The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without PsychologyWhat does it take for you to persist from one time to another? What sorts of changes could you survive, and what would bring your existence to an end? What makes it the case that some past or future being, rather than another, is you? So begins Eric Olson's pathbreaking new book, The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology. You and I are biological organisms, he claims; and no psychological relation is either necessary or sufficient for an organism to persist through time. Conceiving of personal identity in terms of life-sustaining processes rather than bodily continuity distinguishes Olson's position from that of most other opponents of psychological theories. And only a biological account of our identity, he argues, can accommodate the apparent facts that we are animals, and that each of us began to exist as a microscopic embryo with no psychological features at all. Surprisingly, a biological approach turns out to be consistent with the most popular arguments for a psychological account of personal identity, while avoiding metaphysical traps. And in an ironic twist, Olson shows that it is the psychological approach that fails to support the Lockean definition of "person" as (roughly) a rational, self-conscious moral agent, an attractive view that fits naturally with a biological account. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
1 Psychology and Personal Identity | 7 |
2 Persistence | 22 |
3 Why We Need Not Accept the Psychological Approach | 42 |
4 Was I Ever a Fetus? | 73 |
5 Are People Animals? | 94 |
6 The Biological Approach | 124 |
7 Alternatives | 154 |
Notes | 169 |
179 | |
187 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
alive animal's Approach is true argue argument atoms become Biological Approach biologically continuous Bodily Criterion brainless brainstem Brainy cease to exist cells cerebral hemispheres cerebrum Chapter claim Cobbler corpse criterion of identity destroyed duplicate embryo entails example fact fetus fission happens head hemisphere hemispherectomy human animal human body human organism human vegetable infant Inwagen least Lefty Lefty and Righty life-sustaining functions living organism Lockean Account locomotor material object matter mental capacities mental contents mental features metabolism metaphysical moral move numerical identity numerically different ontology of temporal ovum Parfit particles Paul Brophy perhaps persistence conditions persistent vegetative personal identity personhood philosophers physical Prince Prince's actions proach properties proprioceptive prudential concern psycho Psychological Ap Psychological Approach psychological features psychological relation psychologically continuous question rational and conscious reason result seems sense simply someone sort substance concept suppose survive takes thing Tim tomorrow tion Tom's Transplant Intuition Unger virtue Wiggins