“We are animals.” That’s what animalists say—that’s their slogan. But what animalists mean by their slogan varies. Many animalists are adamant that what they mean—and, indeed, what the true animalist thesis is—is that we are identical to animals (human animals, to be precise). But others say that’s not enough. They say that the animalist thesis has to be something more—perhaps that we are essentially or most fundamentally human animals. This paper argues that, depending on how we understand it, animalism (...) is either false or uninteresting. If animalism is just the claim that we are identical to animals, then it is uninteresting. For it doesn’t provide an answer to the question it’s meant to address. On the other hand, if animalism entails a stronger claim, such as that we are essentially animals, then animalism is false. Either way, we should set animalism aside. (shrink)

Here I develop an account of our persistence that accommodates each of the following compelling intuitions: (i) that we are animals, (ii) that we existed prior to the onset of whatever psychological capacities are necessary for personhood, and we can continue to exist with the loss of those and other psychological capacities, (iii) that with suitable psychological continuity, the person goes with the brain/cerebrum in remnant person and brain/cerebrum transplant cases, and (iv) that it is possible for us to survive (...) gradual large-scale replacement of organic with inorganic parts. With the help of a couple of recent “hybrid” animalist accounts I develop an analysis of our persistence that entails (ii)–(iv) while being consistent with (i). (shrink)

In this paper Animalism is analysed. It will be argued that Animalism is correct in claiming (i) that being of a certain sort of animal S is a fundamental individuative substance sortal concept (animal of the species Homo Sapiens), (ii) that this implies that Animalism is correct in claiming that persons such as us are, by necessity, human beings, (iii) that remaining the same animal is a necessary condition for our identity over time. Contrary to Animalism (...) it will be argued that this does not imply that person should be understood as a phased sortal concept. It will be argued that Animalism rests upon a prior conception of person, and that this implies that person must be understood as a basic substance sortal concept through which we have to individuate ourselves and others. It is further argued that this, together with the insights of Animalism, implies that persons, by necessity, are beings of a biological nature. (shrink)

Animalism is the theory that we are animals: in other words, that each of us is numerically identical to an animal. An alternative theory maintains that we are not animals but that each of us is constituted by an animal. Call this alternative theory neo-Lockean constitutionalism or Lockeanism for short. Stephan Blatti (2012) offers to advance the debate between animalism and Lockeanism by providing a new argument for animalism. In this note, we present our own objection to (...) Blatti's argument, and argue that Carl Gillett's earlier reply misses the fundamental problem. We also use Blatti's argument to illustrate a common methodological error, namely, uncritical deference to best theories from other disciplines. (shrink)

This entry sketches the theory of personal identity that has come to be known as animalism. Animalism’s hallmark claim is that each of us is identical with a human animal. Moreover, animalists typically claim that we could not exist except as animals, and that the (biological) conditions of our persistence derive from our status as animals. Prominent advocates of this view include Michael Ayers, Eric Olson, Paul Snowdon, Peter van Inwagen, and David Wiggins.

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)

Various cases of conjoined twinning have been presented as problems for the animalist view that we are animals. In some actual and possible cases of human dicephalus that have been discussed in the literature, it is arguable that there are two persons but only one human animal. It is also tempting to believe that there are two persons and one animal in possible instances of craniopagus parasiticus that have been described. Here it is argued that the animalist can admit that (...) these are cases in which human persons are not animals, without forfeiting the title “animalist.” It is also shown that this is not only an option but also a well-motivated and plausible option for the animalist. Seeing this requires getting clear on what the word “we” should be thought to include in the animalist's claim that we are animals. Here animalism is defended against twinning objections by figuring out how to view the scope of the animalist's identity claim. (shrink)

Animalism is prima facie the most plausible view about what we are; it aligns better with science and common sense, and is metaphysically more parsimonious. Thought experiments involving the brain, however, tend to elicit intuitions contrary to animalism. In this paper, I examine two classical thought experiments from the literature, brain transplant and cerebrum transplant, and a new one, cerebrum regeneration. I argue that they are theoretically possible, but that a scientifically informed account of what would actually happen (...) shows that in none of the cases would the person be separated from the animal. Our intuitions in these cases, when adequately informed by neuroscience, do not conflict with animalism – rather, they suggest a correction of the animalist position: the persisting animal should be at least minimally sentient. Sentience animalism is a new formulation of the animalist account of personal identity that allows us to reconcile facts about our biological persistence conditions with the intuition that human persistence should involve some kind of psychological continuity. (shrink)

ANIMALISTS - Philosophers, activists and other advocates of non-human animals.

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)

I here present an anarchist critique of the idea of ‘animalistic evil’ and its common use as a justification for the State’s existence and use of force. On this view, ‘evil’ is a privation of morality, justice, and civilised behaviour. It is then identified with the ‘animalistic’ since animals are often thought to be defined by the aforesaid privation. I first clarify the idea of animalistic evil within the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and (...) Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895) prominently argue that all that prevents humanity from devolving into animalistic evil, a state of violent and individualistic struggle for bare survival, is the power of State government to forcibly control the animalistic drives within its citizens. I subsequently pose two questions. (1) Is it justified to associate animal life with evil when this is (a) understood as a privation of a morality, justice and society and (b) characterised as an individualistic struggle for survival? (2) If this is not justified, what is the political harm of doing so? Building on the work of the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), I argue that any conception of animalistic evil is unjustifiable, that it is a false justification for the State’s existence and use of force, and that the State, upon making the empty threat of animalistic evil, both violently harms individuals and impedes the socially beneficial practice of mutual aid. (shrink)

This is a review of the excellent collection by Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon which collates essays pertaining to Animalism: the theory that we human persons are identical with the human animals we share our lives with, and thus have the property of being human animals; perhaps essentially and most fundamentally.

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)

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 special cases of partial twinning, two heads, each supporting a more-orless normal human mental life, emerge from a single torso. It is often argued that there must be two people in such a case, even if there is only one biological organism. That would pose a problem for ‘animalism’, the view that people are organisms. The paper argues that it is very hard to say what sort of non-organisms the people in such cases would be. Reflection on partial (...) twinning is no more comfortable for those who think we’re not organisms than for those who think we are. We may have to accept that a single person could have two separate mental lives. (shrink)

What are we? Despite much discussion in historical and contemporary philosophy, we have not yet settled on an answer. A satisfactory personal ontology, an account of our metaphysical nature, will be informed by issues in the metaphysics of material objects. In the dissertation, I target two prominent materialist ontologies: animalism, the view that we are numerically identical to human organisms, and constitutionalism, the view that we are constituted by, but not identical to, human organisms. Because of the problems that (...) arise from endorsing these ontologies, I instead advance immaterialism, the view that we are essentially immaterial. In Chapter 2, I discuss how animalists must respond to a widely-discussed metaphysical puzzle, the problem of the many. This puzzle prompts some to endorse revisionary ontologies of material objects, and I argue that the animalist cannot appeal to these revisionary ontologies to solve the puzzle as it arises for personal ontology. In addition, solutions that don’t involve a commitment to revisionary ontology will be unavailable to the animalist: I argue that if animalists make use of non-revisionary solutions to the problem, they must abandon the most successful argument for their view. Absent their most successful argument, animalists will need to motivate the view in some other way. Some new arguments for animalism have been proposed, and I argue that they fail to give us reason to endorse animalism over competing ontologies. Without a strong argument, we should not prefer animalism over the other, more attractive, views. In Chapter 3, I show how constitutionalists face a different problem: explaining how the person is not the very same thing as the human organism, despite sharing the very same parts and occupying the very same physical space. We think that the person and the organism are different things because they have different modal profiles – the human organism can survive permanent loss of psychological life, but the person, presumably, cannot. Constitutionalists must then explain what grounds the difference in modal profiles, but such an explanation is hard to come by. This is an instance of the grounding problem, which is notoriously intractable. While the grounding problem is a well-known challenge to constitutional accounts of objects, I demonstrate that this puzzle is even more threatening when applied to persons. Some “solutions” to the problem fail to solve it at all, and solutions that might get the right result for ordinary objects require accepting that there are a multitude of persons where we ordinarily take there to be only one. We should not accept a personal ontology that requires a commitment to that multitude. I argue that the threat of the grounding problem is so great that we must reject the constitutionalist personal ontology. We will see from these puzzles in personal ontology that materialist solutions are either unsuccessful or yield unacceptable consequences. This should prompt us toward considering, instead, immaterialism. According to immaterialism, persons are not material objects, and the immaterialist can then provide solutions to the puzzles that threatened materialist ontologies. In Chapter 4, I outline these immaterialist solutions and show that the puzzles cannot be reinstantiated successfully against the immaterialist. I then discuss different available varieties of immaterialism and argue in defense of my preferred version. Ultimately, I argue that we are simple, immaterial entities that come into existence at the proper functioning of the brain. Endorsing this view of personal ontology permits us to adequately respond to metaphysical puzzles and retain judgments about persons that should be most important to us. In particular, the immaterialist has the resources to avoid the problem of too many thinkers and retain the judgment that there is exactly one person in circumstances where we take there to be just one. The immaterialist also has the resources to plausibly analyze thought experiments, such as cerebrum-swap cases, that threaten materialist ontologies. All things considered, it remains to be seen which personal ontology has the most evidence in its favor. In the context of debates that arise from material object metaphysics, however, evidence weighs in favor of immaterialism. Materialist personal ontologies are saddled with unacceptable responses to metaphysical puzzles, and endorsing materialism about persons requires taking on a very high cost: Either there are far more of us than we ordinarily take there to be, or there are no persons – far fewer of us than we ordinarily take there to be. Some might argue that these are the only acceptable options, so cost be damned. But we cannot afford to be so cavalier about our personal ontology. Instead, I advance immaterialist solutions to puzzles in personal ontology and propose that, in the interest of saving ourselves and everyone we love, we should seriously consider accounts according to which we are immaterial entities. (shrink)

Persons think. Bodies, time-slices of persons, and brains might also think. They have the necessary neural equipment. Thus, there seems to be more than one thinker in your chair. Critics assert that this is too many thinkers and that we should reject ontologies that allow more than one thinker in your chair. I argue that cases of multiple thinkers are innocuous and that there is not too much thinking. Rather, the thinking shared between, for example, persons and their bodies is (...) exactly what we should expect at the intersection of part sharing and the supervenience of the mental on the physical. I end by responding to the overcrowding objection, the personhood objection, the personal-pronoun reference problem and the epistemic objection. (shrink)

Animalism, the thesis that each of us is a human animal, is a prominent materialist account of what we are. Animalism is often motivated by an attractive line of reasoning, the Thinking Animal Argument. And, independently, animalism has been challenged by appeals to a metaphysical puzzle, the problem of the many. In this paper, I draw attention to the relationship between the Thinking Animal Argument and the problem of the many. I further argue that in virtue of (...) this relationship, animalists are left in an unfortunate position: animalists cannot hold onto their most successful argument without undermining animalism itself. (shrink)

Animalistic rhetoric is often used to discredit and criminalize political activists. While such dehumanization is embedded within a history of racially-motivated oppression and certainly calls for a reassertion of humanity, I ultimately argue that viewing animals as apolitical forecloses rich possibilities for political resistance.

The vast advances in biometrics over the past several decades have brought with them a host of pressing concerns. Philosophical scrutiny has already been devoted to many of the relevant ethical and political issues, especially ones arising from matters of privacy, bias, and security in data collection. But philosophers have devoted surprisingly little attention to the relevant metaphysical issues, in particular, ones concerning matters of personal identity. This paper aims to take some initial steps to correct this oversight. After discussing (...) the philosophical problem of personal identity, the ways in which the notion of biometric identity connects with, or fails to connect with, the philosophical notion of personal identity is explored. Though there may be some good reasons to use biometric identity to track personal identity, it is contended that biometric identity is not the same thing as personal identity and thus that biometrics researchers should stop talking as if it were. (shrink)

A number of claims are closely connected with, though logically distinct from, animalism. One is that organisms cease to exist when they die. Two others concern the relation of the brain, or the brainstem, to animal life. One of these holds that the brainstem is necessary for life—more precisely, that (say) my cat's brainstem is necessary for my cat's life to continue. The other is that it is sufficient for life—more precisely, that so long as (say) my cat's brainstem (...) continues to function, so too does my cat. I argue against these claims. (shrink)

The doctrine of the resurrection says that God will resurrect the body that lived and died on earth—that the post-mortem body will be numerically identical to the pre-mortem body. After exegetically supporting this claim, and defending it from a recent objection, we ask: supposing that the doctrine of the resurrection is true, what are the implications for the mind-body relation? Why would God resurrect the body that lived and died on earth? We compare three accounts of the mind-body relation that (...) have been applied to the doctrine of the resurrection: substance dualism, constitutionalism, and animalism. We argue that animalism offers a superior explanation for the necessity of the resurrection: since human persons just are their bodies, life after death requires resurrection of one’s body. We conclude that those endorsing the doctrine of the resurrection should be animalists. (shrink)

According to the theory of intrinsic value and moral standing called the ‘substance view,’ what makes it prima facie seriously wrong to kill adult human beings, human infants, and even human fetuses is the possession of the essential property of the basic capacity for rational moral agency – a capacity for rational moral agency in root form and thereby not remotely exercisable. In this critique, I cover three distinct reductio charges directed at the substance view's conclusion that human fetuses have (...) the same intrinsic value and moral standing as adult human beings. After giving consideration to defenders of the substance view's replies to these charges, I then critique each of them, ultimately concluding that none is successful. Of course, in order to understand all of these things – the reductio charges, defenders of the substance view's replies to them, and my criticisms of their replies – one must have a better understanding of the substance view as well as its defense. Accordingly, I address the substance view's understanding of rational moral agency as well as present its defense. (shrink)

Joona Räsänen has argued that pro‐life arguments against the permissibility of infanticide are not persuasive, and fail to show it to be immoral. We responded to Räsänen’s arguments, concluding that his critique of pro‐life arguments was misplaced. Räsänen has recently replied in ‘Why pro‐life arguments still are not convincing: A reply to my critics’, providing some additional arguments as to why he does not find pro‐life arguments against infanticide convincing. Here, we respond briefly to Räsänen’s critique of the substance view, (...) and also to his most important claim: that possession of a right to life by an infant does not rule out the permissibility of infanticide. We demonstrate that this claim is unfounded, and conclude that Räsänen has not refuted pro‐life arguments against infanticide. (shrink)

Steven Luper offers richly-textured arguments against the Embodied Part View developed by Jeff McMahan and offered as an answer to the “too many thinkers” problem. One of the major objections he raises is connected to McMahan's claim that the mind, and so the person, is to be identified with the part of the brain in which consciousness is directly realized. This view has the implausible consequence, Luper argues, that persons do not and cannot think or reason or have desires or (...) interests. While this is indeed a worrisome consequence, it is not clear that McMahan is committed to the understanding of what constitutes “the part of the brain in which consciousness is directly realized” that Luper attributes to him. Making reference to McMahan's Theory of Time-Relative Interests, I develop an alternate way of reading this phrase, one which avoids the difficulties Luper raises. I acknowledge that my understanding yields a view that, while formally consistent, is unattractive in a variety of ways. I suggest, however, that this should not be taken as a reason to favor animalism, since animalism has its own difficulties, which are not entirely unlike those faced by the Embodied Part View. (shrink)

This paper focuses on three theories of personal identity that incorporate the idea that personal identity is the result of a person’s adopting certain attitudes towards certain mental states and actions. I call these theories subjective theories of personal identity. I argue that it is not clear what the proponents of these theories mean by “personal identity”. On standard theories, such as animalism or psychological theories, the term “personal identity” refers to the numerical identity of persons and its analysis (...) provides the persistence conditions for persons. I argue that if the subjective theories purport to provide a criterion of numerical personal identity, they fail. A different interpretation may suggest that they purport to provide a non-numerical type of identity for the purpose of providing plausible analyses of certain identity-related practical concerns. I argue that the criteria the subjective theories provide fail to capture several of the identity-related concerns. As a result, this interpretation must be rejected as well. (shrink)

This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person’s immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that (...) noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic–psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part’s rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic–psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross’s arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system. (shrink)

The author Kitija Mirončuka in her article "Human Savages: Frantz Fanon and Racism" analyses how race, a seemingly constant human trait (natural phenomenon), becomes a condition for exclusion, differentiation, and violence (i.e., abnormality). In the article, the body is portrayed as a formalizable object; the author deliberates whether the natural origin is something changeable and exceptional. Introducing the Franco-Algerian philosopher Frantz Fanon, the author focuses on biopolitical practices and forms of violence that imperceptibly incorporate new concepts of human - Algerian (...) appearance, lifestyle, movement, and habits - savagery, animalism, abnormality, extremeness, and unacceptability. The article reviews three perspectives - body and race, body and skin colour, body and rhythm - to indicate that all these features, although common to many bodies, nevertheless, are selectively used to either normalize or discriminate a person based on appearance or cultural and ethnic affiliations. (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)

Joona Räsänen has proposed a concept he calls Schrödinger’s Fetus as a solution to reconciling what he believes are two widely held but contradictory intuitions. I show that Elizabeth Harman’s Actual Future Principle, upon which Schrödinger’s Fetus is based, uses a more convincing account of personhood. I also argue that both Räsänen and Harman, by embracing animalism, weaken their arguments by allowing Don Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ argument for the immorality of abortion into the frame.

A glance is enough for people to assign psychological attributes to another person. Attractiveness is associated with positive attributes contributing to the “beauty-is-good” stereotype. Here, we aimed to study the possibility of a similar but negative bias. Specifically, we asked if people with facial anomalies are associated with negative characteristics, and if so, what accounts for this association. We tested the hypothesis that biases against faces with scars and palsies arise because of negative stereotypes (less warmth and competence) and forms (...) of dehumanization (animalistic and mechanistic). Using well-controlled stimuli (i.e., photographs of real people before and after plastic surgery) and a wide range of faces to avoid race, age, and gender biases in facial perception, we found that anomalous faces were seen as less warm, competent, and were dehumanized (in both animalistic and mechanistic ways). Our study supports the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype, and further exposes reasons for why faces with anomalies elicit more negative evaluations compared to the same faces before the surgery. (shrink)

This paper contains an overview of the significance of dualism for theism and a modal argument for dualism. It concludes with remarks on the relevance of the modal case on behalf of dualism for an intramural materialist quarrel between animalists and brain-identity theorists.

I critically discuss both the particular doctrinal and general meta-philosophical or methodological tenets of Mark Johnston's paper "Human Beings", attending to several weaknesses in his argument. One of the most important amongst them is an apparent reliance on a substitution of identicals within an intensional context as he argues that continuity of functioning brain is essential to the persistence of "Human Beings" as allegedly singled out by his methodology; another equally important is a simple lacuna in place of an argument (...) that candidate entities for re-identification by means we take for granted in the case of persons cannot be what I call "mentalistically" individuated. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the resources Thomas Aquinas provides for enquiries concerning the psychological abilities of nonhuman animals. I first look to Aquinas’s account of divine, angelic, human, and nonhuman animal naming, to help us articulate the contours of a ‘critical anthropocentrism’ that aims to steer clear of the mistakes of a na¨ıve anthropocentrism and misconceived avowals to entirely eschew anthropocentrism. I then address the need for our critical anthropocentrism both to reject the mental-physical dichotomy endorsed by ‘folk psychology’ (...) and to articulate a more adequate ‘commonsense psychology’ that acknowledges most embodied animal behavior is observable psychological behavior. Next, I argue that we can develop Aquinas’s doctrine of estimation and conation to formulate an account of nonhuman animal action that more adequately characterizes the purposeful behaviors of nonhuman animals. To do so, we first need to recognize a wider range of nonhuman animal behaviors that are captured by Aquinas’s ‘estimative sense’, and that all of these behaviors are specified by a finite variety of particular goods confined to the animals’ environmental niches. But we also need to supplement Aquinas’s account of human and nonhuman animal agency by exploring the ontogeny and ecology of how humans and other animals become attuned to affordances within these different environmental niches. I argue that we should look to Aquinas’s account of nonhuman animal capacities in ST I-II 6-17 for subtle insights that can expand our understanding of how nonhuman animals engage in purposeful behavior by exercising analogous nonrational and imperfectly voluntary forms of intention, deliberation, choice, execution, and enjoyment. I conclude with an outline for how future enquiry can seek to explain the nonrational purposeful problem-solving competencies of chimps, canines, corvids, cetaceans, cephalopods, and other nonhuman animal species. (shrink)

A well-known problem seems to beset views on which humans are essentially material, but where I can survive my death: they seem incoherent or reducible to substance dualism. Thomas Aquinas held a unique hylomorphic view of the human person as essentially composed of body and soul, but where the human soul can survive the death of the body. ‘Survivalists’ have argued that, post mortem, a human person comes to be composed of their soul alone. ‘Corruptionists’ point to Thomas’ texts, where (...) he claims that the human person ceases to exist at death and only a part of one – albeit a special part – persists. With some help from Elizabeth Anscombe, I show that a denial of the semantic and metaphysical assumptions made by both parties on that point gives us a much better solution to the controversy over the personality of the separated soul. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a tension between the Law in the novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H. G. Wells, and Kant's reciprocity thesis. The Law is a series of prohibitions that Moreau has his beasts recite. Moreau devotes his time to transforming animals through a painful surgery into beings that resemble humans, but the humanized beasts are constantly slipping back into animalistic habits, and so Moreau promulgates the Law to maintain decorum. Kant's reciprocity thesis states that free (...) will is the necessary and sufficient condition of moral practical laws. That is, in order for a moral practical law to be applicable, there must be free will, and, if free will is present, then there will be a moral practical law that sets a standard for the free will. However, in Wells's novel, the humanized beasts seem to lack free will. So, how can a law be applicable to them? By delving deeper into the mystery of Moreau's strange island, I will shed light on the otherwise cumbersome concepts of free will, natural impulses, and practical laws, as well as their interrelationships. The upshot will be a deeper understanding of personhood through an exploration of the instinctual nature of animals, moral law, and free will. (shrink)

Whether or not it is coherent to place hope in a future life beyond the grave has become a central question in the larger debate about whether a materialist view of human persons can accommodate Christian belief. Hud Hudson defends a four-dimensional account of resurrection in order to avoid persistent difficulties experienced by three-dimensionalist animalism. I present two difficulties unique to Hudson’s view. The first problem of counterpart hope is a manifestation of a general weakness of four-dimensional views to (...) accommodate adequately prudential concern about one’s future self. More significantly, the second problem of quasi hope demonstrates that even if a temporal parts view can accommodate the possibility of future resurrection it necessarily leaves human beings in the dark about their individual futures and thus incapable of hope. I conclude that whatever its merits in demonstrating the possibility of resurrection, four-dimensionalist materialism cannot accommodate veridical Christian hope. (shrink)

The human mind is central to comprehend and manoeuvre the natural world. Though it is the crown expression of Nature in the mortal world, it is inherently inconsistent. It is often captivated by many animalistic habits. One of the animalistic habits of mind is its fickleness. Sikh theology emphasizes that one must learn how to control and transform one’s mind to come out of this condition. An individual can do so by diverting his/her mind from its feral inclinations and turning (...) it to the mind’s innate longing for spiritual enlightenment. Sikh doctrines assert that the contemplation on God (imbibing love of God in one’s life) helps restrain the mind and attain self-realization and everlasting equipoise. (shrink)

The paper discusses the arguments for and against animalism and concludes that a pluralist position which rejects animalism and embraces a multiplicity of thinkers is the best option.

The human mind possesses matchless creativity and extensive capacity to create its own reality. It has a remarkable capability for contemplation, reflection and even manipulation. Sadly, the excellent human mind has been polluted by the rituals, dogmas, and deceptions of cultures, religions and politics. Its fickleness leads to its being held captive by maya (material world). In his hymns, Guru Tegh Bahadur enunciates that the fickleness of the mind is the primary cause of unhappiness and failure in achieving our prescribed (...) life goals. The Guru urges that a human being can restrain and channelize one's mental energies, by diverting one's mind from its animalistic tendencies and turning it to the mind's innate longing for spiritual enlightenment. He asserts that with the continual longing for the Divine Grace and having a compassionate and contented attitude, one can achieve the goal of harnessing one's mind. (shrink)

The project takes as its starting point our conflicting intuitions about personal identity exposed by Bernard Williams' thought experiment involving the switching of bodies in "The Self and the Future." The conflicted intuitions are identified as animalist and psychologist and correspond roughly with the two major approaches to personal identity. The traditional strategy to resolve the conflict---thought experiments---is critically examined and the project concludes that proper thought experiments will reveal the conflict but are unlikely to resolve it. A new reading (...) of the conflict is proposed. The concept of the person is a cluster concept with distinct components: biological human beings, rational agency and psychological continuity, where the latter is construed as the temporal analog of phenomenological unity at a time. The project then suggests that moral theory is best pursued not by a naturalist conception of persons that unites the components of the cluster, but by a novel conception that separates them. This can be accomplished best by eliminating the concept of the person altogether. Objections that the concept of the person is ineliminable are considered and rejected, as are objections that the nature of conflict is not reason enough to abandon the concept. Personhood's centrality for value theory is questioned and the eliminativist strategy is defended on the grounds that responsibility, self-concern and moral rights are best analyzed with the component concepts instead of the cluster concept. Eliminativism is therefore preferable to competing accounts of personal identity because the former is better suited for moral theory. Among the advantages are the ability to: attribute responsibility to group agents without calling them persons, make sense of our conflicting demonstrations of self-concern without taking them as evidence for conflicting theories of personal identity, and attribute moral rights to entities who fail to meet traditional criteria for personhood but who are nonetheless entitled to moral respect. (shrink)

This paper introduces three new criteria that a theory of personal identity ought to satisfy: (1) material holism, (2) narrative unity, and (3) narrative integrity. Material holism guards against the undesirable consequence of positing the person as part and existentially distinct from the organismal whole, of which it is dependent and interconnected. Narrative unity ensures that continuity between the beginning, middle, and end of a human life is sufficiently accounted for. Narrative integrity secures fidelity and congruence between each part and (...) the whole, the whole to each part. Jeff McMahan’s Embodied Mind Account (EM) fails to satisfy each of these. On McMahan’s account, human persons and human organisms are distinct entities, human persons come into existence after its human organism, and human persons may go out of existence before their human organism. Moreover, fetuses, infants, the congenitally severely cognitively impaired, those with severe dementia, and the comatose are non-persons. A theory of personal identity that incorporates holism and narrative can provide a better explanation of human existence, life and death, and the identity paradox of dicephalic twins. If accepted, EM must either be rejected or ameliorated, and the new criteria ought to be incorporated in contemporary research of personal identity. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of Marya Schechtman's theory of personal identity defended in her book Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life.

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)

Revisionary ontologists are making a comeback. Quasi-nihilists, like Peter van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks, insist that the only composite objects that exist are living things. Unrestriced universalists, like W.V.O. Quine, David Lewis, Mark Heller, and Hud Hudson, insist that any collection of objects composes something, no matter how scattered over time and space they may be. And there are more besides. The result, says Eli Hirsch, is that many commonsense judgments about the existence or identity of highly visible physical objects (...) are a priori necessarily false. In a “last ditch effort” to bring revisionary ontologists back to their senses, Hirsch marshalls what he calls the Argument from Charity. We can be sure that there are tables and chairs and that there are no fusions of Plato’s nose and the Eiffel Tower, says Hirsch, because these commonsense platitudes are a logical consequence of the well-known principle of interpretive charity applied to natural languages, like English. In what follows, I assess the Argument from Charity. My conclusion is that if this is the best we can do to save revisionary ontologists, they are surely lost forever. (shrink)

The persistence problem in relation to us is usually approached from a point of view that gives priority to psychological continuity. My goal in this paper is to advance an argument against it. In order to do so, I start defining the notion of identity and showing the problems that arise from the concept of diachronic identity. Psychological continuity as a criterion of identity for things like us emerges in this context. And, since the mental supervenes on the physical, those (...) who hold this thesis are compelled to say that, in our case, that of human animals, there is a relation of coincidence, and not of identity, between animal and person. This results in several obstacles for determining who of these two entities I am. (shrink)