal to survive the loss of all bodily parts other than the brain.

For good or for ill, we have animal bodies. Through them, we move around, eat and drink, and do many other things besides. We owe much – perhaps our very lives – to these ever-present animals. But how exactly do we relate to our animals? Are we parts of them, or they of us? Do we and these living animals co-inhere or constitute or coincide? Or what? Animalism answers that we are identical to them. There are many objections to animalism, (...) and a dizzying array of rival views. In this article, we do not propose to evaluate those objections and rivals. We will instead present a new argument for that view. The argument begins with the fact that we have emotions. (shrink)

In this article, we develop and defend a new argument for animalism -- the thesis that we human persons are human animals. The argument takes this rough form: since our pets are animals, we are too. We’ll begin with remarks on animalism and its rivals, develop our main argument, and then defend it against a few replies.

Here is a question as intriguing as it is brief: what are we? The animalist’s answer is equal in brevity: we are animals. This stark formulation of the animalist slogan distances it from nearby claims – that we are essentially animals, for example, or that we have purely biological criteria of identity over time. Is the animalist slogan -- unburdened by modal or criterial commitments – still interesting, though? Or has it lost its bite? In this article we address such (...) questions by presenting a positive case for the importance of animalism and applying that case to recent critiques. (shrink)

In her essay, “People and their Bodies,” Judith Thomson writes an evaluation of several formulations of the psychological criterion for personal identity and attempts a strategy of criticizing each formulation of the psychological theory. This is done in order to conclude that a physical theory must be the only remaining viable sufficient candidate for explaining personal identity that is both necessary and sufficient, despite its theoretical weaknesses. This paper seeks to analyze Thomson's critique and explain why her chosen formulations of (...) psychological criterion are inadequate and easy to refine against some of her rather hasty objections. In addition, counterarguments in favor of an 'impure' psychological criterion for personal identity are presented in the hopes of clarifying the philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Accounts of personal identity over time are supposed to fall into two broad categories: 'complex views' saying that our persistence consists in something else, and 'simple views' saying that it doesn' t. But it is impossible to characterize this distinction in any satisfactory way. The debate has been systematically misdescribed. After arguing for this claim, the paper says something about how the debate might be better characterized.

In The Human Animal I argued that we are animals, and that those animals do not persist by virtue of any sort of psychological continuity. Rather, personal identity in this sense consists in having the same biological life. And I said that a human life requires a functioning brainstem. Rina Tzinman takes this and other remarks to imply that personal identity consists in the continued functioning of the brainstem, which looks clearly false. I say it doesn’t follow. But Alan Shewmon (...) appears to have refuted my claim about the brainstem. (shrink)

Standard views of personal identity over time often hover uneasily between the subjective, first-person dimension, and the objective, third-person dimension of a person’s life. Since both dimensions capture something integral to personal identity, we show that neither can successfully be discarded in favor of the other. The apparent need to reconcile subjectivity and objectivity, however, presents standard views with problems both in seeking an ontological footing of, as well as epistemic evidence for, personal identity. We contend that a fresh look (...) at neutral monism offers a novel way to tackle these problems; counting on the most fundamental building blocks of reality to be ontologically neutral with regards to subjectivity and objectivity of personal identity. If the basic units of reality are, in fact, ontologically neutral – but can give rise to mental as well as physical events – these basic units of reality might account for both subjectivity and objectivity in personal identity. If this were true, it would turn out that subjectivity and objectivity are not conflictive dimensions of personal identity but rather two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

This paper develops the Diachronic Self-Making View, the view that we are the non-accidentally best candidate referents of our ‘I’-beliefs. A formulation and defence of DSV is followed by an overview of its treatment of familiar puzzle cases about personal identity. The rest of the paper focuses on a challenge to DSV, the Puzzle of Inconstant ‘I’-beliefs: the view appears to force on us inconsistent verdicts about personal identity in cases that we would naturally describe as changes in one’s de (...) se beliefs. To solve this problem, the paper defends the possibility of overlapping people, and addresses a number of objections to this idea. (shrink)

The transformational pace of modern education, healthcare, business management systems, etc., requires new approaches for prompt and reliable personality assessment. Phenotypology is one of such theories and it claims of the discovered interconnections of a person’s psychological and psychophysical characteristics on the basis of individual features of his/her phenotype. The article aim is to present some validation results for the Phenotypology hypotheses as a possible tool for personality assessment. In order to verify connections between phenotypic treats and individual behavior, we (...) conducted the study when respondents were differentiated according to some anthropometric (facial) peculiarities and characterological features. The results were quantified and analyzed using the mathematical-statistical linear regression. The research output contains the rationale for the conclusion that there are no statistically significant correlations between some phenotypic body features and such individual psychological characteristics as aggressiveness, impetuosity, pedantry, passivity, etc. In particular, the validity of using of appropriate phenotypologic representations to predict the examined character traits was studied. The obtained results disproved the possibility to use directly the phenotypic approach for reliable characterological profiling. Though, the study outcome is tentative due to some limitations on generality. It is necessary to continue verification of the Phenotypology hypotheses with a broader experimental sample with the inclusion of various ethnic and racial groups’ representatives. However, until then, based on actual findings, the practical application of the Phenotypology statements is doubtful, at least for the purposes of character diagnosis and personality assessment. (shrink)

статья содержит реконструкцию аргумента стремительных психологических изменений скотта кэмпбелла. согласно требованиям стандартного психоло- гического подхода, тождество личности основано на постоянстве ее воспо- минаний, убеждений, желаний и намерений. личность сохраняет свое тож- дество во времени, если обладает сильной психологической связанностью и преемственностью. структура аргумента стремительных психологических изменений сопоставляется с аргументом невероятно длительных психологи- ческих изменений дэвида льюиса. главными целями критических атак этих аргументов служат временная рассогласованность психологической связан- ности и преемственности, а также тезис редукционизма, что все важные для выживания факты могут (...) быть описаны безличным способом. ключевые слова: диахроническое тождество личности, психологический кри- терий, психологическая преемственность и связанность, транскраниальная электростимуляции мозга, выживание. (shrink)

Lockean theories of personal identity maintain that we persist by virtue of psychological continuity, and most Lockeans say that we are material things coinciding with animals. Some animalists argue that if persons and animals coincide, they must have the same intrinsic properties, including thinking, and, as a result, there are ‘too many thinkers’ associated with each human being. Further, Lockeans have trouble explaining how animals and persons can be numerically different and have different persistence conditions. For these reasons, the idea (...) of a person being numerically distinct but coincident with an animal is rejected and animalists conclude that we simply are animals. However, animalists face a similar problem when confronted with the vagueness of composition. Animals are entities with vague boundaries. According to the linguistic account of vagueness, the vagueness of a term consists in there being a number of candidates for the denotatum of the vague term. It seems to imply that where we see an animal, there are, in fact, a lot of distinct but overlapping entities with basically the same intrinsic properties, including thinking. As a result, the animalist must also posit ‘too many thinkers’ where we thought there was only one. This seems to imply that the animalist cannot accept the linguistic account of vagueness. In this paper the author argues that the animalist can accept the linguistic account of vagueness and retain her argument against Lockeanism. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that we human individuals are animals. And standard animalists claim that if we are animals, we are animals essentially. This is because they believe that if we are animals, we are essentially members of the human kind (e.g., human animal, Homo sapiens), and as a result, we have the criterion of identity by virtue of that kind. The goal of this paper is to reject the claim that our being animals implies our essentially being animals. I (...) begin by reformulating the standard animalist’s argument for the claim that we are essentially biological entities of some sort. I then argue that the very same argumentative strategy can be applied against standard animalism. Specifically, the standard animalist’s reasoning for the claim that we are contingently psychological beings faces a dilemma that undermines the claim that we are animals essentially. In the remainder of the paper, I reply to various objections to my argument and consider a strategy that animalists can pursue in attempting to block the dilemma. (shrink)

Marquis’ future-like-ours argument against the morality of abortion assumes animalism—a family of theories according to which we are animals. Such an assumption is theoretically useful for various reasons, e.g., because it provides the theoretical underpinning for a reply to the contraception-abstinence objection. However, the connection between the future-like-ours argument and one popular version of animalism can prove lethal to the former, or so I argue in this paper.

The topic of this paper is the general thesis that the death of the human organism is what constitutes the death of a person. All admit that when the death of a human organism occurs, in some form or another, this normally does result in the death of a person. But, some maintain, organismic death is not the same thing as personal death. Why? Because, they maintain, despite the fact that persons are associated with a human organism (‘their organism’), they (...) are not identical with their organism, and so they can, at least in principle and perhaps in actuality, die before or after their organism dies. The thesis described above I shall call ‘the two-deaths thesis’ in virtue of the fact that its proponents believe that there are two kinds of death, viz. organismic death and personal death. The opposing thesis, according to which the death of a human organism does constitute the death of a person, I call the ‘one death thesis’. After giving some background remarks in section 2 of this paper, in section 3 I argue that, if we take linguistic usage seriously, neither the two-deaths thesis nor the one-death thesis is true. I argue, rather, that so far as linguistic usage goes it is indeterminate which of them is true. In section 4 I go further and argue that if one accepts a widely held metaphysical view, viz. that the world itself partially determines reference and the extensions of our concepts, then it is plausible that the one-death thesis is true despite the facts about linguistic usage. (shrink)

The central argument for animalism is the thinking animal problem : if you are not an animal, there are two thinkers within the region you occupy, i.e., you and your animal body. This is absurd. So you are an animal. The main objection to this argument is the thinking brain problem : animalism faces a problem that is structurally analogous to TAP. Specifically, if animalism is true, you and your brain both think. This is absurd. So animalism is false. The (...) purpose of this paper is to propose strategies animalists can endorse to solve TBP. I first show that animalists can solve TBP by arguing that it is not sound. This solution to TBP raises questions about personal identity over time and the mereological relation between the person and the brain. I argue that animalists can answer the personal identity question by endorsing non-biological persistence conditions as well as biological ones. For the mereological question, I first show that animalism is incompatible with four-dimensionalism and eliminativism. I then argue that animalists should endorse the dominant sortal account to answer the mereological question. (shrink)

Animalism is at once a bold metaphysical theory and a pedestrian biological observation. For according to animalists, human persons are organisms; we are members of a certain biological species. In this article, I introduce some heretofore unnoticed data concerning the interlocking interests of human persons and human organisms. I then show that the data support animalism. The result is a novel and powerful argument for animalism. Bold or pedestrian, animalism is true.

The problem of defining the self has traditionally been conceived as a task for philosophers. However, the development of immunology in the second part of the 20th century has led many scientists to conclude that immunology is the science of the self. This led to two different approaches to biological individuality: physiological individuation that is mostly concerned with organisms seen as strongly cohesive and unified metabolic entities, and evolutionary individuation where evolution by natural selection is seen as the best framework (...) for individuating biological entities. I discuss physiological approaches to biological individuation with a special focus on the immunological theories of the self. I argue that the immunological theories can only function as vague metaphors that do not provide a valid criterion for individuating organisms in biology. (shrink)

This article, the first of a two-part essay, presents an account of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism that engages with recent work on neuroscience and philosophy of mind. I show that Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is compatible with the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology, but that it is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. I begin with the basic claims of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism and focus on its understanding of psychological powers embodied in the nervous system. Next, I (...) introduce the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology and illustrate how it can enrich the more abstract ontological framework of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism. In the third section of this article I establish in detail the many ways Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. Based on these fundamental differences I show why a criticism leveled against emergentism by the new mechanist philosophy does not hamper my proposed rapprochement between hylomorphism and the new mechanist philosophy. This conclusion, however, leaves untouched the problem I address in the second article, namely, is the new mechanist philosophy compatible with Aristotelian philosophical anthropology’s contention that intellectual operations are immaterial and interact with the psychosomatic operations of the rational animal? (shrink)

The central case for animalism is the ‘thinking animal problem’: if I am not an animal, this leads to an absurd multiplication of thinkers. One objection to this argument is that animalism faces a structurally analogous problem called the ‘thinking parts problem’: animalism ends up with an absurdity that any part of an animal that includes a brain can be a candidate for being a thinker. Some leading animalists try to avoid the thinking parts problem by eliminating the brain (and (...) other alleged thinking parts) from the animalist’s ontology. There are two versions of eliminativism that animalists endorse: biological eliminativism and causal eliminativism. I argue that these theories are incompatible with animalism and so do not solve the thinking parts problem. (shrink)

Animalism claims that we are animals, i.e. biological organisms of the primate species Homo sapiens. If there is a case in which the number of persons differs from the number of organisms, then animalism is false. Timothy Campbell and Jeff McMahan hold that there are, at least, two such cases: the dicephalus and the cephalopagus conjoined twinning cases. Recently, Eric Olson argued that either Campbell and McMahan's arguments assume the point at issue, rely on undefended assumptions, or constitute paradigmatic anti-animalist (...) claims. After characterising animalism, we address Campbell and McMahan's arguments and Olson's replies. We endorse Olson's first general objection and reject the second and third, nonetheless concluding that animalism isn't undermined by conjoined twinning cases. (shrink)

Part of the philosophical interest of the topic of organic individuals is that it promises to shed light on a basic and perennial question of philosophical self-understanding, the question what are we? The class of organic individuals seems to be a good place to look for candidates to be the things that we are. However there are, in principle, different ways of locating ourselves within the class of organic individuals; organic individuals occur at both higher and lower mereological levels than (...) the stereotypical bounded and physiologically unified vertebrate organism. The view that we are organic individuals smaller than the physiological organism is one that has recently been endorsed by Derek Parfit. This paper attempts to resolve a dispute between Parfit’s ‘embodied part’ view and a contrary ‘animalist’ view according to which we are whole organisms. It is explained why a problem of multiple thinkers presents a serious obstacle to a straightforward resolution of this dispute. Parfit’s own strategy for dealing with this obstacle is found to be problematic. However his strategy has a certain general shape, which can be instantiated in a different, and better, specific way. I close in the final section, not with a definite resolution of the dispute, but with illustration of how progress on the question of about which organic individuals we are requires engagement with questions about the nature and function of self-awareness. (shrink)

I argue that a form of animalism that does not include the belief that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal has a dialectical advantage over other versions of animalism. The main reason for this advantage is that Phase Animalism, the version of animalism described here, has the theoretical resources to provide convincing descriptions of the outcomes of scenarios problematic for other forms of animalism. Although Phase Animalism rejects the claim that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal, it is still appealing to those (...) who believe that our nature is continuous or of a similar kind to that of other physical entities. (shrink)

The reduplication argument advanced by Bernard Williams in 1956 has greatly stimulated the contemporary debate on personal identity. The argument relies on a famous thought experiment that, although not new in the history of philosophy, has engaged some of the most influential contemporary philosophers on the topic. I propose here an interpretation of the argument and a reconstruction of the early reception that Williams’ paper had in the 6 years immediately after its publication. The works discussed include papers by C. (...) B. Martin, G. C. Nerlich, R. Coburn, and J. M. Shorter. (shrink)

Theories of personal identity face a paradox, which traces back to Bernard Williams: some scenarios obviously show that mental continuity is what solely matters in survival; others, on the contrary, show with equal obviousness that it is bodily continuity. Different authors have produced diverging and partly conflicting answers in response to that problem. Based on recent research concerning the structure of philosophical thought experiment, this paper reevaluates and, for the first time, neatly classifies those answers. What is more, several existing (...) approaches of how to answer the paradox are developed further, and two new answers are introduced. (shrink)

In his 1998 postscript to ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ Peter van Inwagen argues that the scenario he describes by which God might resurrect a human organism, even though probably not true, is still conceivable and, consequently, ‘serves to establish a possibility’, namely, the metaphysical possibility of the resurrection of material beings. Van Inwagen, however, has also argued in favour of ‘modal scepticism’ [van Inwagen in, God, knowledge and mystery: essays in philosophical theology, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1995b, pp. 11–12; van (...) Inwagen in, Philos Stud 92:67–84, 1998a]. That is, he thinks that we should limit all our claims about what is possible to ‘ordinary propositions about everyday matters’, 1998a). In this paper I argue that van Inwagen’s modal argument as found in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ is inconsistent with his modal scepticism as found in ‘Modal Epistemology’. In consequence, I argue that, given his modal scepticism, the task van Inwagen set himself in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection’ has not been achieved. (shrink)

According to the doctrine of animalism, we are animals in the primary and non-derivative sense. In this article, I introduce and defend a novel argument for the view.

What are we? What is the nature of the human person? Animalism has a straightforward answer to these long-standing philosophical questions: we are animals. After being ignored for a long time in philosophical discussions of our nature, this idea has recently gained considerable support in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Containing mainly new papers as well as two highly important articles that were recently published elsewhere, this volume's contributors include both emerging voices in the debate and many of those who (...) have been instrumental in shaping it. Some of their contributions defend animalism, others criticize it, still others explore its more general implications. The book also contains a substantial introduction by the editors explaining what animalism is, identifying leading issues that merit attention, and highlighting many of the issues that the contributors have raised. (shrink)

If we are physical things with parts, then accounts of what we are and accounts of when composition occurs have important implications for one another. Defenders of restricted composition tend to endorse a sparse ontology in taking an eliminativist stance toward composite objects that are not organisms, while claiming that we are organisms. However, these arguments do not entail that we are organisms, for they rely on the premise that we are organisms. Thus, sparsist reasoning need not be paired with (...) animalism, but could instead be paired with other accounts according to which we are composites. The embodied mind account—a version of the brain view—is one such account. Replacing the premise that we are organisms with the premise that we are embodied minds, in arguments that otherwise parallel those supporting animalist sparsism, yields an account according to which composite objects include thinkers, but perhaps nothing else. Since animalism has implausible implications about scenarios which are handled better by the embodied mind account, this approach is preferable to animalist sparsism. Furthermore, the role of mental features in sparsism makes embodied mind sparsism the more reasonable conclusion. Meanwhile, adopting sparsism allows the embodied mind account to dodge objections that may not be as easily avoided by it or other versions of the brain view if not paired with sparsism. These include objections about brains that are not persons, inorganic part replacement, and another form of part replacement that might seem to allow one to get a new brain. (shrink)

The typical Four-Dimensionalist metaphysics will posit the existence of many entities with thinking temporal parts. To determine which of these entities are persons, Hud Hudson relies upon an exclusion principle that withholds the label “person” from objects possessing any parts that don’t contribute to thought. Thus the human animal can’t be identified with the human person because it initially consists of mindless embryonic temporal parts. Since even normal adult human animals have parts such as hair and nails that don’t appear (...) to contribute to the production of thought, Hudson argues that the person is to be found “beneath the skin” of the animal. This chapter contests this claim of the non-identity of the human person and human animal while still operating with Hudson’s assumptions that we persist in virtue of temporal parts, that composition is unrestricted, and that there cannot be any persons embedded within larger persons. (shrink)

Several attractive principles about prudential concern and moral responsibility seem to speak against animalism. I criticize some animalist responses to this kind of problem, and suggest another answer, which has similarites with the most important argument in favor of animalism: the “thinking animal” argument.

The Problem of Overlappers is a puzzle about what makes it the case, and how we can know, that we have the parts we intuitively think we have. In this paper, I develop and motivate an overlooked solution to this puzzle. According to what I call the self-making view it is within our power to decide what we refer to with the personal pronoun ‘I’, so the truth of most of our beliefs about our parts is ensured by the very (...) mechanism of self-reference. Other than providing an elegant solution to the Problem of Overlappers, the view can be motivated on independent grounds. It also has wide-ranging consequences for how we should be thinking about persons. Among other things, it can help undermine an influential line of argument against the permissibility of elective amputation. After a detailed discussion and defence of the self-making view, I consider some objections to it. I conclude that none of these objections is persuasive and we should at the very least take seriously the idea that we are to some extent self-made. (shrink)

A high level of confidence in the identity of individuals is required to let them die as ordered by an advance directive. Thus, if we are animalists, then we should lack the confidence required to apply lethal advance directives to the cheerfully demented, or so I argue. In short, there is consensus among animalists that the best way to avoid serious objections to their account is to adopt an ontology that denies the existence of brains, hands, tables, chairs, iced-tea, and (...) lemonade. The adoption of such an ontology reduces the justificatory force of commonsense, which is key in arguing that we are animals and that we persist as long as we are biologically alive. With this loss of justification comes the loss of a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s lethal advanced directive applies to Quinn-post-dementia, via identity. If we do not have a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s advanced directive applies to Quinn-post- dementia, then it is not enough (on its own) to let Quinn-post-dementia die. (shrink)

In the following sections we hold that physical continuity suffices personal persistence through time. First, we determine the theoretic and conceptual grounds of the metaphysical problem of personal identity, the relevant notion of «personal identity», the temporal persistence question simpliciter, what identity criteria and individuation principles are, and the formal properties of the identity concept. We differentiate between the simple and complex views, stating the reductionist thesis transversal to the latter. In the central sections, we discuss the main arguments and (...) objections endorsed to the dominant identity criteria, namely, the lockean memory criterion, causal dependence criteria of psychological connectivity and continuity, the corporeal or physical criterion, the somatic view and the cerebral criterion. Psychological criteria are not considered promising. We hold the hypothesis that personal identity consists in a causal relation of brute physical continuity. For such, we refine the original corporeal criterion, showing that the defense of, at least, minimal physicalism about mind-brain identity ensure its reinforcement. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen an increasing tendency to exclude the phenomenon of personality from the metaphysical investigation of personal identity. We are advised not to confuse personal identity as a philosophical subject, namely as the metaphysical issue of specifying what it is that makes a person staying numerically self-identical over time, with the psychological question of 'personal identity' which asks what makes someone the individual person they are with their particular character and history. However, one might be unsatisfied with this. (...) If (as common sense takes for granted) persons are to be conceived as beings possessing a personality, should there not be some more than superficial connection between personality and personal identity in the philosophical sense? This paper investigates this question by revealing the guiding - metaphysical assumptions behind the claim that personality and personal identity must be treated separately as well as by presenting the metaphysical alternative brushed aside by the adherents of this claim. In fact, I argue, there are two opposing views of the relation between personality and personal identity, these being grounded in two opposing metaphysical models of what a person is: the substance model and the bundle model of the person. However, it turns out that ultimately both competing models fail for fundamental reasons, which raises the question of what a way out of the dilemma might look like. (shrink)

Animalism—the view that the identity across time of individuals like us consists in the persistence of our animal organisms—does poorly at accounting for our identity-related practical concerns. The reason is straightforward: whereas our practical concerns seem to track the identity of psychological creatures—persons—animalism focuses on the identity of human organisms who are not essentially persons. This lack of fit between our practical concerns and animalism has been taken to reduce animalism’s plausibility (relative to psychological criteria of identity). In this paper, (...) I survey the three leading replies to this challenge, finding them either implausible or incomplete. I will then attempt to construct the only viable response, one that begins by admitting that our practical concerns actually do not consist in a monolithic set; rather, there are distinctly different types of practical concerns, and while some are clearly grounded on psychological relations, some are actually grounded on others, including animalistic and humanistic relations; furthermore, their actual connection to identity is tenuous at best. What these concerns are, how they divide up, and what they are grounded on in each instance—these are the issues it is my second aim in this paper to take up. (shrink)

There is a thinking animal in your chair and you are the only thinking thing in your chair; therefore, you are an animal. So goes the main argument for animalism, the Thinking Animal Argument. But notice that there are many other things that might do our thinking: heads, brains, upper halves, left-hand complements, right-hand complements, and any other object that has our brain as a part. The abundance of candidates for the things that do our thinking is known as the (...) Thinking Parts Problem. Animalists who endorse the Thinking Animal Argument must solve this problem by giving reasons for privileging the animal over its rivals. In order to meet this challenge, some animalists have argued that the best solution is a biological minimalist one. In what follows, I argue that every extant biological minimalist solution to the Thinking Parts Problem fails. (shrink)

In his paper ‘Mind, Mortality and Material Being’ Paul Anders attempts to show that Peter van Inwagen’s materialist metaphysics of the human person, combined with the belief that human persons survive death, faces a dilemma. Either, on the one hand, van Inwagen has to accept an account of the survival of human persons across death that cannot escape the duplication objection, or, on the other hand, van Inwagen has to accept an account of the survival of human persons across death (...) that entails the possibility of that which is logically impossible and, in consequence, renders his metaphysics necessarily false. This paper is concerned with the second horn of the dilemma. In this paper, I will attempt to do two things. First, I will attempt to show that Anders’ description of van Inwagen’s ‘naked kernel’ account of the survival of human persons across death is, at times, unclear, before, second, attempting to demonstrate that there is a response that van Inwagen could give to Anders’ argument regardless of these unclarities. Consequently, I think that, at least until Anders’ description is made clearer, and until Anders tells us why van Inwagen can’t opt for the solution I propose, we should consider van Inwagen’s inclination that God can preserve a kernel that is sufficient for the survival of human persons across death to be unharmed by Anders’ argument. (shrink)

Among your closest associates is a certain human animal – a living, breathing, organism. You see it when you look in the mirror. When it is sick, you don't feel too well. Where it goes, you go. And, one thinks, where you go, it must follow. Indeed, you can make it move through sheer force of will. You bear, in short, an important and intimate relation to this, your animal. So too rest of us with our animals. Animalism says that (...) this relation is nothing short of identity. According to animalists, we do not only coincide with or constitute or inhabit or otherwise hang out with these close associates, our animals: we are them. In this article, I offer an opinionated take on what animalism might be and situate it against contemporary rivals. Then, I outline a simple case for animalism. Finally, I sketch non-standard routes for animalists to take in light of standard challenges. My goal in all of this is to open up some new avenues of animalist thinking. (shrink)

What am I? And what is my relationship to the thing I call ‘my body’? Thus each of us can pose for himself the philosophical problems of the nature of the self and the relationship between a person and his body. One answer to the question about the relationship between a person and the thing he calls ‘his body’ is that they are two things composed of the same matter at the same time (like a clay statue and the piece (...) of clay which presently constitutes it). This is the ‘constitution view’. In this paper we give a novel overview of the literature on personal identity, the constitution view, and surrounding topics. (shrink)

Suppose that you're lying in bed. You just woke up. But you're alert. Your mind is clear and you have no distractions. As you lie there, you think to yourself, ‘2 + 2 = 4.’ The thought just pops into your head. But, wanting to be sure of your mathematical insight, you once again think ‘2 + 2 = 4’, this time really meditating on your thought. Now suppose that you're sitting in an empty movie theatre. The lighting is normal (...) and the screen in front of you is blank. Then at some point an image of a peach is flashed on the screen. The image isn't up there for long. In fact, it's only on the screen for what seems like an instant—just long enough for you to see it. These two scenarios are a bit mundane. But, as I will show, reflection on them can yield significant results concerning the nature of persons and their persistence through time. First I will show that thought and perception have temporal constraints whereby your thinking or perceiving in the above scenarios implies that you exist through a temporally.. (shrink)

Animalism is the thesis that each human person is numerically identical to an animal. This work remains neutral on the truth of animalism. Instead of addressing the thesis, it considers the logical implications regarding a range of thought experiments in the personal identity literature, such as the brain transplant case, and argues that many prominent defenders of animalism have misapplied their own view. Based on what is generally accepted in the philosophy of biology, animalists ought to change their positions on (...) these case studies. Along with better matching our best theories of biology, this new perspective helps animalists avoid some of the most counter-intuitive implications of their position. (shrink)

As persons, we are importantly different from all other creatures in the universe. But in what, exactly, does this difference consist? What kinds of entities are we, and what makes each of us the same person today that we were yesterday? Could we survive having all of our memories erased and replaced with false ones? What about if our bodies were destroyed and our brains were transplanted into android bodies, or if instead our minds were simply uploaded to computers? -/- (...) In this engaging and accessible introduction to these important philosophical questions, Amy Kind brings together three different areas of research: the nature of personhood, theories of personal identity over time, and the constitution of self-identity. Surveying the key contemporary theories in the philosophical literature, Kind analyzes and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. As she shows, our intuitions on these issues often pull us in different directions, making it difficult to develop an adequate general theory. Throughout her discussion, Kind seamlessly interweaves a vast array of up-to-date examples drawn from both real life and popular fiction, all of which greatly help to elucidate this central topic in metaphysics. -/- A perfect text for readers coming to these issues for the first time, Persons and Personal Identity engages with some of the deepest and most important questions about human nature and our place in the world, making it a vital resource for students and researchers alike. (shrink)