Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author's Abstract

1. Two theories - animalism¹ and Lockeanism - compete for favor in the contemporary debate over personal identity.
2. The aim of this paper is to criticize the Lockean bias that their capacity for self-consciousness² renders persons metaphysically unique vis-à-vis other animals - 'unique' in the sense that the conditions whose satisfaction is necessary and sufficient for the persistence of persons differ in kind from the persistence conditions³ of all other animals.
3. I argue that this uniqueness claim is both philosophically untenable and empirically implausible, and that its failure necessitates a reassessment of the debate between animalism⁴ and Lockeanism.
4. The burden, I conclude, should rest with the latter to disprove the former - which is to say, animalism⁵ ought to be considered the default position in the debate over personal identity.