Thesis - Personal Identity
Todman (Theo)
Paper - Abstract

Paper StatisticsNotes Citing this PaperLink to Latest Write-Up Note

Introductory Notes

  1. This Paper is firstly a place to record time spent on my Thesis Document1. See ‘Paper Statistics’ above for that. Note that the bulk of the time spent on my Thesis is logged against either the Chapters in the fully on-line Thesis2, or against the (papers associated with) the numerous Notes that make it up.
  2. The version of the Thesis Document that was active when this Paper was last updated appears below.
  3. I’ve added a list of outstanding actions as an Appendix3 to the Thesis.

Write-up4 (as at 15/02/2026 00:07:12): Thesis - Personal Identity

Preface
Argument Schema
Chapter 1 - Introduction25
  1. General Surveys26
  2. Locke27
  3. Forensic Property28
  4. Psychology & The Psychological View
    1. The Psychological View29
    2. Psychology30
    3. Psychological Criterion31
    4. Memory34
    5. Sleep37
  5. Other Philosophers of Note
    1. Descartes38
    2. Leibniz39
    3. Lewis40
    4. Parfit41

Chapter 2: What are We42
  1. What are We?43
  2. Candidates for what we are, considered in later Chapters
    1. Human Animals44: Chapter 645.
    2. Organisms46: Chapter 647.
    3. Persons48: Chapter 349.
    4. Patterns in Information Space50”. Chapter 1051.
  3. Candidates for what we are, considered in this Chapter
    1. Human Beings52
    2. Bodies53
    3. Brains56
    4. Souls61
    5. Selves64
    6. Patterns in Information Space74
    7. Bundle Theories75
    8. Hybrid Theories77
    9. Nihilism78

Chapter 3: What is a Person?80
  1. Qualities of Personhood
    1. Person81
    2. Free Will82
    3. Intelligence83
    4. Language84
    5. Social85
  2. Personality86
  3. Who is a Person?
    1. Human Persons87
    2. Non-Human Persons88
    3. Degrees of Personhood89
    4. Wantons90
  4. The Persistence of Persons
    1. Reductionism91
    2. The Simple View92
  5. Unity of the Person93
    1. Counting Persons94
    2. Personites95
  6. Taking Persons Seriously96

Chapter 4: Basic Metaphysical Issues97
  1. Metaphysics98
  2. Logic of Identity99
    1. Numerical Identity100
    2. Similarity101
    3. Criteria of Identity102
    4. Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle103
    5. Heterodox Views
  3. Ontology113
    1. Existence114
    2. Mind115
    3. Matter116
    4. Kinds119
    5. Artifacts123
  4. Substance & Process
    1. Individuals125
    2. Substance126
    3. Process Metaphysics129
  5. Convention130
    1. Concepts131
    2. Fiction133
  6. Explanation134
    1. Probability135

Chapter 5: Persistence and Time136
  1. Change137
    1. Causality138
    2. Properties139
    3. Thisness (Haecceity)141
  2. Time142
    1. Time Travel143
  3. Modality144
  4. Persistence145
    1. Persistence Criteria146
    2. Continuity147
    3. Theories of Persistence
  5. Does Identity Matter?
    1. Survival154
    2. What Matters155

Chapter 6: Animalism and Arguments for It156
  1. Animalism157
    1. Human Animals158
    2. Biological View160
    3. Biological Criterion161
    4. Animalists162
  2. Organisms165
    1. Life166
    2. Plants169
    3. Evolution170
  3. Animals173
    1. Animal Rights174
  4. Arguments for Animalism175
    1. Thinking Animal Argument176

Chapter 7: The Constitution View and Arguments for It177
  1. Constitution178
    1. Mereology179
    2. Hylomorphism181
  2. Constitution View182
    1. Lynne Rudder Baker183
    2. First-Person Perspective184
    3. Coincident Objects185
  3. Christian Materialism191
    1. Religion192

Chapter 8: Arguments Against Animalism193
  1. Arguments against Animalism194
  2. Dicephalus195
  3. Pregnancy196

Chapter 9: Arguments Against the Constitution View201
  1. Arguments against the Constitution View202
  2. Holes & Smiles203

Chapter 10:Thought Experiments204
  1. Thought Experiments205
    1. Intuition206
    2. Future Great Pain Test207
  2. Principal Examples - Natural
    1. Clones208
    2. Fission209
    3. Fusion213
    4. Psychopathology215
  3. Principal Examples - Artificial
    1. Brain State Transfer219
    2. Brain Transplants220
    3. Siliconisation221
    4. Dracula222
    5. Teletransportation223
  4. Transhumanism225
    1. Nearby Hopes
    2. Far Off Hopes

Chapter 11:Resurrection231
  1. Death232
    1. Near Death Experiences233
    2. Out of Body Experiences234
    3. Persistent Vegetative State235
  2. Life After Death236
    1. Resurrection237
    2. Reincarnation238
  3. Interim States
    1. Corpses239
    2. Disembodied Existence240
    3. Interregnum241
  4. Immortality242
    1. Ivan Ilych243
    2. Makropulos Case244

Chapter 12:Conclusion245
Chapter 1: Introduction246

Abstract
  1. This Chapter provides a motivating statement for the study of the particular path through the topic of Personal Identity I have decided to pursue and gives a brief historical survey of the subject to situate my particular stance.
  2. Why should we care about the topic of Personal Identity? In one sense, this question of “why” hardly needs answering, as it’s just about the most important question to be posed by a reflective (if maybe self-obsessed) person.
  3. Historically, answers to the question of what Personal Identity consists in have provided – or so Locke hoped – grounds for the possibility of life after death.
  4. Yet, the question of what personal identity consists in is difficult and has had many attempted solutions offered. While some philosophers247 think there is no problem left to solve, there is no consensus as to the solution. In any case, before we can answer this question, we need to clarify it and decide what sort of beings we persons are.
  5. My favourite paradigm – in the sense of the one I think most likely to be correct, rather than necessary the one I’d like to be correct – is Animalism248. This is the claim that we are human animals and that consequently death is the end of us. This sensible – if to many disappointing – view is only supported by around 17% of philosophers, according to a 2009 poll249 with about twice as many philosophers supporting some form of psychological view250.
  6. In one sense it is just obvious that we are – in some sense of that weasel word “are” – human animals. But then the problem cases kick in – whether actual real-life cases or thought experiments (hereafter ‘TEs’) that may never be real-life possibilities.
  7. About 36% of the respondents in the aforementioned survey though we could survive teletransportation251 – though 31% thought that the result would be death.
  8. Transhumanists252 think we can be uploaded253 to computers, which makes no sense if we are animals. Or so I claim.
  9. So, how did we get to this lack of consensus?

Chapter Introduction
  1. This chapter could cover more ground than any number of PhD Theses. Its purpose is simply to prepare the ground – and clear the way – for detailed investigation of the dispute between Animalism254 and the Constitution View255, as well as to demonstrate that I do – at least to some degree – understand more of the wider question than that in the narrower focus pursued in detail later.
  2. There are many fine introductory books – and General Surveys256 – on the topic of Personal Identity, and I don’t intend to compete with them here. What I want to do is situate what I want to say in its historical context. I haven’t supplied this section with a detailed scholarly apparatus.
  3. Of course, the modern discussion of Personal Identity has been a series of footnotes to Locke257, so it’s important to understand just what Locke thought on the subject, what positive insights he had, and how – in my view – he led us all astray on the subject. One positive aspect of his thought is to stress that the topic is a Forensic258 one; it has ethical implications and motivations.
  4. Historically – and indeed presently – the majority of philosophers (and probably most ordinary people) hold to some form of Psychological View259 of personal identity. Our Psychology260 is deemed so important to us that it is (allegedly) constitutive of what we are. The Psychological Criterion261 is supposed to explain how we persist over time.
  5. We need to analyse Psychological Continuity262 in general, but the backward form falls prey to reduplication objections: multiple distinct individuals may consider themselves the psychological continuers of a single individual, but the logic of identity263 denies that this is possible. But, it’s difficult to gainsay the psychological view in the face of experiential Forward Psychological Continuity264. If it seems to me that I continue to exist during some adventure during which I’m continually conscious, it would be difficult to deny that I do; or so it seems to me.
  6. There’s a major sub-plot of the psychological view to do with Memory265, which – while admitted not to be the only psychological element of importance – has been beset with problems since Locke’s days, having been refined into quasi-memory266 to avoid begging the question. David Lewis’s Methuselah267 thought-experiment also stresses the memory-criterion.
  7. Finally, there’s the question of dreamless Sleep268. Just what happens to the persistence of the person during this period, in the absence of either the Body or the Organism defining identity?
  8. In this section, I at least briefly discuss the positions of some of the major philosophers who have held neo-Lockean views (or other views not discussed later in this thesis). This would be an endless task, and the ones chosen – Descartes269, Leibniz270, Hume271, David Lewis272 and Derek Parfit273 – are those that happen to have come up274.

Main Text: Brief historical survey of the topic of Personal Identity
  1. General Surveys275
    1. Before starting on the detail of research in Personal Identity, it is necessary to be familiar with the terrain. This involves reading some general introductory books and reading the papers in the standard collections.
    2. There are many fine introductory books on this topic, and I don’t intend to compete with them here. What I want to do is situate what I want to say in its historical context.
    3. A good place to start to survey the field is with "Olson (Eric) - Personal Identity - Oxford Bibliographies Online". I seem to have everything, more or less, on this list – though the list deals with more than general surveys.
    4. The majority of the Introductory texts276 and general surveys that treat of Personal Identity were compiled in the last century and reflect the concerns of the time, which was basically the dispute between holders of the then majority position – the Psychological View277 (PV) – and those supportive of the Body Criterion278. The latter view, which will be discussed in Chapter 2279, has largely been replaced by the Biological Criterion280 (Animalism281), though the Brain Criterion282 is still somewhat popular in preserving the advantages of both the PV and the Body Criterion.
  2. Locke283
    1. Locke was responsible for setting the terms of engagement for the modern discussion of Personal Identity.
    2. It was Locke who first – or at least most famously – made the distinction between the Person284 and the ‘Man’.
    3. The ‘Man’ is these days variously cashed out as the Human Being285 or Human Animal286, though for much of the time since Locke the division has been between the Mind287 (thought of as what the person really is) and the Body288.
    4. It is occasionally claimed that philosophers prefer the mind to the body, and are naturally inclined to take the “mental” side in these debates. While that may be true, the consciousness envisaged as definitive of our identity is not that of philosophical contemplation, but the everyday sort enjoyed by cobblers and the rest of us. It includes appreciation of all things bodily, and is the ground of everything that matters289 to us.
    5. Locke was correct in saying that the term Person290 is a forensic concept291; that is, it has to do with ethical matters. He was also right to connect the topic to the then concern with Resurrection292.
    6. However, while he’s correct to distinguish the person from the “man”, I believe him to be wrong in supposing that the “person” is separable from the “man”.
    7. Rather, we293 are human beings (human animals294) who happen to have the property295 of being persons, maybe – and contentiously – only possessing that property for periods of our lives. This property cannot be transferred to some other entity or – if it can – that ‘other entity’ has undergone a change rather than becoming the new container for a mobile and ghostly entity.
    8. For Locke, the Person296 is individuated by a locus of consciousness and extends as far at that consciousness297 extends. No doubt for much of the time since Locke, this locus of consciousness was thought of as an immaterial Soul298, though Locke himself wasn’t specific that this is the case, which makes the thought experiments299 – from Locke’s ‘Prince and Cobbler’ onwards – easier to credit. However, for some time, immaterial souls have not been an option for most philosophers.
    9. All I otherwise have to say on Locke is covered by my final-year BA essay300.
  3. Forensic Property301
    1. Locke302’s recognition that there are important Forensic – that is, moral – aspects to the topic of Personal Identity is as true today as in his own day, even though we might not share his primary concern in justifying the importance of identifying the resurrected303 with the pre-mortem individuals.
    2. Animalism304 says that psychology has nothing to do with the metaphysics of our identity – in that we continue on as the same animal – if we do – irrespective of our psychological states and history. While this may be true, most of what matters305 to us in our Survival306 is psychological, and ethical, and our concerns about praise and blame, and especially punishment, remain.
    3. Also, forensic matters are central to the Concept307 of Person308, even if we are309 not – most fundamentally – persons, and Person is an honorific rather than a Substance310 term.
    4. Forensic matters are central to discussions as to whether – and if so why – all human beings311 are persons for the entirety of their lives.
    5. Finally, Animalism is especially well-motivated in considering – for forensic reasons – whether certain Non-Human Animals312 are suitable for admission to the class of Person, maybe of reduced degree313.
    6. I reject Frankfurt’s proposal (see "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person") that wantons314 are not persons315, on the grounds that they do satisfy the other standard conditions of personhood: they satisfy rationality and linguistic conditions, have a first-person perspective316 and survival317 matters318 to them.
    7. The issue of the punishment of already-reformed or amnesiac criminals has been thought relevant to issues of personal identity, as though any reluctance to punish was tied to doubts about identity. Such doubts only reflect confusion on the purpose of punishment; it depends whether we think of punishment as reformative, retributive, a deterrent, or merely treat incarceration or execution as a necessary evil for the protection of society319 (by eliminating the source of harm).
    8. Only if we think of punishment as reformative, so there’s no point punishing the seriously repentant, might we have doubts about the propriety of carrying out the punishment. However, the reason isn’t that the criminal is a different person but that the needed reformation has already taken place.
    9. From the other perspectives, for instance the retributive, there is still a point to the punishment of the already-reformed criminal (cf. C.S. Lewis’s advice – probably in "Lewis (C.S.) - Mere Christianity" – to the converted murderer as to his Christian duty – it is “to be hanged”; presumably because this was, in Lewis’s day, his debt to the state, to which, as a good Christian, he must submit), and the temptation to provide reasons not to doesn’t arise.
    10. With respect to amnesiacs, again there’s only a reluctance to punish on the reformatory view, but again the reluctance has nothing to do with questions of identity, but of the attempt at reformation being ineffective or even counter-productive. If I’m punished for something I can’t remember doing, I’m likely to resent the authority that punishes me.
    11. There is a question of whether persons320, as distinct from human beings321, are the subjects of special moral concern, or whether it is the reverse implication – that those for whom we feel a special moral concern should be accounted persons.
    12. Whether all persons are morally equal is another matter altogether. This is relevant because if the Great Apes were to be counted as persons, of what moral status would they be? See "Rachels (James) - Morality without the Idea that Humans are Special", in "Rachels (James) - Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism", for “Moral Individualism”, the view that difference of moral treatment should depend only on the individual’s characteristics, not their group membership, though thus baldly-stated this raises huge questions.
    13. The Great Ape Project (absurdly, it seems to me; see "Cavalieri (Paola) & Singer (Peter), Eds. - The Great Ape Project - Equality Beyond Humanity") demands moral equality between humans and the great apes, on the grounds that the latter have intellectual capabilities on a par with human 2-3 year-olds. Even human beings aren’t equal in their capacities, but we can invent a law demanding that we treat them equally, and we can enact a law extending this moral equality to encompass the great apes, or even stones, if we like. If the great apes satisfy the criteria for personhood, they are persons, but the right to equality of treatment is only loosely connected to capacities.
  4. Psychology & The Psychological View
    1. Introduction
      1. In the arguments between those supporting psychological continuity322 and connectedness323, and those preferring bodily continuity324, the question what we are325 often seems to have been forgotten. Maybe it has often been assumed that Person326 is a substance327-concept?
      2. This is still assumed by those who think that Persons – whether as Souls328 or reified First-Person Perspectives329 – are separable from the infrastructure that – in normal circumstances – “grounds” them.
      3. But, for most people these days it is – or ought to be – obvious that the default position is that “we” are human animals, and that the consequences that stem from this have to be lived with.
      4. But it is difficult not to be – and maybe correct not to be – satisfied with this. We may end up with a “Hybrid330” account: we are animals, but even so, we “go where our psychology goes”. In particular, the brain transplant331 intuition is difficult to escape from.
      5. If this is so, the answers to our questions will rest on just where our “psychology” does – or can (in the widest sense) – “go”.
      6. Transhumanists332 imagine all sorts of scenarios whereby “we” are uploaded333 to a computer. Even were this practical it assumes that “we” are our mental contents rather than the things that enjoy these contents. This strikes me as continuing a mistaken route in the history of philosophy taken by supporters of the psychological view334, and continued by Parfit335 and his supporters.
    2. The Psychological View336
      1. The Psychological View – hereafter the PV – is the view, originating with Locke337, that the matter of primary importance in matters of personal identity is psychological continuity338 (or maybe of psychological connectedness339). Indeed, this view – which was dominant until fairly recently (and maybe still is, given the Bourget & Chalmers survey) – is stronger, in saying that psychological continuity and connectedness are constitutive of Personal Identity.
      2. No-one denies that our psychology340 is important to us341, but making it constitutive of our identity has led to much confusion and paradox.
      3. I think, however, that Elselijn Kingma is incorrect in diagnosing the popularity of the PV as due to philosophers being intellectuals.
      4. The PV encourages the idea that the same human being342 may not be the same person343 throughout its life344, or that the same person may “hop” from one human being to another as has been considered in many TEs345.
      5. I wish to deny both these possibilities.
    3. Psychology346
      1. If we adopt the Psychological View347 of Personal Identity – which I don’t – then it is psychological factors that are important in determining our persistence criteria348.
      2. However, while these factors do matter349 to the survivor350, they don’t matter in the binary sense of “have I survived or not” unless we take the Psychological View351 and make such factors constitutive of personal identity. As an animalist352, I do not.
      3. Supporters of the PV353 - or even the CV354 - tend to stress the discontinuity between the psychologies of human and non-human animals355. Animalists356 tend to focus on similarities, or continuities, as an evolutionary argument for animalism357.
      4. Because Psychology is so important to us, it is important to consider just what is important in it, and how it is grounded in our brains358 and bodies359. The idea of the Embodied Mind360 is very important when we consider phantastical ideas such as Uploading361.
      5. We must consider not just memory362 but other psychological capacities, including character.
    4. Psychological Criterion363
      1. The Psychological Criterion is the use of psychological facts as a criterion of personal identity, as definitive of whether we persist or not. So (on this view) if we want to know whether a person survives or not, it’s matters of psychological continuity or connectedness that we must investigate.
      2. In general, doubts arise about whether an individual has persisted if there are too radical changes in its properties in
        1. a short space of time (failure of continuity) or
        2. over longer stretches of time (failure of connectedness).
      3. These factors can be in tension364, as had been noted since Reid’s “Brave Officer” objection to Locke’s “memory criterion”, and Lewis’s Methuselah365 case. Identity is an equivalence relation, so transitivity is expected. Yet it is not necessarily respected in the case of memory – because continuous so-called memory-identity fails to lead to connectedness over long periods of time.
      4. Another factor I have noted is that there’s a distinction between the evidential force of forward and backward psychological continuity, covered later.
      5. Roughly speaking, the Psychological View (PV)366 of Personal Identity is that which argues that
        1. Questions of our identity are settled by psychological facts.
        2. We are most fundamentally psychological beings.
        3. We come and go when our psychology comes into or goes out of existence.
        4. We cannot survive radical changes to our psychology.
        5. And so on.
      6. I reject this whole approach if matters of identity are uppermost in our minds. However, if we’re talking about what matters to us in survival, then psychology is obviously important.
      7. In relation to the above distinction between continuity and connectedness, …
        1. See "Blackburn (Simon) - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?" for what Blackburn calls the Unity Reaction367: we cannot envision fissioning368: our FPP369 would just seem to go on in one direction only.
        2. Because of reduplication370 problems – as in the “inconceivable” fission case above – at least in the absence of perdurantism371 – no amount of backward psychological continuity is sufficient for identity.
      8. This is all rather complex:
        1. We anticipate forward psychological continuity – and while we’re continuously conscious, this is what we experience, and this seems to be evidentially sound.
        2. Yet our checking is always based on backward psychological continuity. But, in the absence of evil demons, this doesn’t seem to be a problem.
        3. The issue arises in the case of traumatic cases of discontinuous consciousness, where we don’t know how we arrived in our present state. We’d then need to rely on third parties. My point is that no amount of inner conviction is sufficient proof, as distinct from when we are continuously conscious.
      • Psychological Continuity372
        1. Like any persisting thing, the persistence373 of a psychology requires continuity to an appropriate degree of the entity supposedly persisting: hence ‘psychological continuity’.
        2. I’m not quite sure what ‘a psychology’ is supposed to be, but it is supposedly constitutive of personal identity for those accepting the Psychological View374
        3. Popularly, we say that an individual is ‘not the same person’ as they were before if their character or aims differ too much from that former state. Hence, such characteristics would seem to be constitutive of a psychology.
        4. It is usual for someone’s character to develop gradually over time, often in a positive sense, though there may be Dorian Grey like declensions. However, there can also be sudden changes, as when someone has a religious or political conversion experience, though – even there – there is continuity of more general psychological factors.
        5. We are comfortable with gradual changes – new memories are added and lost gradually, and tastes stay fairly constant; knowledge is acquired gradually. But, over time, these gradual changes accumulate to the degree that one might not recognise the child in the adult, say. But usually, we allow that such gradual changes are identity-preserving, even though psychological connectedness375 is to some degree lost.
        6. All this is associated with one’s First Person Perspective376 (FPP), one’s window on the world377 from which standpoint one anticipates the future, enjoys the present, and remembers the past.
        7. So, psychological continuity (and connectedness378) is central to personal identity for those who adopt the Psychological View379. However, it is said by some animalists380 - Eric Olson in particular – to be irrelevant to our survival381, given that we are382 Human Animals383.
        8. Following on from discussions on survival384, maybe the way to put things is that without psychological continuity I might survive, but not with what matters385 to me in survival.
        9. If “Person386” is a phase sortal387 of “Human Animal388”, can there be sequential but different persons within the same animal (as Lewis389 suggests, though not from the perspective of animalism390, in his “Methuselah391” case) or can there be different and encapsulated First Person Perspectives392 (either synchronically – as in MPD393 – or diachronically) within the same animal?
        10. “Person” may indeed come apart from “animal”, but even then, the person cannot “float free” of the animal, but supervenes394 upon it. See the CV395 for this.
        11. I also distinguish between backward and forward psychological continuity396. The former – traditionally involving memory397 and psychological traits – is the usual focus, but it is not necessarily identity-preserving even for those espousing the PV398, on account of reduplication objections399. The same may be true of fission400 of the FPP401, but this is more difficult to imagine.
      • Forward Psychological Continuity402
        1. I think there’s a conceptual difference between:-
          1. Forward psychological continuity, and
          2. Backward psychological continuity.
        2. For example, in the teletransportation403 thought experiment404, it seems to me405 that a new person wakes up, but I don’t wake up, nor do I experience anything, though the new person claims to be me. Incidentally, it’s not just a new person406, but a new human being407 who wakes up.
        3. Imagine the case where408 I’m put into a duplicating machine409 that is intended to take a backup copy of me while preserving the original but where something goes wrong and my body is destroyed by the duplication410 process, though my duplicate wakes up perfectly happily. Then, it seems to me, I411 would never wake up and would have no future experience after entry to the duplicating machine. I would have no forward psychological continuity.
        4. However, my duplicate412 would have backward psychological continuity. Any duplicate of me, looking backward, would consider himself to be “me”, having my memories413, abilities, plans and so forth, and a body looking just like mine. But would I414 ever wake up as the duplicate? My intuition415 on the endurantist416 account, as I have said, is that I would not, though I suspect that on the perdurantist417 account, this might be seen as a case of intended fission418 in which I was intended to wake up twice, provided we consider that the right sort of causality419 is in place.
        5. The above considerations raise issues similar to those in closest continuer420 accounts of personal identity, and the Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle421. How can what happens to someone else affect whether (so to speak) I am me? How could the “right sort of causality” have anything to do with how I experience things?
        6. Fission is, in any case, hard to imagine happening to oneself. Just what does it mean to “wake up twice”? I dare say one could get one’s head(s) around it. The two selves would then be distinct individuals, with distinct consciousnesses, but with a shared past. On the perdurantist account, we were always distinct, but had stages co-located with everything in common.
        7. I think there are connections here with the topic of Intermittent Existence422. There is backward psychological continuity after putative intermittent existence, but no forward psychological continuity.
        8. Let’s consider forward psychological continuity in everyday life. What ensures forward continuity of consciousness423 in the normal case of sleep424 and temporary unconsciousness? I cannot know “from the inside” that when I awake I’m even the same human being425 as the one that went to sleep in my bed. The reason I believe that I am – rather than that a duplicate body has been created and my psychology transferred into it – is for external reasons: duplication426 is not physically possible (or at least practical), and in any case I have no reason to believe it happened to me last night. Other people assure me that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.
        9. Andy Clark427, raises this question about what ensures psychological continuity – more or less than in the case of Teletransportation – in the case of dreamless sleep, or (hypothetically) being frozen and then thawed out. We might ask what it is in the normal waking case. Maybe the whole thing is related to the arrow of time428 or in the distinctions between forward-looking psychological properties – desires and intentions yet to be satisfied or acted upon – and backward-looking memories of what has already taken place.
        10. This distinction is the sort of question that the Logical Positivists would denounce as meaningless, as no empirical evidence can decide it.
        11. I will try another thought experiment429 I’ve been considering. It’s often said in the literature that if Teletransportation430 became commonplace as a means of travel, and was conventionally431 deemed to be such, rather than as a means of death432, then life would carry on just fine. Indeed, no-one could notice and difference, either from the inside or outside.
        12. Let’s try a variant: imagine (as maybe many US citizens do) that each night when you’re tucked up in bed technologically-advanced aliens spirit you away and perform horrible experiments on you, in the process scanning your whole body so they can replace your mangled corpse with a perfect duplicate of the original that had been sleeping happily, and return this simulacrum to your bed. Naturally, your partner and anyone else would be unaware of any of this. Also, the person who wakes up – just like the teletransportee – would have no reason to think anything amiss. He would consider himself the same person as went to sleep433 the night before. Life would carry on ‘happily’. Yet in this – admittedly phantastical situation – our sleeper only lives for under 24 hours before coming to a grizzly end and being replaced by someone else. His experience ends on the operating table aboard the starship. If the reality became known, no-one would dare go to sleep. Maybe teletransportation is less grizzly, but it leads to the same death and recreation.
        13. Maybe one could cavil at the details of the experiment: maybe it’s just not possible to extract the information from a human body sufficient to create a duplicate434 without destroying the original, so all the medical experimentation isn’t possible without a mangled body being returned, which would certainly be noticed. So, we might need to modify the TE so that your body is scanned – without anaesthetic, of course, to ensure this isn’t an experience you’d be comfortable with – and two copies are created – one for experimentation and the other for returning to bed. Then, one copy-you lives on happily for a day, and the other meets the grizzly end.
        14. Now, what could make the waker the very same consciousness435 as the sleeper in this scenario? Usually, it is said that there needs to be the ‘right sort’ of causal connection436, in particular one internal to the continuant. In this case, there is a causal connection, but it is imposed externally by aliens and their (maybe tendentiously named) duplicating machine. Are objections based on causality of the wrong sort anything more than intuitions that others might not share? I leave this open at the moment.
        15. On the Constitution View437, we are individuated by our First Person Perspective438. As far as I can see, all these duplicates are qualitatively identical439 (that is, exactly similar440), and so are their FPPs.
    5. Memory441
      1. Obviously, if I were to become tempted by the Psychological View442 (PV) of personal identity, I would have to give a detailed account of memory here. But as I’m not, I won’t.
      2. Though quasi-memory443 is the more relevant concept for those espousing the Psychological Criterion444, it depends on the concept of memory itself.
      3. While neither version of memory is constitutive of personal identity, even for those who espouse the PV, memories represent much of what matters445 to us in Survival446.
      4. In this regard, I might note in passing that some of the supposed memories that matter most to us may not be true accounts of what actually happened – assuming there even is such a single true account, and especially one that includes any ‘mattering’, in the first place.
      5. It may be his supposed memories that convince the experiencer thereof that he has survived some escapade in a TE447 when in fact he has not.
      6. Loss of memory – amnesia – occurs as a regular trope in Thought Experiments448 associated with the PV. We are asked to consider whether such memory-loss is sufficient – on this view – to make it the case that one Person449 ‘dies450’ (or, at least, ceases to exist) and another comes to be.
      7. As a reminder, there are two forms of amnesia:-
        1. Retrograde Amnesia: see "Wikipedia - Retrograde amnesia". This condition can occur in cases of trauma where all memories prior to the date of the injury are lost. More recent events can be remembered (and forgotten) as normal.
        2. Anterograde Amnesia: see "Wikipedia - Anterograde amnesia". In this case, a brain injury or other factors prevent the laying down and recall of memories after a particular date. See "Wearing (Deborah) - Forever Today - A Memoir of Love and Amnesia", for example. Earlier memories can usually be recalled as normal.
      8. I just remark here that there’s a distinction between the loss of memory and failure to recall. This applies to retrograde amnesia and – of course – in everyday life for most of us. In anterograde amnesia, the condition is not – in real life cases – so severe that no memories are saved at all, but they only retained briefly and are lost in a matter of minutes, as in the case in the book cited above.
      • Quasi-Memory451
        1. One problem with Locke’s memory theory of Personal Identity452 is that it is prima facie circular. A memory can properly only be had by the person who had the experience, so cannot be used to analyse “Person453”.
        2. However, “Quasi-” prefixes do not presuppose ownership.
        3. Snowdon puts it this way454:-
          1. There is a causal linkage L linking a person’s memory to that person’s history.
          2. There is – we may suppose – a neural trace laid down at the time, and re-activated during an act of remembering.
          3. This trace might be transferred – again we may suppose – to some other subject by micro-surgery.
          4. This new subject thereby Q-remembers an event that he did not experience.
          5. So, since Q-remembering does not presuppose the identity of the person doing the Q-remembering with the person involved in the event Q-remembered, Q-predicates can without circularity be used to analyse personal identity in terms of psychological continuity and connectedness.
          6. Or so it is said.
        4. In "Snowdon (Paul) - The Self and Personal Identity" (reviewed here455), Paul Snowdon attributes the establishment of the terminology to "Parfit (Derek) - How We Are Not What We Believe", pp. 219-23, and a major critique to "Wiggins (David) - Personal Identity".
      • Methuselah456
        1. David Lewis’s Methuselah thought experiment457 - in "Lewis (David) - Survival and Identity" - seems to be a reductio ad absurdum of the psychological connectedness458 approach to personal identity.
        2. I’m unimpressed by Lewis459’s solution. Firstly, can there really be an uncountable infinity of persons460 residing in a single body461? But why not? Lewis thrived on pressing credibility so we might let this pass.
        3. The “no prudential concern for the future” argument also seems to be another reductio of the connectedness approach. If I’m not the same person as the future occupant of my body, why make provisions for him. Yet, he’ll share my first-person perspective462 and I’ll be psychologically continuous463 with him.
        4. Of course, Lewis’s model (of a 137-year cut-off for psychological connectedness) is admittedly too crude. Parfit464 sees temporally extended persons as persons of reduced degree465, according to the degree of connectedness. However, this seems to destroy the natural growth and maturation of the person.
        5. I’m still the same person as was my immature self, even though most of my hopes and desires have changed. If I’m in control of my life, I own these changes, brought them about, and often think them for the good.
        6. What about where I don’t own them, but regret my corruption (moral and physical)? It’s still my corruption that I regret. I’m the same human being466.
        7. It depends what concept467 we want to use the term “person” for. We always have to distinguish personality468 from persons.
        8. Finally, consider Saul Kripke on individuation by origin469. Is this a possible objection to overlapping persons? If a person’s origin is what individuates470 him, how is it possible for persons to have vague471,472 origins as in an un-simplified Methusalah case? There are two issues here that need spelling out.
    6. Sleep473
      1. In the context of Parfit’s474 Teletransportation475 TE476, the thought477 is that the “pulling yourself together” that the individual does on awaking is very closely analogous to what happens in the “reception pod” in teletransportation. If this is right, then either the awakening sleeper is not identical to the one who went to sleep, or the teletransportee is indeed identical to the individual who set off, and teletransportation is indeed a form of travel.
      2. I don’t believe any of this. However, it needs to be considered carefully as it’s central to the Psychological View478, which says – roughly speaking – that we are479 most fundamentally mental substances, and there has – since Descartes – been an issue about whether the thinking thing has to be continually thinking, and the dreamless sleep was the classic case of when it appeared not to be.
      3. Another context in which the word “sleep” is used is in the New Testament (Pauline) account of (believers’) death480 – and the state of the dead between death and resurrection481, which is described as “sleep”. This is also referenced in Hamlet’s soliloquy (“perchance to dream482”).
      4. There’s a mildly heretical Christian view – called “soul sleep” by detractors (though those that hold the view tend not to believe in immaterial souls) – that the individual experiences nothing between death and resurrection483.
      5. Of course, we refer to the euthanasia of animals as “putting to sleep”, but this isn’t understood to mean anything significant about the post-mortem state of the animal484.
  5. Other Philosophers of Note485
    1. Introduction
      1. Apart from Locke, discussed above, almost every major philosopher – both historical and contemporary – has had something to say about personal identity, whether or not it has been a major area of concern. How could it be otherwise?
      2. I have chosen a few that have featured in my researches. Some of these – together with other philosophers – will appear again in later Chapters.
    2. Descartes486
      1. Descartes is important as the initiator within modern philosophy of the psychological view487 that we are488 thinking things (res cogitans).
      2. He also initiated the use of Thought Experiments489 in the topic of personal identity. In my view he introduced (or confirmed) the muddle within philosophy that what is (clearly and distrinctly) conceivable is possible490. This will be considered in Chapter 10491.
      3. He will be considered further in the Chapter 2492, under the head of Cartesian Egos493.
    3. Leibniz494
      1. I’m uncertain whether I will have anything to say on Leibniz apart from Leibniz’s Law(s), which are covered under the Logic of Identity495.
      2. However, Leibniz’s critique of Locke’s account of personal identity, in "Leibniz (Gottfried) - What Identity Or Diversity Is", may be worth following up.
      3. As may his wider criticism of Locke in "Leibniz (Gottfried), Remnant (Peter), Bennett (Jonathan) - New Essays on Human Understanding", though I suspect life’s too short.
    4. Lewis496
      1. David Lewis’s views on personal identity are characterised by his espousal of perdurantism497.
      2. As is discussed under that Note, perdurantist metaphysics avoids the reduplication498 problems for identity-preservation following fission499. See also my Note on Counting Persons500.
      3. Lewis is also important for espousing realism with respect to possible worlds. The modal501 counterpart relation is used as an analogy in exdurantism502. I will not discuss any of this here.
      4. Lynne Rudder Baker charges Lewis with trying to reduce the First Person Perspective503.
      5. Lewis discusses the Thought Experiment504 of Methuselah505, important for the Psychological View506 of personal identity. Lewis espouses the PV507 and thinks that several Persons508 can exist successively in a single human animal509.
    5. Parfit510
      1. Parfit is famous for the dictum “identity is not what matters in survival”.
        1. I have a note – What Matters511 on this, which I cover along with other general metaphysical matters in Chapter 4512.
        2. My view remains that there must be some confusion in this dictum, in that survival513 is the same as persistence514, and without identity there is no persistence, so identity is a necessary condition for survival and must, therefore, “matter”.
        3. There may well be situations wherein other things matter – either to others or to myself – more than my survival, but this is not the same thing.
        4. Also, Parfit espouses a psychological view515 of personal identity, and has many interesting things to say on whether – given the psychological difference between myself now and my future self – I should make provision for someone to whom I am only weakly psychologically connected516, and whether others should honour advance directives made by my former self517.
        5. My view on that remains that I’m stuck with my FPP518, which persists (though it may degrade) through all the changes in my psychology, and that prudence demands that I take this into account. It matters.
      2. In addition, Parfit has invented or refined a number of interesting TEs519 to do with Fission520, Fusion521 or Teletransportation522, which will receive attention in their due place in Chapter 10523.
Concluding Remarks
  1. To make any progress on this topic, we need to come to a conclusion as to what sort of thing we are. We discuss this in the next Chapter
Chapter 2: What are We524

Abstract
  1. The topic “personal identity” has historically presupposed that we are (in the sense of “identical to”, or “most fundamentally”) persons, whereas I (along with other animalists) claim that we are identical to human animals.
  2. “We”, therefore, requires explanation.
  3. This chapter will sort out the topic of discussion for the Thesis as a whole.

Chapter Introduction
  1. This Chapter spends most of the time discussing the sort of things that I think we are NOT. Like the preceding Chapter, this one could run and run, so can only provide a superficial summary.
  2. Discussion of our being Persons525 is reserved for Chapter 3526, the next Chapter.
  3. Discussion of our being Organisms527, specifically Human Animals528, is reserved for Chapter 6529.
  4. The first obvious candidate for What We Are530 is Human Beings531, but this is – or has become – a rather obscure term of art in philosophy, not that it’s any clearer in general parlance, where it can mean many things that have their carefully demarcated terms in philosophy.
  5. It was once an up-and-coming idea, in reaction to the Psychological View532, that we might be Bodies533, but this idea has been replaced by Animalism534. The Body Criterion535, despite having the advantage of Bodily Continuity536, is more difficult to define than the persistence of Organisms537.
  6. No-one would think that we are Brains538 unless forced into that corner by various Thought Experiments539 and this leads on to the further possibility that we might be individual Cerebra540. Nevertheless, the Brain Criterion541 should be taken seriously, particularly as the criterion of Brain Death542 for our demise seems to at least incline towards the view that that is what we really are. I’ve included a discussion of Brains in Vats543 in this section, as it covers a number of cases including that we might be living in a Computer-Simulated world.
  7. I will address the concept of a Soul544 as souls were once the major counter-claim to the persisting entity being an animal; or at least popularly so. However – scientific objections aside – the Soul Criterion545 is difficult to make out.
  8. Then, there’s the suggestion that we might be Selves546. This is a highly complex topic, which might be segregated in three main topics:-
    1. Candidates for what the self might be – the ‘I547’, or Cartesian Ego548. The latter leads on to Dualism549.
    2. The connection of the Self with Narrative Identity550; the sort of thing people mean when they say Bloggs is not the same person as he used to be. Because the concept of Race551 as a determinant of narrative identity is so topical, I’m including a discussion in this section.
    3. The reason people think they might be Selves is because they are Self-Conscious552 (ie. conscious of being selves, rather than being shy). Thinking about this requires brief forays into Consciousness553 studies, including Supervenience554, Functionalism555 and philosophical Zombies556.
  9. An intuition557 I do not share is that we might be “Patterns in Information Space558”. This is the sort of intuition that Transhumanists559 have, and will be considered in detail in Chapter 10560.
  10. There are Bundle Theories561, at one time espoused by Hume562, which seem to put the cart before the horse, in saying that we are nothing but bundles of “perceptions”, when – it seems to me – these “perceptions” have to be had by something, and this something – whatever it might be – is what we are.
  11. There may be Hybrid Theories563 which try to get the best bits out of more than one of the main-line theories, usually in response to awkward TEs or unusual circumstances.
  12. Finally, there are Nihilists564 who pretend to deny that we exist at all, or at least – as Buddhists565 committed in the interim to Reincarnation566 – claim that our aim should be not to exist.

Main Text: What are We?
  1. What are We?567
    1. The use of the plural in the question “What Are We?” is significant, as we will see in the course of this Thesis when we consider the social and reciprocal aspects of what it is to be a Person568. However, the determination of “we” as “the sort of entity likely to be reading this paper” isn’t quite right, even though Daniel Dennett and others use similar expressions.
    2. We should refer to the first parts of "Brandom (Robert) - Toward a Normative Pragmatics" in "Brandom (Robert) - Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment" for inspiration on “We”.
    3. “We” implies a reciprocal relationship. We find others (of “our” sort) intelligible, and it is important that they find us intelligible in return. Does this thereby make R = “finds intelligible” an equivalence relation, dividing the world into equivalence classes of mutually intelligible individuals, or does R come in degrees and fall prey to Sorites paradoxes569?
    4. Nonetheless, should we not start with the singular, maybe even solipsist, question “What Am I?”, and expand out from there into the collective question? How we phrase our initial question has an impact on the course of our investigations, and may reflect our deepest intuitions. The first-person question adopts the Cartesian stance of looking from the inside out, whereas the third-person question considers “us” collectively. The first-person question may presuppose that the answer to the question is that I am primarily a psychological being, whereas the third-person question may assume or expect the answer that I am fundamentally physical.
    5. Some of the potential answers to the question will be the same whether we phrase the question in the singular or the plural.
    6. Taking it in the plural for now, we need to distinguish, as candidates for what we might be on the physical side, (prefixing “human-” passim):-
      1. Animals570,
      2. Organisms571,
      3. Bodies572,
      4. Beings573 and
      5. Brains574.
    7. On the psychological side, I might be a Self575 or, more popularly, a Person576. I might even be a non-essentially-embodied entity like a Soul577.
    8. I will consider all these options in due course; with the exception of a detailed discussion of the concept PERSON578 (which is reserved for the Chapter 3579), I will do so later in this chapter.
    9. Olson, in "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology", also considers whether we might be Humean Bundles580 of mental states and events, and even the Nihilist581 view that we don’t exist at all. While I won’t have space for a detailed discussion of all of these possibilities, we need to remain aware of the motivations for these positions.
    10. However, for the moment I want to consider some themes connecting the possible answers to our question. Firstly, does there have to be a single answer? I know that I, and presume that my readers also, fall happily under the concepts HUMAN ANIMAL582, HUMAN ORGANISM583 and HUMAN BEING584. I at least have a human body and a human brain, though I would initially feel reluctant to say that I am one of either of these things. I would certainly claim to be a SELF585, and also a PERSON586, as no doubt would my reader. So, cannot all these answers be correct?
    11. This raises the question of what I mean by saying what I am (or we are) something. In saying that I am any of these things, what sort of relation is the “am”? Am I using am in the sense of an identity relation, a constitution relation, ascribing a predicate, or have some other sense in mind?
    12. There are two kinds of questions I want to ask.
      1. Firstly, what sort of being am I identical to?
      2. Secondly, what sort of properties do I have; both metaphysically essential properties (those without which I would cease to exist), and those I merely consider essential (that is, “very important”, though I would continue to exist without them)?
    13. Any “is” that does duty for the identity relation inherits the formal properties of an equivalence relation; in particular, it is a transitive relation. Additionally, the “two” identical entities either side of the copula must satisfy Leibniz’s law587; “they” share (at a time) all their properties; actual and modal, intrinsic and relational. So, if I am identical to a human animal, and also identical to a human person, then that human animal must be identical to that human person. This would mean that these “two” entities are really one. They co-exist at all times in all possible worlds where either of “them” exists, and share all their properties and relations, at any time and world. Everything that happens to “one” at a world and time happens to the “other” at those coordinates. This places strong logical constraints on how much cake I can have and eat. I may want to say that I am identical both to a human animal, and to a human person, yet claim that a human person has certain mental properties essentially but deny that a human animal does. However, I am then claiming what is logically impossible, at least for the classical logic of identity588 that denies that such notions as relative identity are coherent. As we will see, this point is essential to the animalist case that we are not identical to human persons (given the claim that we are identical to human animals).
    14. My thesis addresses the topic of personal identity, but we might claim that what we’re really interested in is in our identity. Not that we have doubts as individuals as to which particular individual we are (as though I, as Bill Clinton, don’t know whether I am Bill Clinton or George W. Bush), but what sort of individual we are, together with worries about our persistence (how long we are going to last, and in what form). Historically, it has been a standard presupposition that what we are most fundamentally is persons589, or at least that’s all we care about. So, concern about our identity has been elided with concern for personal identity, almost as though we thought that the two questions are the same. Animalists argue that the two questions are indeed different, but for convenience, and the historical continuity of the general topic under discussion, still say they are talking about personal identity.
    15. The above hasn’t attempted to answer our question. Rather, it has sought to consider the sort of desiderata necessary for formulating and answering the question, and for deciding between the various candidate answers, which are considered later on.
    16. No doubt the best place to start is
      → "Olson (Eric) - What Are We?" (the Paper), followed by
      → "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology" (the Book).
  2. Candidates for what we are, considered in later Chapters
    1. Human Animals590: It is my contention that we are identical to human animals, and this view is discussed in detail in Chapter 6591.
    2. Organisms592: This view is a variant of (or component of) the above, and is covered in the same chapter.
    3. Persons593: That we are Persons is the mainstream view, both in philosophy and in common sense. I discuss what Persons are supposed to be, and evaluate the view that that is what we are, in Chapter 3594.
    4. Patterns in Information Space595”. This will be considered in detail in Chapter 10596.
  3. Candidates for what we are, considered in this Chapter
    1. Human Beings597
      1. At first sight, it seems both obvious and uninformative to claim that we are human beings. However, things are not that simple.
      2. Firstly, is there is a difference – real or formal – between human beings and
        1. Human animals598,
        2. Members of the species homo sapiens599 and
        3. Human organisms600?
      3. I assume there’s a distinction between a human being and a human person601, as “person602” is an honorific and – I claim – human persons are phase sortals603 of human animals.
      4. For the primary argument proposing that “we” are human beings, see the – maybe slightly idiosyncratic – work of Mark Johnston in:-
        1. "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings",
        2. "Johnston (Mark) - Reasons and Reductionism", and
        3. "Johnston (Mark) - 'Human Beings' Revisited: My Body is Not an Animal".
      5. Johnston’s view is that human beings are constituted by604 human bodies605. I have two comments on this:-
        1. This superficially sounds like Baker606’s Constitution View607. However, Johnston doesn’t think the human person is separable from the human brain/body as in the case of Baker’s reified FPP608.
        2. Despite this, Johnston doesn’t think that we are (identical to) human animals.
      6. Johnston tries to tread a middle course between animalism609 and the psychological view610.
        1. He wants to be a naturalist – accepting the modern scientific world-picture and rejecting dualism611.
        2. However, because he thinks that what matters612 to us is our mental life, he considers us to be a locus of mental life.
        3. But, this locus is not “inchoate” or “bare” but has to be provided by our organ of mentation – namely the brain613.
        4. Where he differs from the animalists614 is in his response to the brain transplant intuition615 (BTI).
      7. So, for Johnston, a human being is – for usual practical purposes – a human organism, but is only “constituted” by one – it is not identical to one, for two reasons:-
        1. He – along with most people – accepts the BTI, so he thinks you can be “pared down” to a “mere brain” and then transplanted into another human body. That human being would then be you. Also, like Olson616, he doesn’t think “mere brains” are organisms617; but – unlike Olson – he doesn’t consider the human brain to be “just another organ”.
        2. Further, he thinks a human being is necessarily capable of appropriate mental activity. So, in the case of you falling into a PVS618, you – the human being – could be outlived by your human animal.
      8. Thus – for Johnston – “human being” is a rather odd concept: it is a locus of mentation, naturally embodied and not portable other than by transplanting the organ of mentation. The brain isn’t a mere organ, but – if transplanted or a BIV619 – a maximally mutilated human being.
      9. At the moment, I still incline towards animalism – that we are human animals; and that we can survive total and irrevocable loss of mentation, though in the process we also lose all that matters to us.
      10. Also, I think that there’s only a difference of emphasis or terminology between “human being”, “human animal” and “human organism”.
      11. This (probably) commits me to arguing that a disembodied human brain is a maximally-mutilated human animal.
      12. An alternative working out of a ‘human being theory’ of PID is put forward by David Wiggins, according to "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity". This is important, but I have yet fully to get to grips with it.
    2. Bodies620
      1. The idea that we might be human bodies is a rather outdated and tentative reaction to the once (and maybe still) predominant view amongst philosophers that we are basically psychological beings.
      2. The "physical continuity621" view of personal identity is a wider view of PID than the Bodily Continuity622 view as it encompasses either the body or the brain623, with the latter being more important, so that the physical continuity is satisfied by a BIV624, which would thereby continue your existence should you end up in that unhappy state.
      3. Somatic continuity is underplayed by philosophers who (while engaged in philosophy) focus more on mental predicates than would those less intellectually-inclined. This is pointed out by Feminist philosophers. For instance, …
      4. See "James (Susan) - Feminism in Philosophy of Mind: The Question of Personal Identity" and her objections to Bernard Williams’s and Anthony Quinton’s hasty avoidance of the somatic aspects of “body swapping625” – ie. where very different bodies are involved, especially of different sexes; also, the depersonalising effects of trauma.
      5. However, there may be confusion here between two meanings of “what matters626”. Of course, it matters to the ballet dancer or heavyweight boxer that they are appropriately embodied, but this is beside the point as far as personal identity (in the logical627 sense) is concerned. It matters to me if I lose a leg, but I’m still the same person if I do (because I continue to have the same first-person perspective628 – it’s me that cares that I’ve lost my leg).
      6. That’s why the “Future Great Pain Test629” ("Unger (Peter) - Identity, Consciousness and Value" / "Williams (Bernard) - The Self and the Future") is so useful – it focuses the mind on whether it will be me that survives630, even in the sad cases where I’d prefer it if it wasn’t.
      7. Despite the above comments, and while focus on the body (that is, the brain) is an improvement on focus on the mind (considered as psychology abstracted from its physical enabler), focus on “the body” has been superseded in philosophical popularity by animalism631 and a focus on the organism632.
      • Bodily Continuity633
        1. Historically, philosophers have been divided into those that hold that our634 persistence criteria 635 are fundamentally psychological636,637 and those that think they are fundamentally physical638.
        2. The classic paper that wrestles with this dilemma is "Williams (Bernard) - The Self and the Future".
        3. Bernard Williams is sometimes thought of as an Animalist639, possibly because640 he’s inclined to accept the Bodily Continuity (as against the Psychological Continuity 641) approach to Personal Identity. But, this is probably a mistake, because:-
          1. The “Bodily Continuity” view of personal identity is not to be confused with Animalism642, which requires the Biological View 643. The Bodily Continuity view is consistent with my persisting as a Cyborg644 or even an Android645. See also646 Siliconisation647 (the gradual replacement of my brain with silicon chips).
          2. Also, the persistence conditions 648 of bodies649 differ from those of organisms650 in general or human animals651 in particular. Consider the arguments about corpses652, which have different persistence conditions to those of animals, and which gives rise to the “Corpse Problem”, an attempted refutation of animalism 653.
        4. Lynne Rudder Baker consistently – and mistakenly, in my opinion – contrasts her Constitution View654 with that of a bodily view, rather than a biological view. She considers that we persons655 are constituted656 (maybe temporarily) by our bodies657, though her view could be improved somewhat were she to choose organisms as the constituting entity.
        5. Eric Olson distinguishes between organisms and bodies and is doubtful about the existence of the latter658. But he would disagree with Baker even if she claimed that we were constituted by human animals.
        6. Note also, the distinction659 between continuity660 and connectedness. Continuity is critical to the persistence of bodies, but it is doubtful whether connectedness is. You could probably replace all the parts of a body over time, provided this is done gradually enough, and retain the same body (this is certainly true of organisms). However, it is said by some (eg. Parfit661) that a psychology disconnected from, though continuous with, another is not the same person. See his discussion of Methuselah662.
        7. It seems to me that both the biological view and the bodily continuity view would (theoretically, at least) allow for metamorphosis663 (provided, in the former case, that the metamorphosis is into another organism). There are, however, sortal664 objections to metamorphosis.
      • Body Criterion665
        1. The ‘body criterion’ of personal identity claims that we can determine that the human person persists through time just in case the same human body persists, irrespective of its mental properties.
        2. What it is that makes a body – in this case a human body – continue the same body over time?
        3. I need to do some further research in this area, but it is not important as – while considering ‘bodies’ as the bearers of human identity was a step in the right direction – it has been superseded by the treatment of human beings as living bodies, namely Organisms666, for which the Biological Criterion667 is more relevant.
        4. When I to continue research in this area, I would consider:-
          1. Bodies as “lumps of matter”.
          2. Mereological668 matters – such as mereological essentialism – as far as they apply to bodies.
        5. One of the troubling669 areas for animalism670 – the corpse problem – arises from the denial that I am identical to my “corpse to be”, and that when I die, a new item – my corpse671 – which is not identical to my pre-mortem body (which was an organism) because it has different persistence conditions672 – comes into existence. This sudden popping into existence seems counter-intuitive – but otherwise there seem to be two items co-located pre-mortem – the organism and the body. Eric Olson gets round the problem by denying the existence of “bodies” – but this isn’t very intuitive either.
    3. Brains673
      1. There is a view that we are674 really, most fundamentally, our brains. It seems to promise some good things for both the “psychological criterion675” and “bodily criterion676” camps, since the brain is indeed part of the body677, and, in the absence of a soul678, the source of all our psychological functions. However, we seem to be much more than our brains. After all, who would want to be a Brain in a Vat (BIV679)? According to Johnston (see "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings"), BIVs are “maximally mutilated” human beings; which seems to be along the right lines. Note the important distinction between your surviving in a maximally mutilated state (as a brain) and you “really” being your brain.
      2. This is an issue Animalism680 has to contend with - whether a BIV is an animal. Paul Snowdon claims681 that no-one seems to think this, a view that Olson shares but on which he may be open to objection. He says that an animal with a prosthetic leg is a smaller animal with something non-animal attached. If this is admitted, don’t we end up with a sorites682 argument, that a BIV is a (very much) smaller animal; though not, I think, with any paradox?
      3. The big question is whether an animal’s brain is just another organ (like its liver) or whether it has some other status. That it is somehow special can be presupposed if we start conceptually with the brain as the core from which other parts are shaved off. Whether this is the right approach depends, I think, on what the brain does for the animal, and where the animal is on the phylogenetic tree. The brain is a much more important organ in some animals than others; in some lower animals it has no psychological functions and (maybe) its regulatory functions aren’t essential683.
      4. Why is Woody Allen’s expostulation (in Sleeper) that his brain “(is his) second favourite organ” amusing? Firstly, of course, because of the sexual innuendo and the ultimately strange prioritisation (since you can’t enjoy sexual excitement without a brain), but also, I think, because your brain isn’t an organ that you “have”. Without your brain, there’s no “you” at all, or at least this is a strong intuition.
      5. You can obviously (given even today’s technology), do without a liver, and it seems that on a life-support machine your body can do without its brain – where the brain is looked upon merely as a regulator. But the reference of “you684” is a bit slippery in these contexts. There is a sense in which you as an organism can do without a brain – on life support – but “you” as an essentially psychological being cannot. The animalists claim that you – being identical to an animal – have no essential psychological predicates; yet it is difficult to resist the intuition that there’s a reference of “you” that does have essential psychological predicates. This is to you as a person685 – but the big question is whether this person is a separate substance constituted by686 the human animal, or is just a way of describing the animal when possessed of the appropriate psychological predicates. Saying that you can’t do without your brain is just another way of saying that your psychological predicates are those most important to you (the animal); those without which the other predicates cannot be enjoyed.
      6. The issue fundamentally concerns the integrity of organisms687. It is said that a brain isn’t an organism; but does an organism have to be self-supporting (the main reason for denying the status of organisms to disembodied brains)? After all, we seem to be allowing that an organism on life support is correctly described as an organism. We’ll discuss this further in its place (ie. under organisms688).
      7. These issues are especially important when we consider various Thought Experiments689, in particular Brain Transplants690. Transplantation691 of all sorts seems to involve fusion692, with its logical problems for identity693 (not just for persons).
      • Brain Criterion694
        1. The question is whether the brain is the be-all and end-all of the matter of personal identity for human persons695.
        2. This view seems to be presupposed by those ethicists who espouse the (whole or part) brain death696 criterion for death697. There will be some overlap between this discussion and that below on brain death.
        3. It is acknowledged by most that – conceptually at least – there can be persons698 that are not humans (ie. not members of the species homo sapiens) – whether these persons be non-human animals, computers, God, angels, aliens or whatever. Non-animals presumably have no brains, though aliens presumably have a brain-analogue, so brains cannot be identity-criteria for personhood as such (indeed, we might argue that there are no criteria for persons as such699). But for animal-persons (human or otherwise), the brain seems to occupy a central place, both as the seat of psychology (in the absence of an immaterial soul700) and as the regulator of the body.
        4. So, the story would go, X is the same person as Y iff701 X has the same brain as Y.
        5. The trouble is – even if this claim is along the right lines – we can press matters further, and ask whether the whole brain is strictly necessary. If what impresses us is a brain-based psychological view702, when what we imagine is “really the minimal me” is the pair of psychology-bearing cerebral hemispheres, then we might imagine (as some philosophers have) a case of fission703, where – after equalising the hemispheres in psychological potency, we transplant704 one into another body lacking both hemispheres. Or, without needing anything so radical, we sever the corpus callosum in a commissurotomy705, thereby (on this view) creating two persons in one body.
        6. However, if we are animalists706,707 wondering what the “minimal animal” is, and it’s the command-and-control functions of the brain that impress us, then the paring-down process might708 be able to do without the cerebral hemispheres (or at least the psychology-bearing parts) altogether. So, brain-based views from different perspectives might come to different conclusions about the importance of the cerebral hemispheres – one view might make them essential, the other irrelevant to questions of identity (if not to “what matters709”). It is an empirical question whether the brain-stem can be divided, and hence whether a brain-based animalist approach is also subject to worries710 about fission.
        7. Anyway, the appropriateness of the Brain criterion of personal identity depends on what we are711– in particular whether we are (most fundamentally, or in the sense of numerical identity712, which is not the same thing) human animals or persons constituted by713 them (or various other things).
        8. Only if we believe that we are (identical to) brains714 will we adopt the brain criterion (though see Mark Johnston on Human Beings715).
      • Brain Death716
        1. Brain death is – loosely speaking, and rather uninformatively – just the death of the brain. More specifically, it is the death of the brain-stem. See "NHS - Brain Death" and "Wikipedia - Brain Death". Without a functioning brain-stem the human animal cannot survive without life-support, as the brain-stem regulates breathing and heartbeat (amongst much else); nor can the patient ever regain consciousness.
        2. Brain death is important in personal identity as it is often considered the point at which the animal – despite the best efforts of life-support systems – is “really” dead.
        3. There are different understandings of just when brain death occurs, and – indeed – on what it is. See, for example, the Wikipedia article above, which correctly distinguishes brain death (total failure of the brainstem) from a PVS717.
        4. On the Brain View718 of Personal Identity, the death of the brain719 – consistently defined – is obviously the death of the person720 – that is if persons, qua persons, are the sort of thing that can die, as death is a biological event. Maybe more strictly, on the Brain View, brain death would be our death.
        5. The same is probably true of Mark Johnston’s view that we are Human Beings721.
        6. Brain death is important legally and ethically as it is used to decide when it is right to withdraw life support. It is said that the human being is already dead when the brain is dead. I don’t really want to get drawn into this ethical argument. As previously noted, without the regulating power of the brain the organism is already dead, so – on the animalist722 view – we are therefore dead. We don’t therefore exist in this state, whereas in a PVS we do exist, but don’t have anything that matters723 to us.
        7. See "Kaufman (Sharon) - Neither person nor cadaver" and comments thereon for various other issues, which will be included here in due course.
      • Brains in Vats724
        1. There are three variants that I want to consider:-
          1. The traditional disembodied brain in a vat of nutrients, connected to the world by iut sensory and output motor devices.
          2. The Matrix-case, where the “vat” is a living human body, but where we have the same exchange of sensory and motor messages with a computer. I have a real body725, but not the one I think I have.
          3. The simulation case (which depends on Functionalism726 for any plausibility whatever), whereby I am living in a computer simulation. I am a computer program727.
        2. I’m not sure how well-motivated these supposed possibilities are for an explanation of what we are728. Within the context of my research project, I’ve no interest in the sceptical use of these TEs729, but there may be other uses.
        3. "Bostrom (Nick) - Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" (2003) argues that it is highly probable that we are computer simulations (Case ‘c’ above). See also the altercation below:-
          → "Weatherson (Brian) - Are You a Sim?" (2003), and
          → "Bostrom (Nick) - The Simulation Argument: Reply to Weatherson" (2005).
        4. While the claim that we are computer programs is often made by futurologists, it doesn’t make sense to me.
          1. Computer programs are universals. I am a particular.
          2. What I am730 – in the sense intended here – is a particular implementation of a computer program “running” on a particular piece of hardware.
          3. So, I would be a particular partition of a particular piece of hardware, configured in an appropriate way.
        5. "Chalmers (David) - The Matrix as Metaphysics" (2005) seems to take the possibility of our being brains in vats (in the traditional Case ‘a’ sense) more seriously than might have been expected. However, I think his interest is purely in rebutting the sceptical conclusions of traditional epistemology. He thinks that if we were BIVs, we’d still know what we claim to know, because our words would have meanings appropriate to our envatted status.
          → See "Lloyd (Peter) - A Review of David Chalmers' essay 'The Matrix as Metaphysics'", 2008, for an attempted refutation.
      • Cerebra731
        1. The cerebrum is the centre for the higher cognitive capacities of the brain732, and hence of human and other animal733 psychology734.
        2. It is (or they are) one option for the choice of “what we are735” on the part of those who hold the Psychological View736 of personal identity.
        3. The two cerebral hemispheres are joined by the commissures, and commissurotomy737 is a favourite TE738, being an alleged case – suitably elaborated – of the fission739 of the person740; which again (allegedly) shows the non-identity of the human person741 and his animal742.
        4. There is some slackness in the literature where (whole) brain transplants743 and (double) cerebrum transplants are not distinguished, and where half-brain transplants (whatever these might be in practice) and single-cerebrum transplants are confused.
    4. Souls744
      1. I had thought that Souls had been consigned to the dustbin of history, with only die-hards like Richard Swinburne still believing in them, but Eric Olson, while he doesn’t believe in souls, has an entire Chapter of "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology" taken up with the possibility that this is what we are. So, I presume it must still be a live issue.
      2. I have work to do in this area: here I ought to discuss what souls are (supposed to be), and what problems the concept encounters, while under the head of the Soul Criterion745 I should focus on how souls (are supposed to) help with the problem of personal identity, and what problems they encounter in the attempt.
      3. Some of the ground is also covered under the head of Dualism746 and the Cartesian Ego747, which take the soul to be an immaterial mental substance. This has the drawback of the soul having a difficult relationship with the body it is supposed to control – how do the two substances interact? Additionally, there would seem to be a gap between immaterial substances and the findings of modern science, which has no place for them.
      4. There are other alternatives, stemming from Aristotle, where the soul is the Form of the body, which makes it what it is. But as such, it seems to be both mysterious and superfluous.
    5. Selves768
      1. The Self is important, as it’s the root of Baker’s FPP769, and the motivator for all psychological770 theories of PI, so understanding just what it is supposed to be is central to my concerns.
      2. The self is what the reflexive pronouns refer to, but this doesn’t get us far, though it does mean that we are771 Selves, though not fundamentally so. We human animals772 might persist even if we ceased to be selves.
      3. So, just what is a self?
      4. There’s a temptation to equate the Self with the Person773, but this is to waste a term, and it is likely that the two terms can come apart774.
      5. Nor is it just the personality775, though the reification of the personality is probably at the root of the (misguided) intuition776 that personal identity is broken if the individual suffers a too-radical change of personality.
      6. It’s not clear to me that SELF is a natural kind777 concept, so there may not be just one correct definition.
      7. But my use will equate a self to an individual with a perspective on the world which – if that individual were a person (as many selves are) – would equal a FPP.
      8. In "Seth (Anil Kumar) - The real problem", Anil Seth distinguishes five selves (or aspects of the self, considered as “a complex construction generated by the brain”):-
        1. The bodily self778, which is the experience of being a body and of having a particular body.
        2. The perspectival self779, which is the experience of perceiving the world from a particular first-person point of view.
        3. The volitional self780 involves experiences of intention and of agency – of urges to do this or that, and of being the causes of things that happen.
        4. The narrative self781 is where the ‘I’ comes in, as the experience of being a continuous and distinctive person over time, built from a rich set of autobiographical memories.
        5. And the social self782 is that aspect of self-experience that is refracted through the perceived minds of others, shaped by our unique social milieu.
      9. Not all individuals towards which we might adopt Daniel Dennett’s Intentional Stance are selves.
      10. While thermometers are excluded, I’m not sure whether having “a sense of self” is essential for being a self. So, creatures that pass the Mirror Test783 will be Selves, though might not all be persons, but others – human infants, gorillas, elephants, dogs – might be selves even where they fail the test.
      • I784
        1. What is the reference of “I”, and does this linguistic usage and convention have any bearing on the metaphysics of Personal Identity in general or Post Mortem Survival785 in particular.
        2. Naturally, I doubt that it does, but there are arguments to the contrary.
        3. This topic is not to be confused with discussion of Selves786 or Cartesian Egos787 and maybe other similar topics.
        4. It is also not really related to the question What We Are788, though the reference of “I” will be to that being.
        5. "Glover (Jonathan) - I: Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity" and "Button (Tim) - Wittgenstein on Solipsism in the 1930s: Private Pains, Private Languages, and Two Uses of ‘I’" would be good places to start my research.
        6. Additionally, see "Zimmerman (Dean) - Personal Identity and the Survival of Death", Section 4, and another important source is David Kaplan, though I don’t seem to have many relevant papers yet.
        1. Cartesian Ego789
          1. That we are Cartesian Egos has been a popular suggestion in answer to the question of what we are790. It is presumably what those who first supported the Psychological View791 of personal identity had in mind, but may not be what the majority of philosophers these days – most of whom continue to hold some form of the PV – accept.
          2. Cartesian Egos are robustly criticised these days, but I’ve not been able to find any paper on JSTOR that has the term in its title. Maybe the papers I’ve read have defined it, but I’ve forgotten the precise definition. Anyway, I assume that the Ego is the “I792” that Descartes thought that introspection revealed. Presumably it is also supposed to be an immaterial substance, which is what Descartes thought he – a “thinking thing” – was.
          3. There is some overlap with Lynne Rudder Baker’s focus on a First-Person perspective793. Just what is it that’s supposed to look out on the world if not a Cartesian Ego? But Baker is not a dualist794 (at least not in the Cartesian795 sense) – she thinks of us as belonging to the PERSON796 substantial797 kind798, presently constituted by799 a human body800. The person does not have separate existence to the human body, in the way in which the Cartesian Ego does – which is (allegedly) separable from the body (and capable of living in disembodied801 form). I think for Baker we are essentially embodied – just not by802 the same body.
          4. With respect to the Cartesian Ego, we need to consider just how psychologically unified human persons803 are, and whether or not the mind is formally modular. In particular, is there massive modularity, or is there an executive? And is it the executive that is the Cartesian Ego?
          5. In this connection, I must consider psychological accounts of modularity804 of mind from the identity perspective, rather than straying too far into philosophy of mind and psychology. This will feature mainly in discussion of objections to Animalism805.
      • Narrative Identity806
        1. Narrative identity isn’t really an account of numerical identity807, but is dependent on it. It is analogous to the Psychological View808 but is closer to what most non-philosophers usually mean by a person’s “identity”. Saying someone is “no longer the same person” in this context implies such a change in personality809 that their life no longer fits into a single narrative.
        2. To quote from "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Ethics", section 2.3:-
          • what makes some feature mine may actually be making reference to a non-numerical type of identity, a type of identity we are thinking of when addressing the familiar question of an identity crisis: “Who am I really?” This is the question of identity as proper attributability, as providing an account of one's true self and the various attributes genuinely belonging to it.
          • the Narrative Criterion of Personal Identity: what makes an action, experience, or psychological characteristic properly attributable to some person (and thus a proper part of his or her true identity) is its correct incorporation into the self-told story of his or her life. … Narrative identity is thus really about a kind of psychological unity810, but not just an artless or random unity.
          • for that subject of experiences to be a person, a genuine moral agent, those experiences must be actively unified, must be gathered together into the life of one narrative ego by virtue of a story the subject tells that weaves them together, giving them a kind of coherence and intelligibility they wouldn't otherwise have had. This is how the various experiences and events come to have any real meaning at all — rather than being merely isolated events — by being part of a larger story that relates them to one another within the context of one life
          • What explains my special sort of concern for myself is that I'm in fact an extended narrative ego — not some time-slice concerned about the well-being of some future time-slice — and I'm constantly extending that narrative into the future, so my concern is global, a concern for the whole self I'm creating via this story, the whole self whose various parts are mine.
          • what makes some past action mine (for which I'm eligible for praise or blame) is that it flowed from my central values, beliefs, and experiences, that there's a coherent story I may tell uniting it to the other elements of my life.
        3. However, Shoemaker sees a problem:-
          • What matters to us with respect to all of our practical concerns is that we ourselves continue to exist: it's a necessary presupposition of my rational anticipation, self-concern, possibilities for compensation, and so on that I myself persist, but this is an issue of numerical identity811. Another way to put this is that one can't be a person, on the narrative view, unless one gathers up the various experiences one has as a subject of experiences into a coherent narrative, but then the identity of that subject of experiences must be preserved across time for its experiences to be so gathered up.
        4. I noticed in "Jaarsma (Ada) - Choose your own birth" that Simone de Beauvoir – in Pyrrhus and Cineas – states that “I am not a thing, but a project”. This claim may connect Narrative Identity to Existentialism. De Beauvoir’s contrast is rather a stark claim. But it highlights the difference between those who think of persons812 as concrete particulars of whatever form and those who think of them as a process813 of some sort.
        5. In brief, Narrative identity addresses questions of ‘who we really are’ (which is distinct from the generic question What Are We814) and gives an account of the individual’s ‘true self’ and which characteristics truly belong to it. It provides a self-told story with a kind of psychological unity815, coherence and intelligibility. To be a person816 and a true moral agent817 (it is said), one’s experiences and life events need to be gathered together into the life818 of one’s narrative ego. This gives the various experiences and events their meaning by putting them in context. This helps explain my special self-concern, as being for the whole space-time worm819 rather than one time-slice being concerned for a future time slice (as in exdurantism820, I believe). So, what makes an action truly mine – and one for which I’m morally accountable – is that it flows from my core values in such a coherent narrative.
        6. There are clearly objections to all this. Such a narrative – to be a single narrative – needs to be the experience of a single persisting entity, and so is dependent on numerical identity. It also seems to be a rather too convenient way of getting out of responsibility for our ‘out of character’ actions. In any case, our ‘true character’ is revealed by – and develops through – our actions.
        7. If narrative identity depends on numerical identity821, then it is just as subject to fission problems822, as is no-doubt revealed in cases of MPD823.
        1. Race824
          1. The topic of Race has a rather tenuous connection to my Thesis as a sub-topic of Narrative Identity825.
          2. However, given how important racial identity is to some people (maybe to all, but tacitly so for the dominant race in a society826), I ought at least to touch on the subject.
          3. For some people, their race affiliation is key to who they see themselves to be and where they belong. For racists, race is definitive of a person’s status and value.
          4. There seems to be some disagreement about whether “races” actually exist. See Aeon – Hochman – Is ‘race’ modern?827.
          5. Certainly, genetic differences – while obvious – are both overplayed (by racists) and underplayed (by their opponents). Racial ‘problems’ are now largely social, especially in the USA.
          6. I have little sympathy for the ‘reparations industry’. "Lambrecht (Felix) - Reparative Justice for Historical Injustice", which is supportive, may set out some of the issues for the topic of PID.
          7. As this is such a sensitive subject, I don’t intend to say any more for now.
      • Self-Consciousness828
        1. Self-consciousness is more than just phenomenal consciousness829 (which may be a watershed in itself with moral consequences greater than are generally accepted) but the consciousness of oneself as a self830 (as Locke831 noted).
        2. But we need also consider the view that this “watcher” is an illusion, a falsely-assumed Cartesian Ego832 whose existence is undermined by neuroscience, the modularity of mind, and such-like.
        3. I was alerted to a quotation from "Updike (John) - Self-Consciousness":-
            “Not only are selves conditional but they die. Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time? ”
        4. While superficially profound, I think this idea is muddled in several respects:-
          1. Death833 is a biological event that – at least in the ordinary case – can happen to an organism only once.
          2. So, whatever Selves834 are, they don’t die every night. Follow the links above for further discussion.
          3. We do indeed “wake slightly altered”; indeed, we alter slightly whenever we encounter an event that has an impact on us.
          4. I’m not sure what Updike means by our “selves” being “conditional”, but I can well believe it.
          5. Updike seems to subscribe to some “strict and philosophical835” view of identity, whereby nothing survives change. This is not a useful understanding.
          6. Any comfort we might get from such thoughts concerning our inevitable deaths is entirely spurious.
        1. Consciousness836
          1. Conscious mental phenomena are central to any account of what persons837 are. However, we must note that in the philosophy of personal identity, a saltation is usually diagnosed between the phenomenal consciousness of the higher (and probably many lower) animals838, and self consciousness839 (ie. awareness of self840), usually assumed841 to be the preserve of human beings842 only.
          2. Lynne Rudder Baker alleges an ontological change (an ontological novelty) when beings with a First Person Perspective843 come on the scene. I think first-person perspective844 is the same as a consciousness of self, though I suspect that if the non-human great apes are found to have the latter, she would allege the ontological novelty occurs with the arrival of the former, taken to be a more profound awareness.
          3. Personally, I think the real ontological novelty arises with the emergence of phenomenally conscious beings, and that consciousness of self is a culturally-acquired phenomenon (though – despite the Buddhist attempt to eradicate it – a universal one). But even so, the ontological novelty is that of the beings which have this property, not the property itself.
        2. Functionalism845
          1. Functionalism is a thesis in the philosophy of mind – originally in contrast to the then alternatives of behaviorism and the identity theory – to the effect that “mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of” (see "Polger (Thomas) - Functionalism").
          2. However, it has been co-opted by Sydney Shoemaker to support the cause of the Psychological View846 of PID, disputed by Eric Olson. See:-
            → "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Personal Identity: a Materialist Account"
            → "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Self and Substance"
            → "Olson (Eric) - What Does Functionalism Tell Us About Personal Identity"
            → "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Functionalism and Personal Identity - a Reply"
          3. Shoemaker is a materialist847 as far as the mind-body problem is concerned (at least in contrast with Swinburne’s soul view). But, this does not carry over into PID, either as the physical848 view or animalism849.
          4. I am highly suspicious of Functionalism as it applies to consciousness850, though it is a difficult question. If consciousness should turn out to be a quantum phenomenon based in the brain, then Functionalism would be proved false empirically. People have always been suspicious of a network of baked-bean tins wired up isomorphically to neurons being conscious (but then this would be too simplistic a model).
          5. I think that according phenomenal consciousness to other mammals is best motivated by their similar neural structures, even though the fact that they look and behave as though they are conscious would be sufficient for a prudential attribution. This is because we could (as a thought experiment851, at least) build robots that behaved like conscious beings yet we knew (from their architecture) that they weren’t.
          6. This case is put under pressure by very complex computers or by aliens who might have very different physiology.
          7. Any possibility of ‘uploading852’ a person to a computer depends on Functionalism for any plausibility whatever.
        3. Supervenience853
          1. To quote from "McLaughlin (Brian) & Bennett (Karen) - Supervenience", “A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”.
          2. So – the classic example is of the mind supervening on the brain (mental properties on physical properties of the brain) – there can be no change of mental properties without a corresponding change of brain-states.
          3. Humean supervenience854: "is the assumption that all truths about our world will supervene on the class of physical truths in the following sense: There are no truths in any compartment of our world that cannot be accounted for in terms of differences and similarities among those properties and external space-time relations that are fundamental to our world according to physical science."
          4. Apart as a rebuttal of dualism855, I’m interested in Supervenience because it is related to questions of Constitution856 and multiple-occupancy857. It is also claimed as an objection858 to Eric Olson’s Thinking Animal Argument859.
        4. Zombies860
          1. In analytic philosophy, ‘Zombie’ is a term of art for the supposed possibility that individuals might exist with exactly the same
            → physical structure and
            → behaviour
            as human persons, but without phenomenal consciousness – with “no-one at home”, in other words.
          2. It is addressed in "Kripke (Saul) - Naming and Necessity: Lecture III", and is a bug-bear of David Papineau – eg. in the latter part of "Papineau (David) - The Importance of Philosophical Intuition".
          3. The most important claim is the first – that beings of the same physical structure as ourselves might lack consciousness. Accepting it seems to beg the question against materialism861. If materialism862 is true, then zombies are impossible – on the assumption that we are conscious863.
          4. The second claim – that androids (say) might behave like us but lack consciousness is readily believed by all those not in thrall to a strong version of Strong AI and the Turing Test. It is true of ChatGPT.
          5. This doesn’t mean that “zombies” don’t have minds, or that they blunder about as in the horror movies – they would appear completely like us. It’s just that there’s nothing it is like to be a zombie. Or so it is supposed. It may be that this is in fact impossible, though only ‘obviously’ so in the case of human philosophical zombies.
          6. What has all this got to do with Personal Identity? Some immediate thoughts:-
            1. There would seem to be no impact on animalism864, which discounts the importance of the mental for our persistence.
            2. The constitution view865 might equally be unperturbed. This depends on whether zombies have a FPP866. As noted, they have a mind, and presumably intentionality – itself a window on the world. But I suspect there needs to be ‘something it’s like to have’ a FPP867.
            3. Consciousness is often said to be something essential to being a person868.
    6. Patterns in Information Space869
      1. Andy Clark is particularly keen on this sort of idea, claiming that we are870 “patterns in information space”.
      2. Variants on this theme that immediately come to mind include:-
        1. The transhumanists871 seem to assume that we are information, in that some of them imagine and hope that we872 will one day be able to be uploaded873 to a computer and dwell therein.
        2. The primary variants of Teletransportation874 assume that we can be converted to information, beamed up to our destination and reconstituted as the very same individual.
        3. Brain State Transfers875 are another variant on this theme.
      3. I don’t go along with any of this, adopting the animalist876 approach that we are essentially organisms877 essentially embodied in the one body878 we will ever have.
      4. I should remark that Richard Dawkins claims that Life879 is information (as distinct from “protoplasm” in that DNA is information, and living organisms exist to perpetuate their genes, as he says in "Dawkins (Richard) - The Blind Watchmaker" and elsewhere). While this is an important idea, and contains much truth, I don’t think it has the right emphasis, though it’s all a bit “chicken and egg”.
    7. Bundle Theories880
      1. If "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Bundles" is anything to go by, Bundle theories are still a live option.
      2. My initial intuition881 is that they are – if I understand them correctly – too absurd to demand much attention, in that they put the cart before the horse. Rather than attend to substances882 as the bearers of properties883 that may qualify their bearers as persons884, Bundle theories focus on collections of perceptions and thoughts to constitute885 minds886 and sensations to constitute bodies887 – or variations on such themes.
      3. The classic statement is that of Hume888, though there’s some doubt as to whether Hume actually used the term.
      • Hume889
        1. Hume’s “Bundle Theory” of personal identity is – as even Hume seemed to agree – hopeless, and I have no intention of becoming a Hume scholar with the intention of extracting some goodness out of it.
        2. Nor, for that matter, do I intend to weigh in to deciding whether Hume did or not use that expression for his theory.
    8. Hybrid Theories890
      1. In the philosophy of personal identity, I’d like the term “Hybrid Theory” to apply to (to put things somewhat pejoratively) “cake and eat it theories” where you’re faced with an awkward choice between two inconsistent theories, but want – in certain circumstances – to choose the best parts of each. In other words, we might in general want to follow one theory, but in certain awkward cases, be willing – or even strongly inclined – to follow the other.
      2. My own temptation is to espouse animalism891 but also give a high regard to the First Person Perspective892 so that – if this FPP893 is maintained throughout some adventure – it trumps whatever animalism has to say. This applies particularly to Brain Transplants894, though there are ways out of this conundrum other than adopting a Hybrid theory or simply denying the “brain transplant intuition”.
      3. "Keles (Serap) - Personal identity and persistence over time : the hybrid view with regard to hylomorphism", a PhD Thesis, looks important in attempting to bring together Animalism895 and the Constitution View896 as a hybrid theory in the context of Hylomorphism897.
      4. "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity", another PhD Thesis, contains the claim that David Wiggins held to a Hybrid theory with respect to personal identity. To quote from p. 91:-
          Yet while Wiggins takes these features as indicators that ‘person’ is akin to a natural kind word, he is cautious of giving it the full status of such terms, like rabbit, ivy, butterfly, and (putatively) human being. Rather, he suggests that we see ‘person’ as something like a qualification of a natural kind determinable, a ‘hybrid concept’ with a natural kind element and a systemic element as well (alike to how ‘vegetable’ collects together a group of savoury, edible plant kinds).
      5. The only other material I have that propose or discuss a Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity are:-
        → "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Bodies" (Section 7),
        → "Hodson (Sommer) - A Hybrid View of Personal Identity", a PhD Thesis, and
        → "Kotak (Aakash) - The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity", an MPhil Thesis.
    9. Nihilism898
      1. Otherwise known as Eliminitivism, Nihilism is the view that there are no persons or – more alarmingly – that we don’t exist.
      2. Whether what is eliminated is the same in all cases must await detailed examination.
        1. Peter Unger – at least at one time899 – argued (rather improbably) that:-
        2. Eric Olson:
        3. Peter Van Inwagen: thinks that all that exists are organisms and simples. See:-
          → "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Extreme Answers to the Special Composition Question: Nihilism and Universalism" (1990)
          This is no threat to the existence of persons, of course.
        4. "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons" (2001); in particular:-
          → "Merricks (Trenton) - Surviving Eliminativism", and
          → "Merricks (Trenton) - Considerations in Favour of Eliminating Us?"
          Merricks thinks that we – and other organisms – exist, but that statues don’t. Again, this is no threat to the existence of persons.
      3. One reason for considering this topic is that lots of the arguments – sorites-style900, or “too many occupants” – occur throughout the topic of personal identity. If they are unsound here, they may be so elsewhere.
      4. In particular, it’ll be interesting to compare Olson’s argument that he has no hands with his “thinking animal901” argument. He seems committed to both.
      • Buddhism902
        1. Buddhist teachings are relevant in at least two ways to the philosophy of personal identity:-
          1. The rejection of the importance of the Self903. There are some connections to Parfit’s904 ideas.
          2. The insistence on Reincarnation905.
        2. The Buddhist claim is that the focus on the Self, together with attachments to anything whatever, is the cause of all the world's ills. No doubt there's something in this - but it's illicit or inordinate attachments that are the problem, not attachments as such. Attachments are what gives life meaning, and its selfishness, not selves, that is the problem. Anyway, some philosophers think it would be a "good thing" if the boundaries between one self and another were broken down so that we cared less about who was benefitted from our actions, just that our actions were beneficial - so we wouldn't care whether it was ourselves, or our families or friends, or someone unknown to us who benefitted, just that someone did. Despite the potential benefit to the world’s poor, this strikes me as:-
          1. Overly idealistic and
          2. Ignoring our proper responsibilities (ie. we have some greater responsibility - though not an exclusive one - for those close to us, because they are "our job" to look after).
        3. Those philosophers who take a "psychological view906" of our persistence conditions907 – that we're psychological beings whose degree of connectedness to our future selves is exclusively based on psychological factors – some of whom think that we are somehow portable from one body to another – can make some sense of reincarnation908. Those who are thoroughgoing materialists909 (like me) can't. I’m sure the Dalai Lama910 is a very nice man, but his position and authority depends on him being a reincarnation911 of someone else, which isn’t likely to be true.
        4. However, I think this may be a misrepresentation, for if Buddhists take the soul view912 of our identity, then the very same soul may be reincarnated913 – ie. given a new body. This is despite the possessor of that soul – in a previous life – being a different human being914 (or, indeed, not a human being at all).
        5. Where Buddhism differs from Hinduism with regard to the benefits of reincarnation is that for Buddhists reincarnation is never a benefit in itself, because the idea is to achieve nirvana by escaping the cycle of rebirth. For Hindus, the benefit depends on Karma – if it is good, then you go up the ladder, else down.

Concluding Remarks
  1. In our next Chapter, we consider just what a Person is.
Chapter 3: What is a Person?915

Abstract
  1. This chapter will canvass the various views of what Persons are and consider how important issues in this area are for my main concern of ‘our’ identity.
  2. It will also consider whether it makes sense to say that we are persons.

Chapter Introduction
  1. Firstly, we need to consider just what a Person916 is. In particular, is Personhood a Substance concept (assuming a Substance917 rather than Process918 metaphysics) or is it a Property919 of a Substance?
  2. Then we need to consider what Properties qualify an individual to be a Person. Additionally, when does the individual become a person, and having become a person, can that individual later cease to be a person?
  3. The properties usually taken as being essential for persons include several on which I have individual Notes.
    1. A person has a First Person Perspective920, the person’s window on the world, and reflexively on itself.
    2. Persons have Free Will921, at least to the degree that Free Will is possible in the world in which we live.
    3. A Person is an Intelligent922 being (though not all such qualify as Persons).
    4. A person has Language (or at least a Language of Thought923).
    5. Finally, there are – for human persons at any rate (and presumably for the Persons supposedly forming the Holy Trinity) – Social924 aspects to personhood.
  4. We need to distinguish Persons from their Personalities925. When people say that so-and-so is no longer the same person, they usually mean that the individual has had a radical change of personality.
  5. Having decided what a Person is, we need to decide what kind of being is a Person. We need to canvass the usual list of candidates other than ourselves – Human Persons926 – which are covered in my Note on Non-Human Persons927.
  6. It is often assumed that being a Person is an all or nothing affair, with persons having infinite moral value, and non-Persons having negligible value: is – or should – this be so? Can there be Degrees of Personhood928? My Note on Wantons929 is also relevant in this context.
  7. Given the variety of potential Persons, we might doubt whether there are persistence criteria for Persons as such. This gives rise to the choice between Reductionists930, who hold that the persistence of Persons is governed by those of the sort of entities that constitute them, and holders of the Simple View931, which denies this.
  8. We also need to ask how well integrated Persons are, as discussed in my Note on The Unity of the Person932. How do we Count Persons933? Is there a 1-1 match with the entities that constitute them? Can there be such entities as Personites934?
  9. Finally, do the various theories of Personhood Take Persons Seriously935, or at least sufficiently so?

Main Text
  1. Introduction
    1. The main philosophical argument about Persons is whether PERSON is a substance936-concept in its own right, or whether it is parasitic on other substance-concept(s).
    2. My own view is that Human Persons are phase sortals937 of human animals, but other philosophers have more robust views of persons and think of them as substances in their own right.
    3. Famously, Locke938 held this view, and Lynne Rudder Baker939 was a contemporary exponent – her view being that human persons are constituted by940, but are not identical to, human animals941.
    4. In this thesis, I’m only concerned with human persons, and – like most philosophers – allow that there can be non-human persons942 (God, gods, angels, aliens, robots, Great Apes, etc.)
    5. All this is predicated on deciding just what PERSONS are, which in turn depends somewhat on whether we take PERSON to be a natural kind943 concept, or something that is socially constructed and so not something the correct definition of which we can discover.
    6. I defer discussion of the important topic of the First-Person Perspective944 until Chapter 7945.
  2. Qualities of Personhood
    1. Person946
      1. We must first consider whether the debate on personal identity has been hijacked by a term (whose meaning has changed over time) that can now be dispensed with. Wiggins claims (in "Wiggins (David) - The Person as Object of Science, as Subject of Experience, and as Locus of Value", I think) that the Greeks had no term for “person”. Have we always secretly been talking about human animal identity (probably referring to human beings947 rather than human animals) when we thought we were talking about something separate, namely persons? See "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity" for a detailed exegesis of Wiggins’s views.
      2. See "Trendelenberg (Adolf) - A Contribution to the History of the Word Person" for the usage of the term ‘person’ prior to the 20th century.
      3. For a slightly less ancient treatment, see also:-
        → "Mauss (Marcel) - A Category of the Human Mind: the Notion of Person; the Notion of Self"
        → "Allen (N.J.) - The Category of the Person: a Reading of Mauss’s Last Essay"
        → "Collins (Steven) - Categories, Concepts or Predicaments? Remarks on Mauss’s use of Philosophical Terminology"
      4. For a more contemporary historical discussion, see "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons and Personae".
      5. We need to start with some conceptual948 analysis, though this may lead to somewhat arbitrary (ie. merely semantic949 or culture-relative) conclusions if PERSON isn’t a natural kind950 concept.
      6. I accept Locke951’s conceptual distinction between Human Beings952 (“Men”), Persons and Substances953. I accept Locke’s assertion that the rational parrot would be a person, but not a man – the latter essentially involving particular physical characteristics, the former specific mental characteristics.
      7. Can any purely mentalistic definition of the concept PERSON, such as Locke’s definition of a person as
          “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” ("Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity" - Essay II.27.2)
        be correct? I suspect not, because of the corporeal aspects we take as being essential to our self-image.
      8. But, when we think of ourselves in this corporeal way, is this qua ANIMAL or qua PERSON. But then, this “qua-ing” can lead to relative identity954, and shows how difficult it is to maintain the strict logic of identity955 in these discussions.
      9. Some further thoughts:-
        • We must not ignore potential differences between the Person, the Self956 and the Individual957.
        • I doubt the truth of the contention that one’s Self is the sum of one’s projects, one’s individual “identity958”.
        • We must also note the potential for degrees of personhood959.
        • Are persons essentially sentient? Or rational? And is rationality, like the mental generally, overstated by philosophers whose favourite habitat it is?
        • What about temporal gaps960 in sentience & rationality in the life of an individual – does the person pop in and out of existence?
        • What about legal persons: not companies, but the comatose, who still have estates (but then so do the deceased961)?
        • How important is “person”, as against “sentient being962” in my research concerns? The Cartesians denied sentience to animals963 and until recently there has been a down-playing of the capacities of animals, particularly their emotional capacities. Consequently, the persistence criteria964 for sentient non-humans may not have been given the focus they ought. I suspect that many of the thought experiments965 work just as well if we drop some of the more onerous requirements of personhood in such contexts. Some of the thought experiments play on the thought of “being tortured tomorrow966”. While animals may not have the concept TOMORROW, I presume the higher animals have some capacity for anticipating future goods or ills about to befall them – that’s how dog-training works967. I wonder whether my research concerns should be about all beings that care about the future, whether or not they have a clear concept of it as their future.
      10. To aid in investigating just what persons are I will start with Dennett’s six criteria of personhood (see "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", on which I have written an essay968):-
        1. Rationality,
        2. Intentionality – “predicated of”
        3. Intentionality – “adopted towards”
        4. Reciprocation of the personal stance,
        5. Verbal communication and
        6. Consciousness
    2. Free Will969
      1. Free-will may prove essential to our concept of a Person970, as is alleged in "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person".
      2. This idea stems initially from Locke’s view that personhood is a forensic property971 of the individual that allows for praise or blame. Without free will, praise or blame is said to be out of place.
      3. Dennett’s views in
        → "Dennett (Daniel) - Freedom Evolves" and
        → "Dennett (Daniel) - Elbow Room - The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting"
        will be of interest, following on from
        → "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood".
      4. See also the Aeon discussion in "Dennett (Daniel) & Caruso (Gregg D.) - Just deserts".
      5. Gregg D. Caruso has written extensively in this area claiming – contra Dennett – that none of us has free will because all we do is down to luck: either constitutive luck – from our genes and initial family situation – or present luck – from our environment. Consequently, Caruso claims that – rather than blame – criminals need therapy972.
      6. Free will also features in discussions of backward Time Travel973.
      7. I’ve covered the topic of future contingents in my essay on Aristotle’s Sea Battle974. I’ve not repeated the associated literature here.
    3. Intelligence975
      1. Intelligence is a very wide-ranging term, and there’s a tendency to focus on what are really fairly minor differences in human aptitudes; namely, in the discussion of IQ.
      2. The intention of this Note is to consider intelligence as a pre-requisite for personhood976.
      3. Clearly, many non-persons (including the higher non-human animals) are intelligent to some degree or other, so is there a qualifying level – or type – of intelligence needed for personhood?
      4. Could intelligence tie in with the possibility of degrees of personhood977? This would seem to be the case if the Great Apes and other appropriate higher mammals are included in the category of Non-human Persons978.
      5. Also, there’s the issue of Superintelligence – that of (future, putative) machines that exceed humans in intelligence, whatever that means. This is “The Singularity”. Will they also be Non-human Persons979, of a superior kind? That is, is intelligence sufficient for this accolade of personhood? I assume not and that sentience is needed as well as sapience.
    4. Language980
      1. According to "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", Linguistic competence is one of the six essential features of personhood. It seems there are two reasons for this:-
        1. One is communication, as the formation of and participation in societies are essential to the flourishing of persons981.
        2. The other is that the sort of self-reflection needed for personhood allegedly requires language.
      2. In response:-
        1. I believe there can be non-verbal communication between higher animals – especially those that are candidates for personhood (maybe of reduced degree982) – indeed, this must be the case for social beings.
        2. Also, cogitation doesn’t require the ability to verbalise if there’s such a thing as a language of Thought. Our conscious thoughts do seem to involve internalised spoken language, but maybe our unconscious ones don’t.
      3. So, the relevance of Jerry Fodor’s Language of Thought (LOT) hypothesis within the sphere of personal identity arises because of the alleged essentiality of language for personhood. As such, all non-human animals983 would be ruled out because even if certain Great Apes can be taught sign-language, this is not natural to them in the way language is to human beings.
      4. It is also often alleged (eg. by Donald Davidson) that animals cannot even think in the absence of language, because thinking requires concepts984, and concepts are only expressed in language.
      5. These (to me) unwanted conclusions might disappear if all animals whose minds appear to have intensional states should have a language of thought.
      6. I don’t know whether Fodor cares about animals in this context, or whether his theory was designed strictly with human beings985 in mind.
      7. I like the idea that a LOT – which initially only helps an individual – might explain how spoken language arose amongst human beings – given that a spoken language requires a pair of speakers before it becomes useful (even if grunts and other vocalisations don’t). If a language of thought spilled out into vocalisation, even though individual vocalisations might be initially mutually-unintelligible, a conventional speech (constrained only by universal grammar) might naturally arise with the co-operative behaviour germane to social animals.
      8. See "Rescorla (Michael) - The Language of Thought Hypothesis" for an overview.
    5. Social986
      1. It seems that the social aspects of personhood are deemed to be the most important – indeed the defining – aspects of what it is to be a person by some contemporary philosophers.
      2. I have in mind Anne Sophie Meincke in this regard, but no doubt there are others.
      3. I have my doubts as it seems to encourage the widening of the net of personhood to include social animals – including ants and bees – that are clearly not persons unless personhood loses any appropriate sense of being a forensic property987, or else the moral community is expanded to a degree that makes its current norms unworkable.
      4. Such suggestions need to be compared with other assessments of what it is to be a person988, as in my discussion of Daniel Dennett – Conditions of Personhood989. The social aspect is assumed rather than explicitly mentioned.
      5. There are also issues about our “identities” – in the sense of Narrative Identities990 or our sexual identities – being defined or constrained by the society in which we live.
  3. Personality991
    1. “She’s not the same person”, means she’s undergone a change of personality. It does not mean that she’s a numerically-different individual. Such is agreed by all but the most extreme (or maybe most consistent) adherents of the psychological view992 of personal identity.
    2. What are personalities? Are personalities a loose collection of properties and predispositions? Do personalities have persistence conditions, so that saying that someone has or has not changed their personality even makes sense?
    3. Consider an analogy with weight. It makes sense to ask whether individual x has the same weight at time t1 as at t2. That makes sense because weight is a well-defined property. Of course, for “weight” to be a useful practical concept in this context, there is a tolerance; differences of a few grams don’t count, though those of a few kilograms do. However, “personality” is a much less well-defined concept993, and similar994 ones may count as the same.
    4. We do allow for our personalities to “evolve” as we mature, so – presumably – we think of them as having persistence conditions of some sort. Too radical a change is shocking to us, leading to the opening quote above.
    5. I have a separate discussion later on of Multiple Personality Disorder995, some interpretations of which claim that multiple persons inhabit the same human being (as is reflected by the new term “Dissociative Identity Disorder”, though some don’t treat it as a “disorder” at all) while others – more traditionally – think of it as a fragmented personality.
  4. Who is a Person?
    1. Human Persons996
      1. Human persons are the only persons we have direct knowledge of – in the sense of both knowing that they are (or can be) persons997, and what it is like to be such a person.
      2. It is probably only a matter of semantics whether human beings998 are persons throughout their lives. That is, if the term is only applied to individuals with the relevant properties at the time of application, or whether it applies to ‘once and future’ persons, or to all who belong to the species homo sapiens999.
      3. As Person1000 is a forensic property1001, this matter of semantics has ethical and legal consequences. I think these questions get very muddled.
      4. There’s a question whether Neanderthals and other extinct hominins ought to be categorised as human or non-human persons1002, that is if they can be known to have been persons at all (rather likely in the case of the Neanderthals).
    2. Non-Human Persons1003
      1. Amongst philosophers, if not amongst the general populace, it is usually taken for granted that there can be persons who are not human beings1004. The usual candidates are:-
        1. Extinct Hominids, where these are not categorised as “human” (see the Note on Homo Sapiens1005 for a discussion of Neanderthals; there’s a question whether Neanderthals ought to be categorised as human persons1006or non-human persons).
        2. The higher Non-human Animals1007, especially the Great Apes,
        3. Aliens,
        4. Angels,
        5. God,
        6. gods,
        7. Androids1008 (or appropriately-configured Robots),
        8. Cyborgs1009, at least those with silicon1010 (or other inorganic) brains1011 (those with human brains will, naturally, be human persons1012).
        9. Computers1013 – or computer programs – or the combination thereof – of appropriate structure and complexity.
      2. See also my discussions of Transhumanism1014, and Uploading1015 for further consideration of various of the above.
      3. Angels and aliens are discussed in "Wiggins (David) - Reply to Snowdon (Persons and Personal Identity)" and the claim is that insofar as we can conceptualise them, they are animals1016. Wiggins also discusses robot-persons1017. If, in order to satisfy the conditions of personhood, these end up as molecule-by-molecule clones1018 of animals, these are animals also. So – with the possible exception of God and gods – Wiggins doesn’t think there are counter-examples to the supposition that all persons are animals.
      4. The question is whether these candidates can be persons, and what – if they can – this fact tells us about what persons are.
    3. Degrees of Personhood1019
      1. That personhood may come in degrees – rather than being “all or nothing” – is rather a dangerous thought, at least if applied to human persons1020.
      2. However, if we are inclined to extend the boundaries of personhood to include some higher non-human animals1021 (or – in the future – artificial intelligences1022) – but don’t want them to be on a par with human beings, for instance in moral accountability – we might have to allow the thought “person – 2nd class”, or something like that.
      3. It seems clear that the qualities that qualify an individual to be a person1023, come in degrees.
      4. The key point at issue is probably whether personhood is an honorific (a property of substances) rather than a substance1024-term itself. If it is not a substance-term, as I believe it is not, then we have the option to provide – say – legal protection to the underlying substance – say human animal1025 or human being1026, and then denying the epithet “person” to some human beings need not have the genocidal overtones that are usually suspected whenever such a thought is expressed. But, it still might be better to avoid refusing the term altogether.
      5. So, maybe some persons are “more” persons than others and persons do indeed come in degrees. But maybe they are just better persons according to some criteria – whether ethical or metaphysical – and these criteria need to be sharply distinguished.
      6. For instance Frankfurt – in "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" – claimed that wantons1027 are not persons, but maybe we should say that (from an ethical perspective) they are poor exemplars of the concept PERSON.
      7. We can think of an analogy with animals. Some animals (eg. human beings – or, lest we be considered a special case - chimpanzees) are, according to many evaluative criteria, superior to other animals (worms). Yet all are animals. Now ethically and practically, some animals deserve greater consideration than others – it would appear that chimpanzees have a greater capacity for suffering than worms, for instance. So too, presumably, do exemplars of the same species, though not to the same degree except in severely pathological cases.
      8. The issue is thus highlighted by the possibility that some of the higher mammals are persons, nearly persons, or persons of reduced degree. If all persons are just persons, period, and all persons have to be treated equally (if that is our ethical outlook), then we might be stuck with duties that seem counter-intuitive (to some, at least). Alternatively, an “all or nothing” stance may be used by us to avoid giving certain sentient beings the care they deserve.
    4. Wantons1028
      1. “Wanton” is a term of art introduced in "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", of which I’ve written a Review1029.
      2. According to Frankfurt, wantons are human beings1030 who aren’t moral persons, because they lack second order desires (they don’t want to want to do x or be morally like y).
      3. Most human beings (the persons1031) care what their moral likes and dislikes are, and want to reform or improve their moral sensibilities and characters. They care about their moral state. Wantons don’t; they are happy as they are (and not because they are moral saints).
      4. While the term “wanton” is a useful one, I think excluding wantons from falling under the concept1032 “person1033” is making that concept too narrow. Frankfurt may have hijacked the term wanton, but he has left no important semantic gap in so doing (he has probably done no more than perform a service by clarifying the term).
      5. However, in restricting the term “person” to non-wantons, he is (I would claim) invoking a semantic shift that would then require a new term, PERSON-Minus, to cover those wanton human beings who enjoy the non-moral properties that Frankfurt-persons enjoy. Maybe they would be persons of reduced degree1034?
  5. The Persistence of Persons
    1. Reductionism1035
      1. Reductionism in the field of Personal Identity has much the same meaning as elsewhere in philosophy, namely:-
        1. Explanatory Reduction: explaining PID in terms of simpler concepts1036, or
        2. Ontological Reduction: saying that persons1037 are “really” other things, or are made up of or constituted by1038 other things.
      2. This contrasts with the Simple View1039, which denies either of these options.
      3. Currently, my thoughts on the matter are derived from:-
        1. "Garrett (Brian) - Personal Identity and Reductionism", and
        2. "Garrett (Brian) - Animalism and Reductionism",
          but I will add to the topic further over time.
      4. From my perspective, the interesting element is Garrett’s consideration of Phase Sortals1040.
      5. "Cassam (Quassim) - Parfit on Persons" claims that Animalism1041 is a non-reductionist account of PID – indeed, the best one!
      6. Derek Parfit is credited with introducing the term “Reductionism” into the field of Personal Identity from elsewhere in philosophy.
    2. The Simple View1042
      1. Most theories of personal identity assume that PI is reducible to something else, so is to be analysed in terms of physical or psychological continuities, or to be explained by our being human animals.
      2. The simple view is just the contrary of the above:-
        1. "Olson (Eric) - In Search of the Simple View" denies that the distinction is coherent.
        2. "Gasser (Georg) & Stefan (Matthias), Eds. - Personal Identity: Complex or Simple?" (in which the above paper appears) discusses various arguments pro and con.
        3. See "Coliva (Annalisa) - Review of Gasser & Stefan, Eds. - Personal Identity: Complex or Simple?" for a review of the above.
        4. It’s probably best to start with "Gasser (Georg) & Stefan (Matthias) - Personal Identity: Complex or Simple? Introduction".
      3. It seems that Baker’s Constitution View1043 is a form of the Simple View: see "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Personal Identity: A Not-So-Simple Simple View".
  6. Unity of the Person1044
    1. There’s a presumption in the philosophy of personal identity that the person1045 is a single well-defined individual. This is probably a hang-over from the days of Cartesian1046 Dualism1047 or when it was assumed that each of us had an indivisible Soul1048. Nevertheless, this, depending on what the referent of person1049 is supposed to be, can seem (and maybe is) quite sensible.
    2. However this unity has been disputed – for instance in the different interpretations of Multiple Personality Disorder (PMD1050):-
      1. Supporters of the Psychological View1051 argue that cases of MPD1052 show that there can be multiple persons sharing the same body. This assumes that a person is some sort of well-integrated personality, no part of which is shut off from the rest (as is allegedly – though doubtfully – the case in MPD1053). So – on this view – each of the multiple personalities1054 is deemed to be a separate person1055, and so (it is said) the person cannot be identical to the human being1056 that houses it. Of course, any idea of integration ought to have gone out when Freud came in.
      2. However, animalists1057 (and others) would argue that this is all a mis-description, and that all we have is a fragmented self1058 (as is implied – maybe – in the current terminology – Dissociative Identity Disorder), or some other cognitive disorder1059 within a single human animal1060 (to which the title “person” is properly addressed, they say, though only in the sense of a phase sortal1061).
    3. Lynne Rudder Baker1062 – a proponent of the Constitution View1063 – (CV) claims (fairly plausibly) that each of us1064 is individuated by a First Person Perspective1065 (FPP). According to the CV, we – the persons – are separate from our bodies, but form a unity with them. In the case of your fission1066, she thinks (implausibly) that there would be a fact of the matter (somehow), as to which of the two fission products received your FPP1067. You would just know. Well, you wouldn’t, unless there was continuity of consciousness1068 throughout the process of fission, as I argue under the topic of the Reduplication Objections1069.
    4. This intuition that the person is a unity is referred to as the Unity Reaction in "Blackburn (Simon) - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?" and some other works.
    5. I suppose there could be some discussion of the doctrine of Divine Unity within a Trinitarian framework, but I’ll treat this as out of scope, and probably incoherent.
    1. Counting Persons1070
      1. What are the adverse consequences of David Lewis’s perdurantist1071 approach to fission1072 in personal identity?
      2. According to this theory, there were always coincident stages of the two space-time worms prior to fission. So, there were two persons there all along; yet we counted only one, being ignorant of1073 the future fission.
      3. What are the consequences of miscounting? No doubt this depends on what function (or more likely functions) our concept1074 of PERSON1075 performs.
      4. We might ask whether it is just persons who are miscounted, or are human beings1076 also miscounted? This will obviously depend on the TE1077, which would need spelling out.
      5. Take the case of a half-brain1078 transplant1079. In this TE, a person’s psychology is supposed to be duplicated1080 within two idempotent half-brains, one of which stays in the donor’s head, the other being transplanted into the empty skull of a recipient. In this TE, the psychological view1081 of personal identity is assumed. We start off with one locus of psychology, and end up with two. This is the standard problem of fission1082 – which successor is identical to the original person? We seem to want both to be, but – in the absence of perdurantism1083 – the logic of identity1084 forbids it. Perdurantism1085 helps us out, at the cost of there being more pre-fission persons than we thought.
      6. What about other fall-out? Are the earlier stages of the “recipient” patient – viewed as an animal – spatially distributed – so is such a distributed1086 thing a human being at all?
      7. What is the core of humanness – is this always the brain1087, so that the human goes along with the half-brain, and the body1088 is just like any other transplant, only bigger?
      8. Problems with counting persons also allegedly arises in the context of:-
        → Multiple Personality Disorder1089, and
        → Commissurotomy1090
        While the latter is a precursor for the half-brain transplant described above, both are at least actual situations that are less open to the charge of under-description often alleged against TEs.
      9. Finally, for now at least, and maybe most importantly – the issue of counting arises in Eric Olson’s Thinking Animal Argument1091, and the various conundrums involving (partly) coincident objects1092.
    2. Personites1093
      1. PERSONITE is a term of art related to that of Person1094 recently coined by Mark Johnston1095, though Eric Olson much earlier used the term “subperson” for the same concept. Olson also considers “cross-persons” – which are aggregates of temporal parts of different persons. He is simply adding the temporal dimension to the plenary ontology that allows any gerrymandered aggregate – my nose and the Eifel Tower – to be a “thing”.
      2. Anyway, a Personite is a temporal part of a person. If personites exist, and have moral status, then ethical problems arise as – for example – one personite gets the punishment for the misdeeds of another.
      3. Olson – without saying so explicitly – thinks that there are the same sort of problems arising for personites as arise for the Constitution View1096. He also distinguishes Linguistic from Moral persons; the former are the references of personal pronouns according to our linguistic conventions, the latter are the appropriate recipients of our moral concerns. He can’t see how we can guarantee these coincide if we allow the existence of personites.
      4. Personites are also a consequence of Parfit1097’s Relation R as a criterion for what matters in persistence, given that its application is vague.
      5. I doubt there are any more problems with personites than with appear in the problems:-
        → Dion and Theon1098,
        → Tibbles the Cat1099,
        → The Problem of the Many1100,
        and the like. It just adds a temporal dimension, though this is already present in "Lewis (David) - Survival and Identity", as Johnston acknowledges.
  7. Taking Persons Seriously1101
    1. Lynne Rudder Baker1102 accused animalists1103 of “not taking persons seriously”. But, how seriously should they be taken (in metaphysics)?
    2. Probably what really matters ontologically1104 is the possession of a conscious1105 perspective (though not necessarily – I would claim – a self-conscious1106 or first-person1107 perspective). This is what we must take seriously.
    3. Baker argued that there exists an ontological difference at this stage too … but, why is the first-person perspective1108 as she defines it so very important – all that worrying about death?
    4. Buddhists1109 are trying to lose this sense of self1110. Do all cultures have this sense?
    5. See1111 "Wong (David) - Relativism" for the traditional Chinese view, which takes the community more seriously than the individual.
    6. Whether we ought to take moral or rational beings extra seriously is the point at issue. Clearly we should. But this doesn’t necessarily have any ontological1112 implications (as Baker claims). Certain animals – including (most) humans – just have an extra property that demands they be given extra moral consideration.

Concluding Remarks
  1. In our next Chapter, now that we have considered what we are – and what persons are – we consider various metaphysical issues that bear on the arguments for and against the various positions on Personal Identity.
Chapter 4: Basic Metaphysical Issues1113

Abstract
  1. This Chapter will clarify my understanding of – and my assumptions related to – the various metaphysical issues that are of relevance in the philosophy of Personal Identity.
  2. Almost everything of relevance will be touched on here, other than persistence and time, which are covered in the next chapter.
  3. Necessarily, space limitations will mean that any text will have to be brief and superficial. The links to associated Notes will hopefully show that I’ve at least considered the various matters

Chapter Introduction
  1. There are very many topics of relevance to this Chapter. I’ve attempted to put them in some sort of order and grouping, but this will be an iterative process.
  2. Firstly, I have a general Note on Metaphysics1114 which summarises the metaphysical issues of relevance to the philosophy of Personal Identity, but also – via works read – tries to show a wider understanding of metaphysics.
  3. We must then consider the Logic of Identity1115, as non-standard logics are favourite means of escaping from some of the puzzle cases that test our intuitions and theories about PID. After considering what Identity is, we need to ask whether the “strict and philosophical” Numerical Identity1116 is appropriate for the Persistence of individuals like us, and to distinguish it from Similarity1117 (especially in its “exact” form – where individuals are said to be ‘exactly similar’ – so, qualitatively identical (or, at least, mostly so) but not numerically identical). We then need to consider what is involved in discovering (or deciding upon) Criteria of Identity1118.
  4. Another important claim is the “Only X and Y Principle1119”, that X being identical to Y cannot be affected by the existence of otherwise of some rival candidate Z. This principle is designed to rebuff ideas of a Closest Continuer1120 and claims that Contingent Identity1121, even if coherent, can be a satisfactory answer to certain puzzle cases.
  5. There are (at least) five other forms of “identity” proposed that require some consideration, namely
    1. Relative Identity1122,
    2. Occasional Identity1123,
    3. Partial Identity1124,
    4. Indeterminate Identity1125, and
    5. Vague Identity1126.
  6. Of these, the first is the most important, and the last two may or may not be the same idea; but, in any case, discussion of Vagueness1127 itself, and the Sorites Paradox1128 are relevant to them. It is to be noted that it should only be necessary to disappear down these various rabbit-holes if they become relevant to particular issues in the core of my Thesis.
  7. We now move on to Ontology1129 – to what Exists1130. We need to consider in what sense Mind1131 exists, and what sort of thing it is. Then, what is Matter1132, and what is claimed by Naturalism1133 or Physicalism1134. All this has to be kept within bounds and relevant to the context of this Thesis.
  8. The question of Kinds1135 – and in particular Natural Kinds1136 – is important in considering whether Person is a natural kind concept: that is, are persons as such naturally occurring or inventions of our conceptual schemes. Just what are Natural Kinds? Universals1137? We will also need to consider whether and how a change of kind – Metamorphosis1138 – makes sense, and whether it might be a possible transformation for beings such as we are.
  9. Finally in connection with ontology we might consider Artifacts1139, especially as they feature in discussions of Constitution and also in various Thought Experiments. They also provide examples of Scattered Objects1140, though consideration of whether disassembled bicycles are better described as Intermittent Objects will be left until the next Chapter.
  10. Substances1141 and Sortals1142 are central to the persistence of any thing, and define their persistence conditions. In particular my claim is that Human Persons are Phase Sortals1143 of Human Animals (the substances).
  11. Things can – however – be viewed very differently by denying that there are Individuals1144, but only Processes1145.
  12. Certain four-dimensional approaches to persistence do away with the substance concept, but I discuss this issue in the next Chapter.
  13. We need to consider whether any of the persistence or identity claims related to Personal Identity are matters of Convention1146, whether they relate to human Concepts1147 – whether the arguments are just matters of Semantics1148 – outside of what is really happening in the world (though many of our concepts do – or are intended to – “carve nature at its joints”). It might be that our claims for ourselves are Fictitious1149, and it’s worth investigating the persistence of fictional entities.
  14. Finally, I must include somewhere a few comments on Explanation1150. This Thesis is an exercise in “inference to the best explanation” of the facts of, together with our intuitions about, the identity and persistence of persons. We also need to consider how Probable1151 these various explanatory schemas might be.

Main Text
  1. Introduction
    1. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify my views on a number of logical and metaphysical issues that are central to the core of this Thesis.
    2. The coverage in the Chapter itself will have to be very brief lest it consume the word-count for the entire thesis. Most information – and in particular the bulk of the justification for my views – will remain in the Notes.
    3. Three background issues, namely my views on:- are covered elsewhere (follow the links above).
  2. Metaphysics1155
    1. Many general areas of philosophy are relevant to the topic of Personal Identity, including Ethics and Epistemology, but the questions are mainly metaphysical.
    2. Metaphysics is a large subject. As far as this Thesis is concerned, I’m only interested in it insofar as metaphysical arguments and ideas are necessary to support the overall argument.
    3. Thankfully, metaphysics is no longer regarded as the meaningless nonsense it was supposed to be under the Logical Positivists but as a way of addressing questions that don’t have any other method of approach, and ‘metaphysical’ is no longer a term of abuse.
    4. I do note, though that some metaphysical questions – by their nature – can never have empirical answers. The Logical Positivists would have these down as ‘meaningless’, but I take them as meaningful but indeterminate (except for the individual experiencing the situation in question). See, for example, my discussion of Forward versus Backward Psychological Continuity1156.
  3. Logic of Identity1157
    1. Identity as a logical concept ought to be rather uninteresting. Contra Wittgenstein1158 in the Tractatus, I consider the concept of identity to be both useful and essential.
    2. Despite much argument to the contrary, there’s only one type of identity – that which satisfies Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals and is an equivalence relation.
    3. That said, there’s a dispute going back to Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid as to whether there are two forms of identity, one allegedly falsely so-called, namely:-
      1. Strict and Philosophical, and
      2. Loose and Popular
    4. The idea behind this suggestions is that the conditions for the persistence of an object should be really strict – probably involving mereological1159 essentialism1160 – so that nothing ‘really’ persists through time. At the moment I’m not sure whether this suggestion is true but useless or simply false. We need the concepts of identity and persistence1161 for all sorts of practical reasons, and a choice of concepts that never apply in the real world is no help.
    5. While rejecting them, I will still need to consider various deviant “identities” for the light they shed on the issues at hand. They are listed below. Wrong answers to tough questions can be enlightening.
    6. As for the standard notion of identity here are two “Laws” attributed to Leibniz1162:-
      1. The Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals: this just appears to be a law of logic, and is (almost) universally accepted. It states that if “two” objects are identical (that is, “they” are the same object picked out by two descriptions) then “they” have exactly the same properties – both intrinsic and relational.
      2. The Law of the Identity of Indiscernibles: this is a more contentious – and metaphysical – suggestion, and is that if “two” objects share all the same intrinsic and relational properties, they are identical (ie there is only one object, but picked out by different descriptions).
    7. The (apparent) problems with the first1163 law are (at least) twofold:-
      1. The same object can have different properties at different times. This is the problem of temporary intrinsics1164, and the logic of identity is tied up with resolving this issue.
      2. Intensional properties1165 are excluded from consideration – as revealed by the masked man fallacy: the fact that I don’t know that the masked man is my father – though I do know that my father is my father – doesn’t mean that the masked man isn’t my father.
    8. The second Law seems reasonable enough for ordinary macroscopic objects, but
      1. It is allegedly false for quantum objects, and could also be false in a universe consisting of two exactly similar spheres. It is neither a logical nor a necessary truth, if it is true at all.
      2. However, if it is false, it seems to demand haecceities1166, where things are distinct just because they are distinct (something empiricists dislike).
    1. Numerical Identity1167
      1. There is an initial confusion that needs clearing up. To quote the Synopsis of "DeGrazia (David) - Human Identity and Bioethics":
        1. When philosophers address personal identity, they usually explore numerical identity: What are the criteria for a person's continuing existence?
        2. When non-philosophers address personal identity, they often have in mind narrative identity1168: Which characteristics of a particular person are salient to her self-conception?
      2. DeGrazia explores both conceptions, and acknowledges a debt1169 to Eric Olson for the former and Marya Schechtman for the latter.
      3. Anyway, numerical identity is the relation a thing holds to itself and to nothing else. This definition is agreed to be rather circular, but the intention is clear. The term “numerical” is used because we use the concept of numerical identity in counting things. Things picked out under different concepts are only counted once if they are numerically identical – if they are the very same thing. I may be a man, a person, a father, a grandfather, a student of philosophy but I’m only to be counted once.
      4. As is noted under the above topic of the Logic of Identity1170, “identity” has been divided into two further senses, namely:-
        1. Strict and Philosophical, and
        2. Loose and Popular
      5. If this division is correct, then it is only the “Strict and Philosophical” version of “identity” that is Numerical Identity properly so-called.
      6. However, it is unclear just how strict the “Strict and Philosophical” version should be. If it requires mereological1171 essentialism1172, then it has no application for material things other than “simples”.
      7. It has to be noted that lots of puzzles related to persistence – for instance fission – rely on the premise that “identity” is an equivalence relation, which may not be the case in the “Loose and Popular” sense of the term – if this usage could be clarified.
      8. I will continue to assume that the persistence of an organism – despite the continual change of parts – is correctly described as identity in the “Strict and Philosophical” sense.
    2. Similarity1173
      1. The logic of similarity, like the logic of identity1174, is a prerequisite for understanding continuity1175 and change1176.
      2. It is important to distinguish identity from exact similarity, as in the case of "identical" twins" which are not identical in the strict logical sense.
      3. Some further thoughts:-
        1. “Exact Similarity” is an equivalence relation in that it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive.
        2. “Similarity” is less obviously an equivalence relation – however it is defined – because the transitivity relation may be deemed to fail. Not only is it subject to Sorites1177-style paradoxes but suffers from the same transitivity problems as does Memory1178 as a criterion of PID.
        3. “Identical twins” – despite the suggestion above – are not even “exactly similar” in the strict sense, as it’s only genetically that they are exactly similar. In principle, each set of chromosomes in either twin is exactly similar to any other. And, I suppose, we could say that as their genomes are abstract objects, they are numerically identical. But the bodies and minds of identical twins – while “similar”, barring accidents, are not “exactly similar”, other than immediately after birth (and then only if we’re lucky: their conditions in the womb and throughout the birth process may differ, sometimes tragically so).
        4. “Exactly similar” individuals of whatever kind would seem to have all non-relational and non-intensional properties in common. To make the term useful in practical life, we might have to allow some latitude. If I want my television replaced by an “exactly similar” one, I want one that’s how the one I bought ought to have been without whatever defects are inducing me to return it. Nor may I care for trivial differences in weight, surface marks and the like.
        5. “Similarity” applies to particular properties of things (“wearing similar ties”) or to individuals in their entirety (as “identical twins”).
    3. Criteria of Identity1179
      1. Maybe the distinction between Criteria of Identity and Persistence Criteria1180 is that the former can be synchronic, or refer to multiple sightings of what may be the same thing. The latter refers to change1181.
      2. We might want to be assured that the Morning Star is (identical to) the Evening Star, which is Venus – and – indeed – whether it is necessarily1182 identical to Venus, given that it is Venus. Or so claims Saul Kripke. This is the topic of “Identity Criteria”, provided Venus remains substantially unchanged during the period of interest.
      3. Persistence Criteria1183 – in this example – would relate to whether Venus would remain Venus if it merged with a large asteroid and a hunk broke off, or suchlike.
      4. For the moment, I just note that there are two categories of criterion:-
        → Metaphysical and
        → Epistemological.
      5. Metaphysical criteria are those that, if they obtain, establish identity irrespective of whether anyone knows about them.
      6. Epistemological criteria reflect how we know that identity obtains.
      7. I might also add that there are different criteria of identity for different kinds1184 of thing, including:-
        1. Persons1185,
        2. Organisms1186,
        3. Inanimate Physical Objects: presumably considered as lumps of Matter1187, or as Artifacts1188,
        4. Events: Which would include Lives1189, if that’s what lives are,
        5. Etc.
      8. There are no criteria of identity for “things in general” (or even “persons in general”, for that matter).
    4. Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle1190
      1. This principle (also known as the ‘Only X and Y Rule’, with and without various forms of quotation mark around the variables) – probably first enunciated by Harold Noonan – claims that in saying whether X is identical to Y, the existence of some other entity Z should have no bearing.
      2. The principle is averse to Closest Continuer1191 theories, where a “better candidate” – often in modal situations – can undermine the case of an entity to be the continuer of – that is, identical to – an earlier entity; so, “X would have been identical to Y were it not for the existence of a better candidate Z”.
      3. As such, there is some connection with supposed Contingent Identity1192.
      4. I accept this principle, though this is not the case for all who clearly understand and reference it.
      • Closest Continuer1193
        1. “Closest Continuer” is an alternative term for the concept “Best Candidate”. Closest Continuer solutions to puzzle cases have to be rejected beause they violate the commonsensical Only X and Y Principle1194.
        2. This situation – where we’re tempted to reach for the ‘best candidate’ – occurs where we have more than one candidate as the continuer of an individual, and we feel we have to make a choice because:
          1. There is only one social or legal role to fill, and
          2. The logic of identity causes a problem.
        3. Consider Locke1195’s prince and cobbler or Williams’s body swapping1196, but without the swap (ie. where only half the thought experiment is performed, so we have two identical psychologies). If the cobbler’s body is informed by the prince’s mind, then Locke claims that the cobbler is the prince. But if the prince still exists in his own mind as well, there’s a better candidate (says Nozick, for instance in "Nozick (Robert) - Personal Identity Through Time" or "Nozick (Robert) - The Identity of the Self: Introduction"), so the cobbler then isn’t the prince after all – but how (so the objection goes) can the existence of someone depend on the existence of someone else?
        4. A Perdurantist1197 can accommodate these situations. This is by saying that prior to the point of decision, there were always two person stages co-located (ie. there were always two persons present, they just happened to share all their stages up to that point), and that only following the point of decision can we distinguish them. So, we don’t have to choose who is really the prince – they both are, in the sense that each post-decision spatio-temporal worm forms part of a larger spatio-temporal worm that includes pre-decision princely stages. Logical identity only applies to complete spatio-temporal worms, and there were always two worms sharing stages.
        5. Of course, we might have a convention1198 that enables us to choose in a principled manner who can fill which role (the prince remains in his palace, the cobbler’s body informed by the prince’s mind retires to a madhouse). Yet (if we adopt the perdurantist view and the psychological criterion1199) they are both the prince for all that.
        6. My own view used to be simply that the cobbler (ie. cobbler-body) just undergoes a radical psychological change, and so remains the cobbler all along. But I now think the thought experiment may be underspecified. Given the supervenience1200 of mind on brain1201, the superposition of one psychology on another would have radical physical consequences that would most likely destroy the original, and replace it with a clone1202 of the copied brain. But it is a clone, for all that, and not the original1203.
        7. There are other Thought Experiments1204, such as varients of Teletransportation1205 where Closest Continuer possibilities arise – I will discuss these in Chapter 101206.
        8. All the above notwithstanding, Perdurantism1207 – to be evaluated in Chapter 51208 - is a fairly fringe position to take that is often taken as having too great a metaphysical cost to be introduced simply to sort out worries caused by the Only X and Y Principle1209. We need to adress the puzzle cases individually and see just why we’re tempted by Closest Continuer solutions. These will – I would hope – arise because of mistaken approaches to the persistence of the entity in question that appears to be undergoing fission1210, duplication1211 or some other viscissitude.
    5. Heterodox Views
      • The orthodox approach to the Logic of Identity1212 is to treat it as a necessary equivalence relation. I follow this approach. However, in response to various TEs1213, deviant forms of the Identity relation have been devised, and some are still popular.
      • Contingent Identity1214
        1. The idea of Contingent Identity arose1215 in "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity", which considers the TE of the Statue and the Clay1216.
        2. The TE relates to the topic of Constitution1217. We are to consider a statue and the lump of clay of which is constituted. If we arrange things carefully, the two might coincidentally come into and go out of existence at the same time. If so, are they not identical, given that they would seem to have all the same properties? Yet, they might not have been temporally coincident – in the normal case, the lump would be formed first, and only slowly be sculpted into a statue. So, they are only contingently identical, the argument goes. And this TE shows (it is said) that far from being a necessary relation, identity may only contingently hold.
        3. The logic of identity1218 is so secure that it is sensible to look for other explanations of the TE. Of course, the divinations of just what is wrong with the TE are many, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the TE is misleading for any of these reasons.
        4. Baker1219, for instance, has “relation to an art world” as one of the properties the Statue has which is not had by the Lump. So, by Leibniz’s Law1220, the two are never identical.
        5. I’m suspicious of any TE involving artefacts1221. Any Intuitions1222 we have may be Conventional1223 rather than discoveries.
      • Indeterminate Identity1224
        1. The idea of Indeterminate Identity arises in response to certain TEs. However, the logic of identity is so secure that it is sensible to look for other explanations of any TE that appears to bring it into doubt.
        2. Two seemingly related suggestions are Vague Identity1225 (VI) and Indeterminate Identity (II).
        3. I’m not sure of the distinction between VI and II, having studied neither in any detail, but:-
          1. I’d have thought that VI is a metaphysical claim alongside the suggestion – allegedly refuted by Gareth Evans – that there can be vague objects.
          2. In contrast to this, II sounds like an epistemological claim – that there are identity claims the truth-values of which we cannot know.
          3. The above distinction is somewhat moot if the puzzle of Vagueness1226 is seen as at root epistemological, as by Timothy Williamson.
          4. To make matters worse, there are at least two other terms used:-
            → “Indefinite Identity”, and
            → “Imperfect Identity”
            Both these terms sound metaphysical, so I’ve assumed (for now) that they are the same as “Vague Identity1227”.
        4. However, a quick look through the abstract of the papers on the reading lists suggests that the two notions are related – in that papers titled as related to one actually seem to relate to the other. "Parsons (Terence) - Indeterminate Identity" looks like a good study of the whole topic but uses II to mean indeterminacy in the world, which is a metaphysical claim.
      • Occasional Identity1228
        1. Occasional identity is a response to TEs such as the fission1229 of an individual – such as amoeba – into two qualitatively identical individuals. We want to say that both are numerically identical to the parent, but the logic of identity1230 forbids this unless we claim that the two daughters are numerically identical to one another, though even this seemingly-impossible claim has been supported: see "Miller (Kristie) - Travelling in Time: How to Wholly Exist in Two Places at the Same Time".
        2. So, the claim is that the amoebae were once identical (and co-incident: though not in the sense supposed by Constitution1231 or Perdurance1232 or co-location), but now are not.
        3. This makes numerical identity1233 into a temporary (hence “occasional”) matter.
        4. It’s important not to confuse “temporary identity” with “temporal identity”. Maybe some philosophers – even if not confused – have been careless with their terminology. Some philosophers seem to use “temporal identity” for “diachronic identity” while others use it for “occasional identity”.
        5. An answer to this TE is to appeal to perdurance1234 – the daughters were always distinct, but just shared their pre-fission stages. This should maybe be a last resort as there are other explanations which I’ll cover when I consider Fission1235 in detail.
      • Partial Identity1236
        1. It seems that “Partial identity” is a mereological1237 claim, that something that has some of the parts of another things is “partially identical” to it. Two things are “partially identical” to the degree that they share parts. So, on this account, I am partially identical to my own head, and I am more partially identical to the mereological fusion of my head and my right hand.
        2. However, the term also seems to apply to properties1238 (taken to be universals1239, with universals viewed as the mereological sum of their instantiations).
        3. I doubt this has much relevance to my Thesis, though it might just be relevant to Brain Transplants1240.
      • Relative Identity1241
        1. Relative identity is invoked to try to explain some people’s intuition1242 that – following certain exigencies (say, a nasty bang on the head; or the Phineas Gage situation; see "Tobia (Kevin Patrick) - Personal Identity and the Phineas Gage Effect") – I might be the same Human Being1243, but not the same Person1244.
        2. So, it is said by the Relative Identity theorist, the identity relation is indexed to a sortal1245. It is said that it makes no sense to say that A is the same individual as B unless we say “the same what”. I think this is true, but it doesn’t mandate Relative Identity,
        3. David Wiggins is sometimes accused of straying into Relative Identity by insisting that questions of persistence are Sortal1246-relative. "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity" is at pains to point out that this is not the case. Relative Identity claims that the very same thing (X) can be identical to Y under one sortal and to Z under another. Most philosophers – including Wiggins and myself – deny this.
        4. My view is that – while it is true that we need to be careful what individual we are to pick out for identity claims – once we have picked out an individual (say in more than one way), it is self-identical whatever description we are using. And necessarily so as Saul Kripke has shown in his Hesperus / Phosphorus / Venus discussion in "Kripke (Saul) - Naming and Necessity".
        5. So, when we are thinking of what we imagine to be a single thing under two descriptions, then if we imagine the thing under one description coming apart from the thing under another, then one or other description doesn’t really pick out that thing as a substance1247, but (say) picks out a property of that substance.
        6. So, returning to our example, when we say “same person”, the term “person” is ambiguous.
          1. It can stand as a proxy for “human being”, or
          2. “Same person” can mean “has the same personality1248”.
        7. When this is understood, in neither case are we tempted into espousing relative identity:-
          1. In the first case we have identity, and
          2. In the second case we are comparing a property of a substance, and substances can change their properties over time without ceasing to be the same substance.
        8. So, Phineas Gage continues to be the same substance (human being – or maybe human animal) despite a radical change of personality.
      • Vague Identity1249
        1. I have nothing to say on this topic other than what I’ve said under Indeterminate Identity1250.
        1. Sorites1251
          1. The Sorites paradox – that of the heap – arises in many areas of philosophy, but specifically on the topic of vagueness1252.
          2. It is a TE1253 invented by the Greeks – see "Diogenes Laertius, Galen & Cicero - On the Sorites".
          3. From my perspective, there are two points of interest:-
            1. Firstly, just when is an individual correctly classified as an X, where X is a vague concept – or an epithet which may be applied as a matter of degree.
              → Specifically, is “Person1254” such a concept? Are there Degrees of Personhood1255?
            2. Secondly, as an argument-form.
              → Peter Unger used Sorites-style arguments to argue that we and other things don’t exist. I discuss these arguments under Nihilism1256.
        2. Vagueness1257
          1. Vagueness is a wide and interesting area of enquiry, and I will restrict most of my investigations to areas relevant to personal identity. So,
            1. While there can be clear paradigm cases it may be vague (ie. uncertain, or indeterminate) whether some particular instance is a paradigm case.
            2. There can be vague boundaries to the concept person1258.
            3. Also, maybe there can be persons of varying degrees1259.
            4. Maybe some higher mammals possess many of the qualities of persons, but to a reduced degree.
          2. All this is covered, more or less, in this chapter under other topics, including Vague Identity1260, Indeterminate Identity1261 and Sorites1262 and in Chapter 71263 under the Problem of the Many1264.
  4. Ontology1265
    1. Ontology is the study of what exists1266.
    2. In the context of the philosophy of personal identity, ontological questions ask what persons1267 really are.
    3. Maybe it’s best first of all to step back, with Locke1268, and consider the sorts1269 of thing that persist and establish the persistence conditions1270 for these sorts. For example:-
      1. Bodies1271,
      2. Animals1272,
      3. Human Beings1273.
    4. The ontological question is whether – with Locke – we should add Persons1274 to this list.
    5. Lynne Rudder Baker1275 held the view that when a person comes into existence, so does a new entity, of a new kind1276. A world without persons would be ontologically impoverished.
    6. But is this so, or do existing entities simply gain new properties1277?
    7. We must even (on certain definitions of PERSON1278) ask whether there are any1279, or whether the term can be eliminated. See:-
      1. "Unger (Peter) - Why There Are No People" and
      2. "Unger (Peter) - I Do Not Exist".
    8. Since Unger’s sorites1280 arguments eliminate all material entities with parts1281, not just persons (though the elimination of persons on this account depends on the assumption that they are material entities with parts) I, along with the later Unger, wish to reject their conclusions by denying the soundness of the argument-form1282.
    9. The ontology of Artifacts1283 will be covered in the section on Artifacts.
    1. Existence1284
      1. For something to persist1285 is for it to continue to exist. So, we need a basic understanding of just what it is for something to exist, one of the foundational questions of metaphysics.
      2. The topic here is one of logic1286 – what it is for a thing to exist – rather than ontology1287 – what exists, though there will be some overlap between the discussions of the two concepts.
      3. There’s a question whether existence is univocal. Do abstract objects exist in the same way as concrete particulars? What sort of thing are personalities1288, and where, if anywhere, do they exist?
      4. Some matters of existence are covered elsewhere in this Chapter, namely:-
        1. Vague Existence1289
      5. Other matters are to be addressed in other Chapters:-
        1. The various Nihilist1290 positions in Personal Identity: Chapter 21291
        2. The possibility of Intermittent Existence1292: Chapter 51293
        3. Disembodied Existence1294: Chapter 111295
      6. There are many interesting questions about existence that I won’t have time or space to address, unless they come up as essential factors in arguments about Personal Identity. For instance:-
        1. Meinongian claims, and the possibility of Subsistence for things – like unicorns – that don’t exist.
        2. The notion of necessary1296 existence This topic gets tangled up with the Ontological Argument1297 for the existence of God. I’ve omitted all but a taste of this topic from the reading list.
    2. Mind1298
      1. The topic of Mind – and just what we mean by minds – is very large, and not one I can address in any detail.
      2. However it’s central to the Psychological View1299, which says that this is what we are1300 most fundamentally.
      3. At the very least, having a mind is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a Person1301, though individuals who have ‘lost their minds’ may be accorded the status of persons on account of their past mindedness.
      4. However, Animalism1302 denies that the mental has anything to do with our persistence conditions1303 – we can survive1304 without any mind at all, though we might not have anything that matters to us1305.
      5. Mindedness is a lesser property than Consciousness1306, let alone Consciousness of Self1307.
      6. It seems that minds can be attributed to appropriately-configured machines1308, and even to plants1309.
      7. Whether reality is correctly divided between the mental and the physical is discussed under Dualism1310.
      8. Whatever I have to say about ‘Hive Minds’ – the supposed mind of a Superorganism – will be covered in my Note on Organisms1311.
    3. Matter1312
      1. “Matter” works fine as a contrast to “mind1313”, even though relativistic Mass/Energy is preferred in physics.
      2. Also, “physicalism1314” is preferred to “materialism” as the contrast to dualism1315 (or idealism).
      3. The persistence conditions1316 of “masses of matter” are usually different to those of the things that matter constitutes1317, or so it is said (and sometimes denied).
      4. For example, in the (alleged) “corpse1318” problem for animalism1319, the corpse is said to be distinct from the animal1320 for the above reason – that corpses are masses of matter to have different persistence conditions to the animals they instantaneously constitute. So, where does the corpse come from? Has it always existed co-located with the animal? Do we then end up with a constitution account of animalism1321, whereby – in contrast to the CV1322 of Persons – it is the animal1323 – rather than the person1324 – that is constituted by the body1325? This will be considered in later Chapters.
      • Naturalism1326
        1. Ontological Naturalism is the assumption – tacit or explicit – that there are no supernatural entities or causes in nature. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective: What Is The Problem?" distinguishes two forms of naturalism:-
          1. Weaker: There is no supernatural reality.
          2. Stronger: Science is the arbiter of reality and knowledge.
        2. Methodological Naturalism makes no ontological claims but just adopts the reasonable stance that we should proceed (in the sciences, but also in historical investigations and in everyday life) as though Weak Naturalism were true. This form of naturalism cannot be adopted when addressing supernatural claims, without begging the question. The same goes for Weak Naturalism, of course.
        3. However, Strong Naturalism (in the absence of Methodological Naturalism) might be consistent with supernatural claims. But since supernatural events are – to say the least – rare, it is best to adopt Methodological Naturalism unless forced by the evidence to assume otherwise – and even then, it may be best simply to await further evidence or the advance of science.
        4. What Baker terms Strong Naturalism seems to be the same as, or to include, Naturalised Epistemology. I suppose "Kornblith (Hilary) - Naturalizing Epistemology" would be a good place to start.
        5. I don’t understand Baker’s choice of terms. The bald statement that ‘there are no supernatural entities or causes in nature’ seems to be a stronger assertion than ‘Science is the arbiter of reality and knowledge’. For all we know, science might one day be forced to include supernatural entities in its ontology, though – as noted – Methodological Naturalism would make this a very last resort.
        6. I just note in passing that “naturalisation” – that is, explaining in fully naturalistic terms (possibly involving reduction1327) – is a process that can be applied to just about any field.
        7. I leave it as an open question at this stage whether naturalism is equivalent to physicalism1328, implies it, is implied by it, or is orthogonal to it.
        8. The relevance of this topic to my Thesis stems from my interest in the Christian Materialists1329, and also from the topic of resurrection1330, or other “possibilities” of post-mortem survival1331.
      • Physicalism1332
        1. I reject any form of mind-body dualism1333 or immaterialist monism. There are no souls1334, if a soul is an immaterial substance separable from a body1335.
        2. But, I need to investigate Dean Zimmerman’s recent “emergent dualism” (see "Zimmerman (Dean) - Reply to Baker's 'Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism'"), despite the fact that his main motivation is a desire to conform to a traditionalist reading of Christian doctrine.
        3. There is a comparatively-recent move within certain Christian circles (by the Christian Materialists1336) to adopt physicalism and focus on Resurrection1337 – rather than the immortality of the soul – as a solution to most-mortem survival.
        4. Given my focus on physicalism, I will need to give some attention to the identity and persistence criteria1338 of material objects1339 as such.
        5. There are too many versions of physicalism for its endorsement to deliver much without clarification, so I will need to pursue the matter in some detail.
        6. For the moment, I simply wish to note (or claim) that:
          1. “The physical” encompasses both body1340 and brain1341 (ie. the physical criterion1342 of personal identity would be satisfied if continuity of brain were essential for the persistence of the person1343).
          2. The brain is more important than other physical organs for the persistence of the human being1344 or the human person1345.
        7. Consequently, I think it worthwhile to conduct a detailed investigation into the functional roles of the various parts of the brain, CNS (Central Nervous System) and PNS (Peripheral Nervous System) and how these and the residue of the body are coupled together.
        8. Such matters may be relevant to the realism of the various thought experiments1346 about brain transplants1347, cerebrum transplants and such-like.
        9. It is, however, debatable how important these details are. For example, debates seem to continue about the possible identity of pain and C-fibre-firing, when it’s now acknowledged by all the participants in such debates that the physical realisation of pain-states in mammals requires a lot more than C-fibres (see "Wikipedia - Group C nerve fiber"). The assumption seems to be that the details don’t matter and that similar arguments could be constructed whatever the physical realisation of mental states might be.
    4. Kinds1348
      1. This may be an important topic, particularly in distinguishing Natural Kinds1349 from other Kinds, as the question whether Persons1350 (or even human persons1351) fall under a natural kind concept is critical to the debate between animalists1352 and those favouring the constitution view1353.
      2. I can’t see much difference between Sortals1354 and Kinds, and Natural Kinds1355 are obviously a subset of Kinds. Phase Sortals1356 are a bit like jobs, so may not be kinds at all.
      3. But if (as I believe) persons are Phase Sortals1357 of human animals1358, then this can’t be right if persons form a kind as seems likely.
      4. Kinds may be instantiated Concepts1359; so, are sets of things, but with a principled array of entry-criteria, which would allow members of multiple natural Kinds to belong (for Persons1360, this might be the usual suspects – God, aliens, human beings, the great Apes, and so on).
      • Natural Kinds1361
        1. This topic is a subsidiary to that of Kinds1362.
          1. A kind is a way of categorising things.
          2. Some ways of categorising things are more “natural” than others – ie they reflect the way the world is, rather than the way we and our interests are. Natural kinds “carve the world at the joints”.
          3. So, toothbrushes form a kind, but it is not a natural kind, whereas lions form a natural kind, as does gold.
        2. A good general introduction to this topic is "Hawley (Katherine) & Bird (Alexander) - What are Natural Kinds?".
        3. I have some questions on Natural Kinds related to the topic of PID:-
          1. Is the concept of a PERSON1363 a natural kind concept?
          2. Can PERSON be analysed in terms of other concepts, or do we presuppose it?
          3. See, for example, "Madell (Geoffrey) - The Identity of the Self" for the alleged unanalysability of the concept PERSON. This is the Simple View1364.
          4. It may be the case that SENTIENT BEING (or RATIONAL BEING) is the natural kind concept, and that PERSON, with its social / legal / moral overtones, is something cultures assign.
          5. Even so, the concept HUMAN ANIMAL1365 is really the natural kind concept, exemplars of which gain or lose the properties1366 of sentience, rationality, and even the first-person perspective1367.
        4. When does a natural kind come into existence?
          1. Natural kinds are concepts1368, and such questions are controversial.
          2. Maybe I should side-step this question and simply talk about when the concept becomes instantiated, which is when the first individual that falls under it comes into existence, though this may be before the concept is formulated or even conceived of.
        1. Universals1369
          1. What have Universals to do with Personal Identity? Well, not a lot – except David Lewis introduced them as an example to distinguish perdurance1370 from endurance1371 – Universals being analogous to enduring entities as they are (allegedly) wholly present in each particular that possesses the property covered by the Universal. So, (a particular shade of) redness is (said to be) wholly present in each red object exemplifying that shade.
          2. There’s also a connection with Natural Kinds1372. In "Hawley (Katherine) & Bird (Alexander) - What are Natural Kinds?", the authors suggest that Natural Kinds are “Complex Universals”.
          3. I also – probably heretically – have the view that Universals themselves might have persistence conditions1373. My example is that of a book. “Pride and Prejudice” is a book – but both a Universal that can be variously instantiated in physical books, or (now) eBooks. But it (or a better example) might go through several editions. What makes all these editions “of the same book”?
      • Metamorphosis1374
        1. Metamorphosis involves a radical and fairly rapid change of bodily1375 form in the same individual1376, by comparison with “business as usual” growth and maturation – catastrophic injury doesn’t count. No doubt this begs the question somewhat in assuming that we do indeed have the same individual.
        2. Tadpoles → frogs and caterpillars → butterflies are, in seems to me, different kinds of cases of metamorphosis. If there is anything it’s like to be a caterpillar or a tadpole, the caterpillar’s experience of metamorphosis will differ from that of the tadpole’s, as the caterpillar transforms into the butterfly via goo, whereas the tadpole’s metamorphosis into the frog is continuous1377 with it remaining an active organism1378.
        3. While “Tadpole → Frog” is a paradigm case of Metamorphosis, presumably there’s no more metamorphosis in this transformation than there is in fetus1379 → neonate in humans and mammals generally? Isn’t the difference between the maturation of a tadpole and fetus simply the environment and food-source? Maybe not, since the tadpole’s gills and tail have to be re-absorbed and the material used for the frog’s front and rear legs respectively. The use of the collagenase enzyme in this process is described in detail in "Al-Khalili (Jim) & McFadden (Johnjoe) - Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology", Chapter 3, pp. 110-112.
        4. If the account of Sortals1380 is correct, metamorphosis involving a change of Ultimate Sortal is a logical impossibility (in the sense of the very same thing metamorphosing as in the frog to prince case). I suppose, in this last case, we might have the Ultimate Sortal as Organism1381 of which Frog and Prince (or Human Being1382) are Phase Sortals1383, but then, what is an Ultimate Sortal in one context is a Phase Sortal in another. Is this an issue?
        5. How should the (supposed) case of bodily transformation to be expected by the Christian at Christ’s return be understood? In that case – see 1 Corinthians 15:521384 – rather than dying and being resurrected1385 to a new body, the living body is “… changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump”. Is this a case of metamorphosis? What about the dead (supposedly) coming out of their graves during the same event? Are these Corpses1386 metamorphosed into (resurrection) bodies?
        6. "Bynum (Caroline) - Metamorphosis and Identity" is presumably the jumping-off point for this topic, though the detailed text seems overly fixated on medieval fascination with werewolves.
    5. Artifacts1387
      1. Since artifacts are human inventions, they do not fall under natural kind1388 concepts, and so their persistence conditions may be to some degree a matter of convention1389. Since human beings1390 are (at least) organisms1391, analogies with artifacts may be moot, to say the least.
      2. An interesting notion – I think due to Trenton Merricks (in "Merricks (Trenton) - Objects and Persons") and others – is nihilism1392 with respect to artifacts. This is the view that there are no statues, but only atoms arranged statuewise.
        • If this is a correct account, then this would undermine the prime support of the Constitution View1393.
        • The reason being that statues, and the like, are prime examples and motivators of the CV, whereby you can have two things (of different sorts1394) in the same place at the same time, one of which constitutes1395 the other.
        • If there are no such statues, then all this falls apart.
        • This would be odd because – as far as I remember – Trenton Merricks is a supporter of the CV.
        • Yet of course there are statues, but in what sense?
        • An idea I intend to play with (this may be Merricks’s, for all I know) is that artifacts are shared ideas (memes1396) projected onto the physical objects (which are indeed collections of atoms arranged X-wise, and the form of the X-wise structure is deliberately chosen to enable it to perform its function).
        • This agrees with, say, Baker’s notion that statues exist only in relation to an art-world. But they are ideas rather than things.
      3. See also the Ship of Theseus1397 under this head. It is the standard conundrum concerning the persistence conditions of artifacts, which are also the clearest contenders for the existence of intermittent objects1398. Some philosophers (sensibly) claim that a bicycle can survive being disassembled and then re-assembled, with the (rash) assumption that the bicycle doesn't exist in its disassembled state. Well, my view is that the bicycle does exist in the disassembled state. I'd be miffed if someone returned my bicycle in a disassembled state, but my miffedness wouldn't be because I thought I'd not received my bike back, but because it would be a pain to re-assemble it.
      4. The intermittent existence of objects is relevant to the issue of resurrection1399 for physicalists. But the artifact model isn’t appropriate here. A bike can't survive its parts being mulched up and re-manufactured. In any case, we can't logically get our original atoms back (as organisms1400 exchange atoms with their environment all the time, so there's no such things as "my atoms", since any such things would (over time) be shared with other organisms).
      5. There’s a disagreement – it seems – between Western and Eastern traditions as to whether material continuity and connectedness1401 are required for the persistence of artifacts – in particular, for buildings. Japanese Shinto temples can be rebuilt next to one another and swapped over on a 20-year cycle while remaining “the same temple” (or temple complex). It’s the form that’s important, not the matter1402, and it’s deemed essential to keep the matter in good condition – though not, of course, the same matter – using traditional crafts to replace it. See "Han (Byung-Chul) - Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese". This is something of a problem even in the Western tradition, as the reductio of “Trigger’s Broom” exemplifies.
      6. There is the claim that adopting a functional approach to personal identity is effectively treating persons as artifacts (which are defined by their functions – eg. a corkscrew – though there can be broken exemplars that can no longer perform the function). Presumably this is intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the functionalist1403 account of personhood.
      7. Wiggins touches on the subject of persons as artifacts in "Wiggins (David) - Personal Identity" (in "Wiggins (David) - Sameness and Substance Renewed"). From a quick look, it seems to me that Wiggins is saying that if we tinker around with human beings enough (whether genetically or by heroic surgical intervention), we have effectively turned them into artifacts of our own devising, and so there is no longer a natural-kind1404-constrained answer to questions of their persistence conditions1405. Since Wiggins seems to equate persons1406 and human beings1407, the thought experiments1408 if carried out in a world would lead to persons that are artifacts. But maybe he’s saying something deeper.
      8. This topic – the artefactual status of transplantees, and in particular Wiggins’s views on Persons and Human Beings – is covered in detail in the "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity".
      • Scattered Objects1409
        1. The possibility of scattered objects is of fairly limited interest in the study of Personal Identity, though the topic is discussed passim in "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death", and also in my review1410 of "Zimmerman (Dean) - Problems for Animalism".
        2. The concept features in the discussion of intermittent objects1411 where – rather than admit of such things – an alternative is to allow the disassembled bicycle to be a scattered object.
        3. Another locus of interest is in certain medieval concepts of the resurrection of the body. If the body is gathered together again from its “dust”, then maybe it had continued to exist as a scattered object. The problem with this is that organisms don’t own their parts essentially, and they can be shared over time by a number of organisms (witness the old worry about cannibalism, and the counterfactual reply that the body “rejects” cannibalised flesh).
        4. A problem with allowing scattered objects is that it undermines our intuition that one of the things that grounds the persistence1412 of material objects is spatio-temporal continuity1413.
        5. Scattered objects arise perforce if we hold to mereological essentialism1414, or allow that any gerrymandered object exists1415 and has its parts essentially.
        6. Various collectives may be said to constitute a Superorganism and be said to have a ‘Hive Mind’ or have ‘Collective Intelligence’ or ‘Swarm Intelligence’. Whatever I have to say about this will be covered in my Note on Organisms1416.
  5. Substance & Process
    1. Individuals1417
      1. We often refer to persons1418, or human beings1419, as “individuals”, but this is just an index for “X”, where “X” is a “person”, “human being”, or such-like, without being explicit about what category of being is referred to.
      2. Hence, it may betray confusion or uncertainty about the sort1420 of thing we are1421, an equation of the various possibilities, or the assumption of one position as the only available one.
      3. Be this as it may, the main topic to be covered under this head will be the problem of individuation – how to tell one thing from another.
      4. Individuation is an important question because until we have identified a particular individual, and separated it from others in the locality, we can’t sensibly talk about its persistence1422.
      5. The whole idea of individuation depends – in part – on adopting a substance1423 rather than process1424 view of metaphysics. However, if we take the process line, we then have to have criteria for individuating processes, which may be even more difficult, so the question doesn’t just go away.
    2. Substance1425
      1. This is a big subject but, basically, I take a substance to be an individual (relatively) self-standing thing (a particular) that has properties that may change over time.
      2. My specific interest in this topic is whether persons – qua persons1426 – are substances. This depends what the term “person” refers to. My contention is that “person” is a property (or collection of properties, or an honorific) of a substance rather than a substance in its own right. So, animalism1427 would have it that the substance is the human animal1428, which for part of its existence has the property of being a person.
      3. There’s the question whether the substance-view is inconsistent with perdurantism1429, whereby individuals are not wholly present at a time, but are “space-time worms”. On this view, for an animalist, a person would be a section (or a collection of sections) of the space-time worm that is the human animal.
      4. But on either view, a person is a phase sortal1430 of the human animal.
      • Sortals1431
        1. Using Howard Robinson’s terminology ("Robinson (Howard) - Dualism (Stanford)"), the Ultimate Sort of a thing is that property1432 without which the thing ceases to exist.
        2. However, an individual falling under a Phase Sortal1433 can lose the property that defines the phase without ceasing to exist.
        3. Ultimate Sorts are presumably the same as Baker1434’s Primary Kinds1435, though I can’t remember if she has an analogue of a Phase Sortal.
        4. The standard example is of a Human Being1436 (as the Ultimate Sort) and Child (as a Phase Sortal).
        5. So, is personhood1437 an attribute of a human being, like “childhood”, that a human being can either possess or lack, or are persons ontologically1438 separate from “their” human beings?
        6. Wiggins1439 argues that we can’t talk of the persistence conditions1440 of anything until we know what sort it is.
        7. Olson1441 claims that it’s futile to talk of the persistence conditions of persons1442 per se – if human beings, God and angels are all persons – since their persistence conditions (assuming the existence of God and angels, for the sake of the argument) are completely different. This lack of a common set of persistence conditions would indicate that Person1443 is not an Ultimate Sort.
        1. Phase Sortals1444
          1. I may have misappropriated this term. In its standard usage (I am told), a phase sortal is a biologically-motivated term. The clearest examples are of individuals that metamorphose1445; for example the butterfly: egg → larva (caterpillar) → pupa (chrysalis) → adult (butterfly). The caterpillar is a phase sortal of the organism, with clear spatio-temporal boundaries. My standard example is of Child, which is a (vaguely1446-boundaried) biological phase of the substance sortal Human Being1447.
          2. An example of a possible human phase sortal that is a non-person1448 is Infant. This example might be especially relevant to the topic, because “infant” is derived from the Latin in-fans “without speech”, and the capacity for speech is often claimed to be an essential prerequisite for being a person1449.
          3. Any suggestion that the concept Person1450 is “no more than” a phase sortal of an umbrella concept isn’t intended to imply unimportance. Rather, simply that persons might not form a kind1451 (and in particular a natural kind1452), nor be substances1453, but that personhood might be a property1454 of substances (of animals1455, for instance).
          4. What about “periodic” phase sortals such as Student? A human being can “pop in and out of” studenthood by registering or deregistering, but he can’t do this with childhood. Which model suits personhood? See the discussion of intermittent objects1456.
          5. However, if the above suggestion that the concept Phase Sortal is biologically motivated is correct, a purely social concept such as Student is not a phase sortal in this sense, and Person might not be either. I could, of course, invent a new term of art.
          6. All roads seem to lead to Wiggins1457 (Paul Snowdon refers to him a lot in the context of Animalism1458, though I seem to remember that Eric Olson thinks Wiggins isn’t a true Animalist, but a supporter of the psychological view1459).
    3. Process Metaphysics1460
      1. A foundation-stone of my – and most philosophers’ – account of identity is that “things” – or at least some “things” – exist1461. Without things1462 to persist, there can be no persistence1463 and no diachronic identity.
      2. There has been much discussion about just which things exist, and which things make up – or compose1464 – other things.
      3. This is the Substance1465 view of Ontology1466.
      4. However, other philosophers cast doubt on the existence of things, and prefer to focus on processes – in particular, biological ones. This is “process metaphysics”, or “naturalistic metaphysics”.
      5. Anne Sophie Meincke, in collaboration with John Dupré, seems to be proposing a non-substance1467 version of Animalism1468.
      6. Also, it seems that Chinese philosophy eschews substance in favour of process, at least according to Byung-Chul Han.
      7. I’m not sure how much of an impact this stance has on my research. I’d already suggested that animals1469 are each individuated by a life1470, itself a process.
      8. On what exists, see, for instance:-
        → "Hudson (Hud) - Vagueness and Composition"
        → "Markosian (Ned) - Brutal Composition"
        → "Miller (Kristie) - The Existential Quantifier, Composition and Contingency"
        → "Parsons (Josh) - Conceptual Conservatism and Contingent Composition"
        And especially …
        → "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Special Composition Question"
        → "Van Inwagen (Peter) - When are Objects Parts?"
      9. Papers on Aeon that sparked my interest in Process Metaphysics:-
        → "Vieira (Celso) - Which is more fundamental: processes or things?"
        → "Dupre (John) - Metaphysics of metamorphosis"
        The above two papers are all I’ve read on the subject thus far.
      10. Relevant books include:-
        → "Rescher (Nicholas) - Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy"
        → "Ladyman (James), Ross (Don), Spurrett (David) & Collier (John) - Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized"
  6. Convention1471
    1. Can it ever be right to say that whether a thing persists1472 or not – or even exists1473 or not – is merely a matter of convention?
    2. Because of the existence of a First Person Perspective1474, it seems difficult to imagine in the case of Persons1475, but it may be true of artifacts1476.
    3. Issues arise with Thought Experiments1477 that stretch the boundaries of our Concepts1478, so that it might be argued that it is arbitrary whether an individual survives the vicissitude described – maybe inadequately – in the TE.
    4. But, it might be argued, individuals falling under a Natural Kind1479 concept persist or fail to do so irrespective of our language and our concepts.
    5. However, if personhood is an honorific, rather than a natural kind, concept then whether an individual persists as a person might indeed be conventional – depending on our concept person1480.
    6. But whether an individual persists as an animal1481 is not a matter of convention, though it might be subject to epistemological vagueness1482.
    1. Concepts1483
      1. Concepts are important in "Unger (Peter) - I Do Not Exist". Unger’s answer to the problem of vagueness1484 – as exemplified by the “disappearing chair” problem (atom-wise annihilation of the chair … just when does it cease to be?) – is that there never were any chairs, just our concept of a chair and atoms arranged chair-wise. We sit on the atoms, not on the concept, but we describe the atom-heap as a chair. But this concept is vague, or there is a family resemblance, so sometimes it’s not clear whether it applies or not.
      2. This may possibly be satisfactory for Artifacts1485, but the big question is whether natural kind1486 objects exist independently of our conceptual schemes. Certainly they do as atom-heaps, but it is unclear whether they do as answers to our concepts. So, various atom-heaps carry on existing1487, but whether our concepts carry on applying is vague.
      3. Others (eg. Peter Van Inwagen) take the view that only mereological simples and organisms exist, which seems to be a similar view: nothing answers to our concept if it is not of an organism or a simple. Or, rather, it’s atoms arranged X-wise that answer to our concept of X in these circumstances.
      4. There seems to be something special about natural kind1488 concepts, the persistence1489 of whose exemplars (unlike those of artifact-concepts) don’t in any sense seem to depend on us and our conceptual schemes. Is PERSON1490 a natural kind concept – rather than a qualification of an individual falling under a natural kind concept (such as human animal1491)? If it isn’t, then are we simply left with semantic1492 arguments, which – though logically inconsequential – have profound practical and ethical consequences?
      5. Are the arguments above really saying that artifacts don’t exist? Presumably artifacts depend on us for their existence as artifacts1493, though not as lumps of matter.
      6. Lynne Rudder Baker argues that a new ontological1494 entity (a painting) comes into existence because of the relation of an object (a canvas plus paint appropriately distributed) to an art-world. I need to press Baker here. Are all her analogies truly analogous? Given evolution1495, even species-concepts (paradigms for natural kind1496 concepts) are mobile rather than being eternally fixed. Yet Baker seems to think that it’s a relation to evolutionary history that makes an animal1497 what it is (as distinct, presumably, from atoms arranged animal-wise).
      • Semantics1498
        1. We need to separate those issues in the topic of personal identity that turn on matters of fact, and those that just depend on the meaning of our words. Sometimes, it is not clear which of these options is assumed in any particular case.
        2. For instance, David Wiggins’s view (shared by many others) is that we should use the term Person1499 of individuals1500 who belong to a kind1501 whose typical members have certain capacities.
        3. This will allow us to use the term of individuals who don’t presently possess these capacities – which may be correct in the case of temporary loss of function – but also of those who never have and – most likely – never will possess them.
        4. Then, if we accord certain rights to Persons1502 in this sense, we may act differently to some of those designated Persons1503 than do those who only confer the title Person1504 to those with the appropriate present (or normally-present) capacities.
        5. So, there is a practical difference. But is this difference generated only by confusion over words? If we adopt the “typical members” definition., then might we not then say that not all Persons have the same rights, and introduce a new term “Person1505-Plus” for all of whose exemplars do deserve the rights? This would allow for Degrees of Personhood1506 and, of course, the “typical members” definition may be adopted to resist this slide (as it might be seen).
        6. This will depend on whether Person1507 is a natural kind1508 concept1509, and whether this kind strictly relates to Person or Person-Plus.
        7. My own view is that neither Person nor Person-Plus is a natural-kind concept, but is an honorific or description of properties possessed by exemplars of a true natural-kind concept – Human Animal1510 or Human Being1511.
    2. Fiction1512
      1. This is a somewhat tangential topic for my Thesis, though fictional characters are (usually) persons1513, so I have to say how I – as an animalist1514 – can account for this given that they are not animals1515. Not particularly hard.
      2. We might also consider what are the persistence conditions1516 of a fictional character. Are there things his creator cannot do to the character without killing him off? Can the character be resurrected? What is the ontological1517 status of a fictional character? In what sense – if any – do they exist1518? What about characters – like Superman – that pass into the public domain? Or – like Dr. Who – that are portrayed as having different characters and bodies across what purports to be a single story-line?
      3. Various Thought Experiments1519 rely on cases from science-fiction, the suspected impossibility of which can undermine their cogency. I discuss such Science-fiction cases later under the head of TEs1520.
      4. Yuval Noah Harari argues that many of our everyday beliefs are “convenient fictions” rather than truths. They help to hold society1521 – and the individuals1522 within it – together.
      5. Myths divide into redundant fantasies and the still-current ways in which we speak of and seek to make sense of the world in ways that go beyond – or against – what can actually be known.
      6. Sundry philosophers – eg. Hume1523 – complain that various things we normally take for granted (such as the self or persisting objects) are “fictions” – that is, they do not exist1524.
      7. Fictionalism appears as an alternative to realism with respect to mathematics, modality1525 and the past1526 (and probably elsewhere). This deserves further consideration.
  7. Explanation1527
    1. In the introductory Preface to this Thesis, and in my Note on Method and Form1528, I said that the entire work will be abductive – an exercise in inference to the best explanation – so I need to give an account of what an explanation is. The Thesis needs to account for our intuitions1529 in response to the various TEs1530 and other situations and questions that arise, or else explain them away as confused. If there is a universal response, that is – though this isn’t always the case (consider the ‘transplant intuition1531’ that ‘you go with your brain’, denied by card-carrying Animalists, though I suspect they feel the power of the intuition even so).
    2. This is the underlying reason for the methodology I’ve adopted – to try to tease out all the implications of a theory of Personal Identity – because ‘fixing’ a problem in one area may have unintended consequences in other areas. The entire implied ‘world view’ has to hang together as best as possible.
    3. I have certain prejudices as to what an explanation is – a bias towards modern scientific as against Aristotelian forms of explanation, whereby an explanation has to fill in the details of mechanism, hopefully with quantification, rather than be vaguely gesturing.
    4. I need to define and defend this position but, as it’s methodological and somewhat peripheral, without causing too much of a diversion from my main concerns. I can’t get into a full-blown study of the philosophy of science.
    1. Probability1532
      1. I, and probably many others, tend to say that certain propositions are ‘unlikely’ to be true; that they are ‘improbable’.
      2. But, just what does probable mean in this context, given that this “probability” usually cannot be quantified – ie. given a number in the range [0,1]?
      3. In philosophical circles, the philosophy of rational belief closely follows Bayesian principles and conditional probabilities. So, while there is no objective probability for the truth or falsehood of our beliefs, we can supply subjective probabilities and revise these in the light of new evidence.
      4. I really don’t think this topic has much to do with my thesis on the topic of Personal Identity, though I will be on the look-out hereafter. It seems to be more relevant (as far as my own concerns go) in the philosophy of religion in regards to the probabilities of certain beliefs – in miracles and the like. I’ve also written some brief Notes on Pascal’s Wager, which I argue should be rejected.
      5. Some further thoughts – not worth including here – appear in my Note on Probability1533.

Concluding Remarks
  1. In our next Chapter, we need to consider further the question of Persistence and Time and how they impact on the topic of Personal Identity.
Chapter 5: Persistence and Time1534

Abstract
  1. Any discussion of identity over time – of anything – needs to have some discussion of just what it is for something to persist, what we take time to be and what our attitude is to the existence – or otherwise – of the past and future.
  2. This involves discussion of change, and the difference between persistence and survival, and whether our continuing self-identity really matters to us.

Chapter Introduction
  1. We start off with a discussion of Change1535. In this context we need to consider Causality1536, because this is implicated in which changes are identity-preserving and which not.
  2. Change is usually understood as differing Properties1537 enjoyed by Substances from one time to another. This leads to the problem of Temporary Intrinsics1538, how having inconsistent properties at different times doesn’t violate Leibniz’s Law. However, there’s an alternative account – Haecceity1539 – which claims that substances persist irrespective of change of properties.
  3. Before we can discuss Persistence1540 as such, we need to have a view of the temporal ‘medium’ in which change takes place. The philosophy of Time1541 is highly complex, and I need only touch on it insofar as it affects my choice of theory of Persistence. It appears, however, that the possibility of Time Travel1542 – assuming there is such a possibility – has some implications for our theories of Personal Identity.
  4. When we consider the circumstances under which a Person, Human Animal, or anything else can be said to persist, we need to consider not just actual cases – situations which the individual has undergone – but possible cases, ones that it might undergo. This brings in Modality1543, especially when we get on to the more exotic Thought Experiments, when the various sorts of Possibility need to be taken into account.
  5. Now we get to the meat of the Chapter as we consider just what Persistence Criteria1544 are, and review what alternatives have been suggested.
  6. Whatever else Persistence Criteria involve, we know that Continuity1545 of some sort is key. We covered Psychological Continuity in Chapter 1. In the context of Animalism, Physical Continuity1546 is of more relevance. We need to distinguish Continuity from Connectedness1547, as there’s a tension between the two.
  7. However – in the case of Artifacts at least – Continuity and Connectedness are, superficially at least, not required in the case of disassembly and reassembly. Can this Intermittent Existence1548 apply to Human Animals to allow for Resurrection? Does Intermittent Existence make sense?
  8. We now need to consider whether the standard view of Persistence – Endurantism1549 – where the individual is considered to be wholly present at a time – is correct, or whether we should consider a space-time worm view – either Perdurantism1550 or Exdurantism1551.
  9. The above is relevant because, depending on our approach to time and persistence, some of the troubling thought experiments that worry us about the persistence of human persons that feature in Chapter 10 are resolved, because the reduplication objections fail. However, we get nothing for nothing. As is usual in philosophy, a gain here is compensated for by a loss somewhere else. We need to determine these losses and agree that they are “worth it”.
  10. Finally, we will consider whether matters of Identity really matter. Derek Parfit claims that “Identity is not what matters in survival”. In making this claim, he introduces the term Survival1552, which – as far as I can tell – is not the same as Persistence, since the latter necessarily involves Identity, whereas the former does not. Parfit had a rather impersonal view on What Matters1553, which was more prescriptive than descriptive: we should be happy if our pet projects carry on, even if not with us at the helm.

Main Text
  1. Change1554
    1. Change is one of the central problems that questions of identity address. Just what changes can an object undergo while remaining the same thing?
    2. If an individual thing1555 is to Persist1556, this is in the face of Change – either (in the absence of Essentialism1557) to its Parts1558 – by losing or gaining some – or to its Properties1559, the problem of Temporary Intrinsics1560.
    3. As is indicated above, the changes that can affect the persistence of an Individual are intrinsic to it. Extrinsic (relational) property changes do not affect persistence, being ‘mere Cambridge Changes’. Or so is the orthodox position, but might have been disputed by Lynne Rudder Baker1561. For example, if the art-world changes its mind about a urinal being a work of art, is there an ontological1562 change?
    4. Just two further things for now.
      1. Firstly, if I understand things aright, change is something that happens to substances1563, and the question of identity is whether or not that substance remains the same substance after some change. Change is not relevant (or at least persistence through change isn’t relevant) under (at least) a couple of philosophical positions:-
        1. If we adopt a mereological1564 essentialist1565 position, whereby the things that exist are regions of space-time and their contents. This turn of phrase may sound too much like the “generous ontology1566”, which answers the question “what exists” as “any region of spacetime, and whatever is in it”, which includes all sorts of spatio-temporally gerrymandered objects. Here, I refer only to objects as are ordinarily taken to exist, like dogs and tennis balls, but with the restriction that they have all their parts essentially, and cease to exist when they lose a part. Then, a thing just is a collection of particles, and if one of these is lost or destroyed, then so is the thing. This leads to the denial that there are any ordinary things, like chairs or animals, as they are always losing and gaining parts, and so only exist as the same thing momentarily.
        2. If we adopt a perdurantist1567 account of persistence, the things that exist are space-time worms. A thing is not wholly present at a time, only its temporal stage is. The thing as a whole exists timelessly. Does the thing therefore change? Maybe not, but questions of persistence still apply, though maybe only pragmatically. Just what aggregate of stages are usefully described as a persisting thing? A four-dimensional naturalist might insist that exemplars of natural kinds – particularly organisms – have a greater claim to existence than arbitrary assemblages of stages.
      2. A second important matter is that (on many accounts) it is the rate of change that is critical. Everyone seems to agree that you cannot just swap out all the parts of a thing at the same time and claim that you have the same thing, whereas the assumption is that a thing can persist through change (pace the views in the bullet above) provided the changes occur slowly enough and piecemeal enough. After all, organisms1568 replace all their parts over time (it is said) yet remain the same organism (ditto). It strikes me that there’s a degree of vagueness1569 about how quickly the changes can take place without violating the persistence conditions of the object. Also, in the case of organisms, historically it has been supposed that the changes would take place naturally, but transplant1570 surgery allows unnatural change. The transplanted organ will either by assimilated or rejected by the organism. If it is assimilated, especially if it’s hidden from view, we don’t feel any qualms about saying that is has become part of the organism, which has persisted through the change. I suppose we’d also get used to the successful transplantation of visible parts, like limbs. Things get difficult with heads, in deciding what has been transplanted onto what – the head or the body – and therefore what has persisted through the change. Maybe it’s a case of Fusion1571.
    1. Causality1572
      1. Causality (or Causation) is important in determining which changes1573 are identity-preserving and which aren’t. There has – it is said – to be the right kind of causal connection between A and B for A=B. This is sometimes given as an objection to Teletransportation1574 TEs1575 – the causal connection between the pre- and post-teletransportation individuals isn’t of the right kind for identity-preservation.
      2. Similar objections are sometimes raised in response to tinkering with organisms – for instance siliconisation1576, brain transplants1577 and such like. The causal connection between successive states of the supposed same organism isn’t sufficient to preserve identity.
      3. Also, memories1578 sometimes feature. Fiddling with or implanting memories doesn’t have the right causal connection between the events they are supposed to be of – on the one hand – and me – on the other – to make them my memories, even though they might seem so to me.
      4. In all cases, we need to consider just what it is that preserving the right sort of causality effects. An important idea in this regard is internal change versus externally-imposed change, and why some externally-imposed changes preserve the individual, while others don’t. See in particular "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death".
    2. Properties1579
      1. Properties are relevant to the topic of Personal Identity because it is the possession of incompatible properties at different times that is the explanation of change1580. And, the key question in Personal Identity – other than what we are1581 – is what changes we can undergo and still persist1582.
      2. Consequently, the problem of Temporary Intrinsics1583, which are intrinsic (ie. non-relational) properties that are “just had” by a persisting object at some time(s) but not others, is central to the explanation of change, and to the decision whether Endurantism1584, Perdurantism1585 or Exdurantism1586 is the better account of persistence.
      3. This topic also relates to that of Universals1587, which is what realists claim properties to be.
      4. Properties are usually said to be had by substances1588, so seem to depend on a substance metaphysics. Presumably they can be had by processes in a process metaphysics1589?
      5. Lynne Rudder Baker’s Constitution View1590 makes a great play on her distinction between having properties derivatively and having them essentially; the constituted1591 thing can have some properties derived from the constituting object, and others on its own account.
      6. So, says Baker1592, a person’s weight is derived from the weight of her body while her status as “employed” is had essentially. Maybe another example is clearer, as it doesn’t involve the contentious claim that persons are separable from human animals: a statue has its value essentially but its weight derivatively. The value of the constituting matter will usually differ from – and be less than – that of the statue.
      7. Note that there’s a distinction between two contrasts – between Intrinsic and Extrinsic properties and those held Derivatively and Essentially. The two contrasts don’t map onto one another. Value may be essential, but it is not intrinsic – unlike mass – as it depends on evaluation by an art-world. Awkwardly, weight – rather than mass – is an extrinsic property, depending as it does on the local presence of a massive gravitating body.
      • Temporary Intrinsics1593
        1. A “temporary intrinsic” is an intrinsic – non-relational – property1594 had by an individual1595 or object at one time but not at others. This situation is constitutive of change1596.
        2. The “problem of temporary intrinsics” is the problem of how to explain that the very same thing can have different properties at different times, in seeming contradiction of Leibniz’s Law1597, that identicals must have all their properties1598 in common.
        3. An example – due to my friend Sophie Botros – is of a leaf that is green in the spring and brown in the autumn. She points out the tension and claims that1599 identity is an “atemporal relation”, but in so doing has to give up on the common-sense intuition that some things persist1600 through some changes without leading to a logical contradiction.
        4. "Kurtz (Roxanne) - Introduction to Persistence: What’s the Problem?" is a good place to start on this topic. Kurtz points out the tensions that arise when the three “non-negotiable theses” alluded to above are held simultaneously, namely Non-contradiction, Change1601 and Persistence1602.
        5. This topic is entwined with those linked to above and listed below.
    3. Thisness (Haecceity)1603
      1. Haecceity – or Primitive Thisness – is an idea in the logic of identity1604 that allows for an individual thing to be that thing irrespective of its properties. It’s the ultimate expression of the “pin cushion” model of substances1605 (with the pins being properties1606).
      2. It’s in tension with Leibniz’s1607 rather dubious “law of the identity of indiscernibles”. I think it arises in the “universe with only two spheres” TE1608, which have all the same properties – both intrinsic and relational – yet are intuitively distinct. Haecceity explains why (it may be said).
      3. If haecceity is allowed, then there are no essential properties, and certain dubious forms of metamorphosis1609 – for instance – are allowed.
      4. So, while animalism1610 says that we are essentially human animals, haecceity would (I presume) allow us to be transformed (if gradually) into transhumans1611, via cyborgisation1612 - or maybe even to be converted into androids1613. It would also allow the replacement of our brains1614 by siliconisation1615 to be identity-preserving (both our identity, and that of our brains).
      5. I’m dubious about both claims, but a strict animalist would accept the former – as my brain is “just another organ”, replacing it with another – but functionally equivalent – organ with which it is non-identical would not affect the identity of the animal any more than an artificial heart would.
  2. Time1616
    1. I don’t think I need to wade too deeply in the topic of time for the purposes of my thesis, dealing as it does with the dispute between Animalism1617 and the Constitution View1618 and the possibilities of Transhumanism1619 and post-mortem survival1620, but it’s clearly central to the topic of diachronic identity, ie. identity over time. It’s also an interesting and important topic in its own right, one on which every metaphysician needs to have a worked-out position.
    2. Aspects of particular interest include:-
      1. The Endurantism1621, Exdurantism1622, Perdurantism1623 debate. Perdurantism may solve the identity-related problems of fission1624, at least according to Lewis1625.
      2. The claim that Presentist theories of time seem to undermine non-endurantist theories of persistence, though this is disputed.
      3. Parfit1626’s contention that we should discount the concern we owe to our future selves proportionate to our likely lack of psychological connection.
      4. Time Travel1627: maybe surprisingly, this alleged possibility appears in various TEs1628 on Fission1629.
    3. Theories of Time: This is not yet the place to expatiate on these. Enough to note what they are:-
      1. Presentism1630: The only time that exists is the present.
      2. Eternalism1631: All times – including the future – exist eternally.
      3. Growing Block1632: The past and the present exist, but the future is ‘open’ so does not.
      4. Moving Spotlight1633: Eternalism is true, but the present is ‘special’.
    4. Red Lines: There are certain things required of any theory of time, and certain boundaries that cannot be crossed:-
      1. Science: Any philosophical theory of time must take account of the best science of the day1634.
      2. The past is fixed: While it may be possible retrospectively to change the truth-value of statements made in the past, or the importance of actions in the light of the then future, it is not possible to change what actually happened. Also, what happened in the past is not dependant on our present evidence.
    5. A Rant!1635
      1. While – as I asserted above - any philosophy of time needs to be informed by the best science of the day1636, there are issues with tying it too closely to physics, in that there is not currently – and may never be – a complete and unified physical theory of the universe. Any theory only seeks to model part of reality and there are conflicts at the edges between these theories and much current disagreement about the unification of the various partial theories into a Grand Unified Theory1637.
      2. There are doubts about the metaphysical implications of any partial theory, since it is only an approximation to the truth that makes accurate predictions in a wider or narrower – but not universal – domain.
      3. But again, that said, ignoring physics entirely and relying on common sense is also a mistake. Often “common sense” is just the physics of the past and is based on theories even more partial than the current ones.
      4. I suspect that the common-sense idea of “the present” is that which Newton relied on in his dynamical theories, where a single universal time is posited. Newtonian dynamics is very useful and is good enough in the everyday scenarios, as everyone knows, but falls short for speeds approaching that of light, or close to massive gravitating bodies, both of which can slow the passage of time.
      5. Much of modern physics deals with domains where common sense is not only of little use, but is a hindrance. It’s not really possible to make “common sense” of quantum indeterminacy or the distortion of spacetime by gravitating bodies. So, I have my doubts about any philosophy of time based on armchair thoughts about people walking across rooms.
      6. However, there’s no simple answer to the metaphysics of time. There are philosophers who are well informed of modern physics who are presentists. However, one must be careful not to cherry-pick those philosopher-scientist that can be taken to agree with you, such as Lee Smolin, while ignoring the consensus, if there is one.
      7. I’m aware that there’s a suggestion that disagreements about time are purely verbal. If the past (or the future) exists, it doesn’t exist in the same way as the present, in that it is inaccessible. However, it’s a travesty to say that the past – if it still exists – is “still happening” somewhere. No doubt the idea is that – viewed in some sort of hypertime – it could be “re-played” on request.
      8. What concerns us all, I submit, is that the past – in the sense of what has happened – ought to be immutable. The import of what has happened, and the truth-value of certain statements1638 – may be changed by future events, but not the happening itself. Now this is common sense, and maybe some future physics will undermine it, but some of the “paradoxes” of time travel seem to be contradictions.
      9. What I don’t think we should do is confound epistemology with metaphysics. The Logical Positivists – like Hume1639 earlier – had many sensible things to say about consigning armchair metaphysics to the flames. Anything that relies neither on “quantity” nor experience is highly suspect if it makes claims about the world. But, there can be truths that we can never know. There is – I submit – a fact of the matter about what if anything Caesar had for breakfast on the Ides of March, though we can most likely never know what it was. I’m not sure there’s any support for “unknowable truths” from quantum mechanics, however. There are pairs of quantities that cannot both be known exactly, but it’s not clear that there’s a fact of the matter of which we’re necessarily ignorant, or whether there’s no fact of the matter at all. Common sense doesn’t help here.
      10. There’s a distinction between what it is rational to believe, and what is true. It’s rational, and maybe obligatory, for non-physicists to go along with the consensus of whatever is said by mainstream physics, even though this is suspected of being incomplete and many claims may turn out to be false. But the statements when true aren’t made true by the fact that consensus physics makes them.
      11. By analogy, it’s rational, though maybe less obligatory, to go along with the consensus account of historical events, though maybe not as obligatory as history is more generally accessible than physics, and detailed assessment of the evidence and historical reconstruction is less difficult for the non-specialist.
      12. However, there’s a contrast between what makes statements about the current world true and those of the past. The present world is open to inspection, so – roughly – the truth-makers are those of empirical investigation. With respect to the past, some truth-makers will be empirically-derived theory (if we can wind the laws of physics backwards, we can know what must have happened in the past), but what if there is no such relevant theory?
      13. In such a case, the evidence that justifies rational belief in statements about the past may indeed well be the theories and evidences of the best-qualified historians – given that as a matter of empirical fact, modern historians – at least in the liberal West – are an honest and conscientious bunch. But their conscientiousness and evidence is not what makes their statements true – only making it rational for us to believe them. What makes them true is whether they happened as described (subject to interpretive caveats).
      14. What we need to know is what would be the case if – as in the dystopia of 1984 – the job of the Ministry of Truth is to destroy the evidence down the memory holes. Orwell presumably believes that this is a reductio ad absurdum of the view that the truth-makers of statements about the past are restricted to present evidence. Winston Smith knows that there’s a concerted attempt to destroy evidence because it’s his job to do it, but the reason he’s concerned is that his memories tell him that the attempt fails to actually change the past, and he doesn’t accept double-think as a way out.
      15. So, I think we end up with the truth-makers of true statements about the past – in default of anything else – being the past itself. If this requires that the past exists in some sense, then I suppose it does, but it’s open to metaphysicians to think up some other scheme. But relying on “present evidence” as a truth-maker is absurd, as the availability or quality of evidence is open to malign influence, or to simple chance events.
      16. Getting back to Caesar’s breakfast, while we may never know, there’s a fact of the matter, just as there’s a fact of the matter about what I had for breakfast 3 years ago today, though I’ve no evidence or memory of what it was. To deny this is to deny a very strong intuition1640.
    1. Time Travel1641
      1. From the perspective of Personal Identity, Time Travel enters into various Thought Experiments1642.
      2. Time Travel is sometimes taken as a knock-down argument against Endurantism1643, because if you travel back in time to talk to your former self, it doesn’t look as though you can be wholly present at a particular time, as different “time slices” of “you” are located in different places at the same time.
      3. Perdurantism1644 isn’t worried by this TE, though it would seem to make the topology of the spacetime worms rather complex (and scattered).
  3. Modality1645
    1. Modality – the logic of possibility and necessity – is important to my thesis because discussions of Personal Identity often range over merely possible – rather than actual – events that an individual1646 might encounter and which might call that individual’s continued existence into doubt.
    2. This is particularly the case with the numerous popular thought experiments1647 (TEs), one of which – Teletransportation1648 – has a reference to this topic (the bungled duplication1649 case and what this has to say about the standard singular case).
    3. Modality also features in the arguments over the logic of identity1650 – in particular the standard view that Identity is a necessary relation, contra the heretical positions.
    4. "Sturgeon (Scott) - Zombies and Ghosts" has a useful categorisation of types of modality, and their relation to conceivability and genuine possibility.
    5. I doubt I need to get into Modal Realism (Lewis1651) or other discussions about what modality reduces to ontologically.
    6. The same goes for the intricacies of Modal Logic, though a quick read through "Girle (Rod) - Modal Logics and Philosophy" might be beneficial.
    7. I need to review my old notes on "Kripke (Saul) - Naming and Necessity" and apply them to this Note where appropriate.
  4. Persistence1652
    1. Persistence is the continuing in existence of one thing from one time to another.
    2. Different kinds1653 of thing have different kinds of persistence criteria1654.
    3. My interest is in the persistence of Persons1655, or at least of beings such as Us; consequently I need to know what kind of thing we are1656.
    4. Whatever I have to say is covered by the topics below.
    1. Persistence Criteria1657
      1. There’s a distinction between persistence criteria and persistence conditions, both of which topics will – eventually – be covered here.
      2. Maybe the former term (“criteria”) focuses on epistemology (how we know that something has persisted) and the latter (“conditions”) on metaphysics (what it takes for something to persist).
      3. I suspect David Shoemaker – in "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Immortality" – of confusing the two (despite his explicit acknowledgement of the distinction) in his rejection of the soul criterion.
      4. In brief, the persistence conditions for an object of a particular kind1658 are the necessary and sufficient conditions for it persist1659, that is, to continue in existence1660.
      5. With respect to our1661 persistence criteria, David Shoemaker considers the following possibilities:-
        1. Soul Criterion1662
        2. Body Criterion1663
        3. Memory Criterion1664
        4. Brain1665-based Memory Criterion
        5. Psychological Criterion1666
        6. Biological Criterion1667
      6. In this regard,
        1. The first four feature in "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Immortality".
        2. The final two in "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern".
      7. In "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Self-Regarding Ethics - Alternative Approaches" Shoemaker considers two other alternatives:-
        1. Narrative Identity1668, and
        2. Identity Doesn’t Matter1669.
      8. Most of my work on the topic of persistence conditions and criteria will be undertaken under the guise of pursuing the topics above.
    2. Continuity1670
      1. Continuity is one of the principle factors taken into account when determining or deciding whether an object of whatever sort1671 has survived1672 some change1673.
      2. “Spatio-temporal” continuity is usually what is intended, though this might be deemed to beg the question against certain forms of the Psychological View1674 of Personal Identity where the continuity required is psychological: while this continuity is temporal, it’s not obviously spatial unless psychology is dependent on something physical (the brain1675), something denied by substance dualists1676.
      3. To be identity-preserving, the change must not be too radical or too swift: both of these break the continuity requirement.
      4. In particular, it is usually held that
        1. An object cannot survive the loss of one of its essential properties1677. If this loss involves continuous change, we may encounter a sorites1678 paradox.
        2. Nor can the object change too many of its parts at once, though some things may change all of their parts over time provided change is gradual.
        3. Nor can it change sortal1679, which makes radical metamorphosis1680 impossible.
      5. In all of the above cases there is deemed to be insufficient continuity between successive stages of a thing to allow for its persistence1681.
      6. I don’t think in the above that “gradual” means “slowly”, though this will usually be the case. What is needed is for there to be many intermediate steps to allow continuity. Each change involved in each of the steps has to be “minor”. All this is somewhat vague1682.
      • Physical Continuity1683
        1. In addition to considering just what causal1684 conditions a physical object needs to satisfy in order to persist1685, I need to consider continuity and contiguity requirements.
          1. It is not normally supposed that a physical object can continue to exist if it ceases to be a contiguous whole – if its parts become spatially scattered.
          2. Nor does it persist if there is no continuous spacetime path between the location of the object at one time and the location of its supposed continuant at another.
        2. These requirements raise a couple of issues:
          1. Intermittent Objects1686: can things go in and out of existence? Does the disassembled bicycle still exist1687 in a dispersed state?
          2. Mereology1688: is the content of any region of spacetime – whether spatially or temporally contiguous or disconnected – a thing?
        3. What do decisions here have to say about the possibility of resurrection or reincarnation? Is a physicalist1689 able, even in principle, to allow the possibility of disembodied existence1690, resurrection1691 or reincarnation1692, given the need for a continuing physical substance1693 to which the individual is identical? This is an especially pressing issue for animalists1694.
        4. Some Christians are physicalists1695, and Peter Van Inwagen has (as a wild speculation - see "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection") God miraculously swapping out and preserving our corpses so he can resurrect the same individuals in due course.
        5. Failure of physical contiguity for an individual arises in cases such as that imagined in "Dennett (Daniel) - Where Am I?".
        6. Another case in point is that of Teletransportation1696.
        7. I need to consider (but expect to reject) such suggestions that beings such as we1697 can survive such radical physical discontinuity.
      • Connectedness vs Continuity1698
        1. When defining persistence conditions1699, we need to distinguish between connectedness and continuity.
          1. Continuity is a transitive relation that relates adjacent stages.
          2. Connectedness is intransitive and requires enough of the properties of interest to be maintained over time.
        2. At root, this is just the message of the Old Soldier, raised against Locke1700, and answered by Ancestrals of the “remembers” relation.
        3. Indeed, "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings" describes Continuity as the ancestral of Connectedness.
        4. Persons1701 – like animals1702 – develop and “grow” (not necessarily physically – that would be begging the question as to what persons are). We can admit that we have the same animal from fetus1703 to corpse1704 (with some arguments about the termini). However, do we have the same person?
        5. Contrary to standard Animalism1705, my Intuition1706 is that whatever physical and psychological discontinuities1707 the human animal undergoes, we do have the same person where we have a person at all, provided a single First Person Perspective1708 is maintained, though my definition of FPP1709 would differ from that proposed by Baker1710.
        6. If one’s character changes radically over time, do you remain the same person? Yes, if we want the child and the adult to be the same person (as we do), or the convert to be the same person as the unbeliever.
        7. The relevance of this to the present debate is that it is continuity that is relevant to personal identity, and not connectedness. This applies whatever view of Personal Identity we hold.
        8. Derek Parfit – who doesn’t think identity is what matters1711 – holds a different view; that it is connectedness that matters, and so we need have no concern for future selves1712 that are psychologically disconnected from our current selves. I think this view is mistaken, as we are locked into a First Person Perspective1713 and will have to experience the fate of that future self, however unconnected.
        9. This Note doesn’t cover the topic of topological connectedness, which is relevant to the metaphysics of pregnancy1714, and much else.
        10. I think I need to have a Note on Connectedness per se which should cover all I have to say on the topic.
        11. Finally, issues of Continuity and Connectedness have featured often earlier in this Thesis; I need to add some signposting to say that the matter is discussed in detail here.
      • Intermittent Objects1715
        1. This topic is to be discussed under at least six heads, as follows …
        2. Artifacts1716
          • Are the classic cases of possibly intermittent objects, in that many small artefacts can be disassembled and then reassembled, and it is usually thought that the reassembled object is numerically identical to the original.
          • But it is not clear whether the watch (say) ceases to exist when disassembled for cleaning, or whether it continues to exist in a scattered1717 state. The recipient of a bag of watch-parts would still consider they had received their watch back, even if annoyed at having to reassemble it themselves.
          • But, as with all things artifactual, there’s a question whether our intuitions1718 are conventional1719 and could be otherwise. My gut-feel1720, however, is that disassembled artifacts just exist in a disassembled, scattered state, rather than ceasing to exist. Hence, disassembled artifacts are examples of scattered objects1721 rather than of intermittent objects.
          • I suppose the counterargument might be that artifacts are the things they are for functional reasons, but does a disassembled thing have a function (or, at any rate, the same function it had when assembled)? I imagine we could say that an object might be delivered in kit-form, and then assembled, and it is probably arbitrary (or can be stipulated) whether the kit is of the same kind as the object or not.
          • The Write-up1722 of "Carter (William) - Artifacts of Theseus: Fact and Fission" will cover all this in more detail.
        3. Persons1723
          • When it comes to Persons, it’s the possession of certain capacities, not the present exercise of them, that qualifies an individual as a person.
          • David Wiggins holds the view that a person is one who belongs to a kind whose typical members possess some open-ended list of properties.
          • In that case, a foetus or someone in a PVS1724 would still be a person. They would not “intermit” while in that state.
          • However, on a “present capacity” view, they would not qualify as persons in such a state, and a person might have intermittent existence. For instance, if I were to fall into, and then recover from, a PVS I would not be a person when in the PVS, but would on recovery again be a person, and (importantly) the same person.
          • So, someone like Baker1725 might be committed to persons as intermittent objects because she thinks of human persons as ontologically separate from the human animals that constitute them.
          • However, an animalist like Olson1726 would not be so committed. For the animalist, it’s the animal that’s the persisting thing, and the animal persists throughout the PVS.
          • I’m not sure what Olson’s view is of the ontological status of persons (I don’t think he considers them a kind); they are just individuals of another kind (most notably human animals) with special, maybe temporary, properties.
        4. Phase Sortals1727
          • My view is that human persons are phase1728 sortals1729 of human animals.
          • So, I side with Olson against Baker in the controversy about what Persons are.
          • While persons are ontologically significant, this does not bring into being a new kind – namely ‘PERSON’ but raises the status of the kind whose typical members are persons (and of the individuals who are persons, of course).
          • So, I do not think that persons – at least persons falling under the kind HUMAN ANIMAL – can have intermittent existence. A fetus or a human animal in a PVS remains the same human animal.
        5. Constitution1730
        6. Scattered Objects1736
          • The topic of physical continuity1737 addresses – amongst much else – both scattered objects1738 and intermittent objects, the former intermitting in space, the latter in time (and maybe in space as well).
          • So, if persons are things constituted by other things, then the person intermits during a PVS, but there is no physical discontinuity.
          • But, as Baker believes, the very same person can be constituted by different bodies at different times, then there must necessarily be persistence in the absence of spatio-temporal continuity, which it usually taken as a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for persistence.
          • This leads on to our next topic.
        7. Resurrection1739
          • The possibility of Resurrection1740 is the main reason for my interest in intermittent objects.
          • Clearly, if we are to claim that the very same individual who died is resurrected somewhere else (maybe not a place as such, though it is difficult to envisage bodies that are not at places) at some other time (or not in time – but similar worries apply) then we have an intermittent object.
          • This process (or fiat) would also seem to involve some sort of metamorphosis1741, though maybe the Constitution View does not worry about such things, as it is the constituted person that persists, not the constituting body.
    3. Theories of Persistence
      • Endurantism1742
        1. Endurantism is the traditional account of persistence1743, that doesn’t invoke the metaphysics of temporal parts. What follows is a modified version of a write-up1744 of the relevant section of "Kurtz (Roxanne) - Introduction to Persistence: What’s the Problem?".
        2. Kurtz introduces the acronym MET for Metaphysics of Enduring Things. The contrasting acronym is MTP for Metaphysics of Temporal Parts. These Temporal Parts exist only instantaneously, and are otherwise known as Stages or Time-Slices. A duck – according to MTP – is wholly or partly constituted by temporal parts. It seems odd to think of a duck as being wholly constituted by a single temporal part, but this just is the exdurantist1745 claim.
        3. There are two forms of MTP – Perdurantism1746 and Exdurantism1747 – and (says Kurtz) their motivation – and that of MTP itself – comes from how well either of these accounts for persistence. I had thought the motivation came from the need to explain conundrums like Fission1748, but it seems there are philosophical difficulties with MET (the problem of Temporary Intrinsics1749).
        4. Kurtz sees three ‘non-negotiable theses’ in accounting for persistence. These are:-
          1. Consistency: the same thing cannot have incompatible properties. Follows either from the law of non-contradiction or from Leibniz’s Law.
          2. Change: Change involves incompatible properties.
          3. Persistence: Objects persist through change.
        5. Perdurantism and Exdurantism share a metaphysics of temporal parts, which Endurantism claims ordinary things lack. Each maintains the tension between the three ‘non-negotiable theses’ given above by sacrificing at least one “intuitively and philosophically appealing” metaphysical claim on persistence. Kurtz sees this as the “real problem of persistence”.
        6. According to MET, at least some objects endure – a numerically self-identical object is wholly present at different times.
        7. For both MTP and MET, objects may have temporal parts. So, the existence of stages or a space-time worm is not denied by MET.
        8. Neither a space-time worm nor a stage is an enduring thing, as neither is wholly present at different times. Nevertheless, says Kurtz, “MET does not entail the claim that ordinary objects lack temporal parts”. This sounds wrong as far as ordinary objects are concerned – I need to check what the endurantists say on this. Though the worm is not an “ordinary thing”, but (presumably) a collection of momentary stages, which are themselves not ordinary things.
        9. Endurantists claim that ordinary objects persist by enduring, that is, that identity over time is strict identity between objects wholly present at different times. Change is the holding of incompatible properties by objects identical over time. So far seems to be common sense.
        10. I need to put the following comment somewhere, so here goes:
          1. I had the impression that MET goes along with Substances1750, while MTP does not.
          2. I need to see what "Wiggins (David) - Sameness and Substance Renewed" has to say.
          3. I note that SUBSTANCE is not mentioned once by Kurtz in her Introduction.
        11. To avoid the contradiction of an object having incompatible properties, endurantists adopt temporally mediated property instantiation, whereby temporal facts (whether of time or tense) external to the object mediate the instantiation of incompatible properties without an appeal to temporal parts. Thus, an ordinary object persists through change and both alters and survives. What has to be given up is the “just having” of properties. The question seems to be how important the having of properties only mediated by internal facts is.
        12. There are various implementations of endurantism. Those in "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings" are as below, though presumably, these chapters present, but don’t necessarily support, endurantism:-
          → "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Four-Dimensional Objects",
          → "Mellor (D.H.) - Selections from 'Real Time'",
          → "Hinchliff (Mark) - The Puzzle of Change", and
          → "Markosian (Ned) - A Defense of Presentism".
        13. Kurtz thinks that the introduction of time or tense into property instantiation creates four potential problems. I’m not hugely convinced by these – presumably for MET only – and Kurtz admits she’s only gestured at them to get them on the table:-
          1. She thinks it irrelevant what the time is to whether an object has an intrinsic property or not.
          2. Issues like Bradley’s Regress (to be discussed under the head of Temporary Intrinsics1751) threaten our understanding of how a property can be predicated of an object at all.
          3. Indexing properties to times makes them seem like different properties, and so gets rid of the prima facie problem of inconsistent properties too easily. And, if they are different properties it (to my mind) obscures what makes Red-at-T1 and Red-at-T2 both instances of Red.
          4. Given the definition of change, then if the properties aren’t incompatible, why do we have change at all?
      • Perdurantism1752
        1. As developed by W.V. Quine, David Lewis, Ted Sider and others, Perdurance – otherwise known as Four-Dimensionalism (4-D) – is to be contrasted with Endurance1753 and Exdurance1754.
        2. I will take "Sider (Ted) - Four-dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time" as my primary text, though "Kurtz (Roxanne) - Introduction to Persistence: What’s the Problem?", the introduction to "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings", provides a good overview of these matters.
        3. The logical problems with 4-D need to be carefully considered and, for good or ill, the four-dimensional approach has the advantage – or maybe disadvantage – of undermining the reduplication objection1755 to identity1756 being maintained in certain fission1757 thought experiments1758.
        4. Does 4-D imply fatalism1759? According to perdurantism, a thing is a 4-D object, but not only do we not know the future, but the future may not even exist.
        5. How does this tie in with Lewis’s realism about possible worlds? Maybe if possible worlds are real, all possible futures are real as well.
        6. Note that perdurantism is inimical to a high view of substance1760. A temporal worm cannot change, it just is. The purpose of positing substances is as the enduring things that change1761.
        7. Perdurance also impacts on Leibniz’s Law, where property exemplification is usually taken to be relative to a time.
        8. Look at the adverbial defence of endurantism. See "Haslanger (Sally) - Endurance and Temporary Intrinsics" (probably … this is the explicit response to Lewis)
          → "Haslanger (Sally) - Persistence, Change, and Explanation",
          → "Haslanger (Sally) - Persistence Through Time" and
          → "Haslanger (Sally) - Humean Supervenience and Enduring Things"; and
          → "Kurtz (Roxanne) - Introduction to Persistence: What’s the Problem?" in "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings" seems to cover much the same ground).
        9. If perdurantism really is incompatible with a high view of substance1762, then I may not need a chapter on perdurance (though I would have thought that I would need to argue for the incompatibility), and I can thereby ignore perdurantist objections to the cogency of reduplication objections.
        10. I note also that Eric Olson sets perdurance to one side. He assumes that we are concrete substances that “endure through time by being wholly present at different times”. He claims1763 that if this (and a couple of other assumptions) should be false, then there are no substantive metaphysical questions of our identity over time, only semantic ones.
      • Exdurantism1764
        1. What follows is a modified version of a write-up1765 of the relevant section of "Kurtz (Roxanne) - Introduction to Persistence: What’s the Problem?".
        2. Exdurantism is otherwise known as Stage Theory and Kurtz describes it as analogous to identity between possible worlds. Just as an object might have had incompatible properties – and this is cashed out as a counterpart in a possible world having these properties – so a temporal counterpart stage of the object has them. The objects with incompatible properties are, in both cases, non-identical counterparts of one another. So, the exdurantist then contends that change over time is nothing more than an object and its temporal counterpart having incompatible properties and existing at different moments in the actual world.
        3. Exdurantists have it that an object is numerically identical to a single stage, and is wholly present at the moment it exists. In contrast to Perdurance1766, according to Exdurantists, objects persist when they exdure, and exdure by changing over time. An object changes over time, then, when it and a counterpart stage just have incompatible properties. Consequently, an exduring object does not – strictly speaking – survive change1767.
        4. Just Having (a property) is a term of art. To quote Kurtz: an object just has a property1768 if and only if no extrinsic facts are relevant to the truth of the proposition that the object has that property. It is a slightly tricky concept, and "Lewis (David) - Rearrangement of Particles: Reply to Lowe" is invoked, which refers to non-relational changes (the example is of changing your shape by sitting, etc.).
        5. The primary proponents of Exdurance are Ted Sider and Katherine Hawley.
        6. Acording to Exdurance, an object undergoes change1769 when it and a counterpart “just have” incompatible properties. It persists1770 when it changes over time by standing in the counterpart relation to a stage from a different time. As no single thing has incompatible properties (different stages are different objects), Exdurantism satisfies the demands of consistency. Just how is this “Counterpart Relation” cashed out?
        7. Exdurantism has the advantage over Perdurantism1771 in that it’s the object itself that “just has” its properties1772, rather than a (temporal) part of the object. However, just like Perdurantism1773, Exdurantism rules out change1774 as is commonly understood. In both cases, it’s just different stages that have the incompatible property, not one and the same whole object.
        8. But, Exdurantism does much worse over survival, in that an exduring object doesn’t survive1775, as the different stages are different objects. At best, an exduring object “continues1776,1777” in some way, but the momentary stages are no more identical than are links in a chain.
  5. Does Identity Matter?
    1. Survival1778
      1. Just what does ‘survival’ mean in philosophical contexts? Is it no more than a sloppy locution when ‘persistence1779’ is intended, or is it a lesser relation?
      2. The term found its way into the philosophical literature in Derek Parfit’s expressions “identity is not what matters in survival”. Unfortunately, this expression is ambiguous, and is not clarified by being often repeated. It could mean one of:-
        1. When we survive – that is persist through – some adventure, what matters to us isn’t self-identity as such, but the continuation of our projects, relationships and other things that matter to us. However, of course, we need to persist in order for all these things to be ours.
        2. We can survive some adventure without persisting. That is, without being identical to the person who emerges from the adventure.
      3. We need to distinguish these two possible interpretations of Parfit1780 according to whether survival is or is not identity-preserving. By “survival” does Parfit mean the same as other philosophers mean by “persistence1781”?
      4. Some philosophers (eg. E.J. Borowski) claim that Parfit thinks that “survival is a matter of degree” (implying, it would seem, Partial Identity1782) or that (eg. Frederick Doepke) “survival is one to many”.
      5. In the standard Parfitian claim that “what matters in survival is not identity”, Parfit is right that the issue isn’t necessarily “am I (A) identical to B or C”, but “will I have what matters1783 in survival if B, or C, or both survive”, and that the reason the two questions are elided is that they don’t usually come apart.
      6. However, there’s incoherence in an expression such as “will I survive as B”, if I’m not supposed identical to B, since survival and this use of the personal pronoun seem to imply identity. That is, if Relative Identity1784 is incoherent, as I believe it to be.
      7. Also in an expression such as “will I have what matters”, to what does the “I1785” refer if I’m assumed not to persist? To my present self1786 only? I might now see that I would be happy that a certain future state of affairs, not involving me, appertains; but I would not then have what matters, nor indeed have anything at all.
      8. So, I think a temporal1787 element fits in. Looking forward to some future contingency, we might say that the state of affairs then – in the future – gives me now much of what I want (now) to be the case. My plans will have gone well, my family is in a good state, I am famous or whatever it is that matters to me now. But at that future time I will have nothing that matters, because I won’t exist.
      9. I note that – in "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?" – Parfit says that – in the teletransportation1788 case – he would not survive, but would have what mattered to him in survival. So, I take the “what matters in survival” to mean – for Parfit – what would have mattered had he survived.
      10. So, I think we can indeed distinguish, with Parfit, identity1789 from what matters in survival1790. His idea seems to be that we can have what matters in survival1791 without surviving.
      11. Parfit’s concerns are fundamentally ethical, with Buddhist1792 tendencies. He’s trying to remove self1793 from ethics and persuade us that we don’t need self, and therefore don’t need self-identity.
      12. Parfit’s claim, which I believe to be false, is that we don’t really care about our persistence1794 as such, but about the future success of our projects, which can as well or better be prosecuted by others. But we are more selfish than that, and in many circumstances justifiably so. It may be that some people – saints – could live with this ethic. But most people (entrepreneurs, students and the like) – at least some of the time – make sacrifices now so that they themselves can reap the benefits in the future. If they didn’t have the possibility of this recompense, they might not do what they do, and we might be all worse off. Yes, some people (parents in particular) invest in others and they might well be satisfied if their charges, and not themselves, survived and flourished in the future. But society needs some people to use their own talents initially for their own selfish reasons so that we might all benefit from what they do.
    2. What Matters1795
      1. We need further discussion of Parfit1796’s claims that we can have what matters to us in survival1797 without the need for identity. That is, if the individual who follows on from us experiences good things or fulfils our projects, then provided that individual is sufficiently close to us, or those projects are sufficiently close to ours, we will have what matters to us even if that individual is not – strictly-speaking – us.
      2. The situation envisaged is where the logic of identity1798 – maybe as a result of fission1799 – means that it is logically impossible that we should survive1800 some vicissitude. In those circumstances it’s not mere quibbles over identity that matter to us, but those benefits that are usually concomitant with identity.
      3. It seems obvious that our survival1801 matters to us, or at least some of the benefits of surviving matter to us. If we don’t survive, we can have none of those benefits of survival. Such questions come up in trying to explain why death1802 is bad for the one who dies.
      4. However, the question has been raised that some people (eg. those contemplating suicide) don’t want to persist1803, so persistence doesn’t matter to them. I think it does – persistence matters, though maybe persisting doesn’t. What I mean is that whether they persist or not matters to persons, who can anticipate – in a good or bad light, accurately or not – the future. If things get too bad (or are perceived to be that way), it may be important to them that they don’t persist. In the normal case, it’s important that they do. Either way, persistence matters to them.
      5. Where I differ from (an interpretation of) Parfit is that it’s not just my projects that matter to me. If I had a worthwhile project and I died before completing it – but someone else completed it for me1804 – then – provided it was done competently – that would be a good thing. If this happened to all my outstanding projects, even those I’d not started, that would be better. But it would not be as good as – or even the same thing as – my completing them myself. Sometimes the journey is as good as the arrival, and even where it isn’t it is often an extra good. But if I don’t arrive, I would miss out.

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having now cleared up all our preliminaries, we can now turn to the meat of the Thesis in our next Chapter, where we consider Animalism and the arguments for it.
Chapter 6: Animalism and Arguments for It1805

Abstract
  1. This Chapter describes what Animalism is, with an excursus on animals and organisms and their persistence.
  2. It puts forward the arguments in favour of animalism, those against being reserved for Chapter 81806.
  3. It focuses on the account of Eric Olson, the primary contemporary exponent of Animalism.

Chapter Introduction
  1. As we saw in Chapter 021807, nothing is more obvious than that we are Human Animals1808. The disadvantages of whole-hearted acceptance of this seemingly obvious fact – leading to ‘conversion’ to Animalism1809 – are at least twofold:-
    1. Firstly, that it seems to demote human beings from their status of being made in the image of the God many – maybe most – people no longer really believe in. There are two responses to this: Either
      1. Deny that it does, or
      2. Accept this claim and agree that the differences between human beings and other animals are those of degree rather than kind.
    2. A second disadvantage is that accepting that we are human animals makes the prospects for post-mortem survival look bleak. This is addressed in Chapter 111810.
  2. So, while saying that we are human animals might seem to be the default position – and so the burden is on others to demonstrate that we are not – the historical situation places a burden on the Animalist to present the case for animalism with as much rigour as possible. Saying ‘it’s obvious’ isn’t enough.
  3. Firstly, it needs to be made clear what the claim that ‘we are animals’ – the Biological View1811 – amounts to. The Animalist makes the claim that this is one of numerical identity. We’re not simply animals in the sense of having animal bodies, while ‘really’ being something else. Being members of the species Homo Sapiens1812 is what we really are.
  4. So, our persistence criteria are Biological Criteria1813, and the implications of this need to be spelled out.
  5. Despite the ‘obviousness’ of the Biological View, most contemporary philosophers are unconvinced, as was noted in the Chapter 11814. I have a Note detailing just which Philosophers can be counted as Animalists1815. Eric Olson1816 was probably responsible for clarifying and popularising the position. I also have a Note on David Wiggins1817, though his status as a card-carrying Animalist is doubted by some, including Olson.
  6. The Biological View is often referred to as the Organism View, so we need to consider what Organisms1818 are, and – indeed – what Life1819 is, including when it starts – Animation1820. I’ve referenced my Note on Quantum Mechanics1821 here as recent research has attempted to implicate it in the mechanism of life. We discuss life’s end – Death – in Chapter 111822.
  7. Recently, some philosophers have tried ascribing intentionality to Plants1823, which I think is muddying the waters, just as is trying to include fish in the moral community.
  8. We need to consider Evolution1824, especially as this is a major consideration in why we are animals. I also have Notes on Genetics1825 and Origins1826, which are connected to this subject and others.
  9. After all this ground-clearing, we need to consider Animals1827 themselves – especially those at the higher end of the spectrum most closely related to Homo Sapiens in their abilities and potential moral considerability, leading on to Animal Rights1828.
  10. Finally, we get down to the actual Arguments for Animalism1829, of which Olson’s favourite is the Thinking Animal Argument1830.

Main Text
  1. Animalism1831
    1. There are different interpretations of Animalism, which I need to compare and contrast. My preferred option is Olson1832’s, namely, that animalism is the view that we are identical to human animals1833 and that, since human animals1834 don’t have any psychological properties essentially, neither do we.
    2. Olson is probably the best-known active Animalist1835. His two books below need to be analysed in exhaustive detail.
      → "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology" and
      → "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology".
      Follow the above link for other animalists.
    3. Olson’s claim is not that there are no non-animal persons, but that human persons are essentially animals. Other animalists, such as Wiggins1836, insist (or are said to insist, or used to insist) that the only persons are indeed human beings1837, or are (maybe) other animals.
    4. I incline to agree with Olson on the topic of what we are1838, but need to press hard with thought experiments1839 to see why we can’t separate the two – that is, why we can’t separate where we go as persons1840 from where we go as animals: our personhood can’t be pealed off from our animality and ported to some other infrastructure – or at least not while preserving our identity.
    5. There is a distinction between persons and human animals. Is the distinction empirical or conceptual? Why can’t I copy my consciousness1841 onto a machine1842 and that machine be me? There seem to be two issues here.
      1. Firstly, my intuition1843 is that phenomenal consciousness essentially involves a brain-like infrastructure and
      2. Secondly, copying a consciousness onto a machine isn’t identity-preserving, even if possible, but is the creation of a simulacrum1844 (or – significantly – multiples thereof).
    6. Basically, I reject both functionalism1845 and the idea of consciousness “hopping from one infrastructure to another”. Incidentally, I rather hope we can’t copy our phenomenal consciousness onto a machine, or the possibility of hell on earth unfolds. The nasty business of very extended torment could be delegated to another machine that neither knows nor cares what it is doing.
    7. Also, should we consider fetuses1846 and the senile or those in a PVS1847 as persons? See Baker1848 who alleges that those who have, will have or have had the capacity for a first-person perspective1849 should be accounted persons. But is this simply arbitrary retrofitting of philosophy to Christian doctrine (though Wiggins1850 seems to share this view; individuals are persons if typical individuals of their kind are persons)?
    8. I must also discuss animals1851 under this head. If we are identical to (human) animals then to what, exactly, are we identical – that is, just what is a human animal – and that are their persistence conditions1852? Note that there are disagreements about the referent of “animal” – is it the organism1853 or the body1854? The key issue is with corpses1855. Feldman thinks they are animals, but Olson thinks they aren’t. Death1856 is central to the enquiry. Just when does the person or animal commence1857 or cease to be? If he is resuscitated (or resurrected1858 / reincarnated1859, assuming these to be possible) what happens in the interregnum1860?
    9. As noted above and elsewhere1861,1862, I need to investigate the termini of human existence, and the issues they raise for the various views – the “fetus problem1863” for the constitution view and the “corpse problem1864” for animalism.
    1. Human Animals1865
      1. I haven’t anything to say currently here other than what is covered in a bunch of related topics.
      2. However, as this is what I think answers the question What Are We?1866, and is the plural of the title of "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", it seems sensible to create this topic as one onto which detailed discussion may eventually be hived off.
      3. The main point – often re-iterated – is that we are Animals1867, and while we are animals of a special kind1868, there is no ontological1869 difference – other than of degree – between our species1870 and other animals.
      4. I note further that Baker1871 might agree with this as far as it goes, but she thinks there is a major ontological difference when the human animal becomes a person1872. I deny this, as will most animalists1873.
    2. Biological View1886
      1. The Biological View (BV) is that we are1887 biological organisms1888, and – in particular – have the persistence conditions1889 of biological organisms. Since the organisms we are are obviously human animals1890, this view is effectively just Animalism1891.
      2. However, it is just possible that the BV and Animalism might part company for some philosophers. Maybe you might think that we are essentially animals, but can metamorphose1892 from one species to another or be reincarnated1893 as an individual of another species – or as a different individual of the same species. These might count as variants of the BV, but would not be Animalism1894 as commonly understood, since it presupposes that we cease to be at death, and are essentially human animals1895 and, indeed, essentially one and the same human animal.
      3. The BV is to be distinguished from older physicalist1896 variants – in particular the “Body View1897”.
      4. For the detailed principles of individuation and persistence criteria associated with the BV, see the Biological Criterion1898.
    3. Biological Criterion1899
      1. Biological Criteria are the criteria of identity1900 associated with the biological view1901 of what we1902 human beings1903 are.
      2. Animalism1904 takes this biological view, that we are human animals1905 (as distinct from persons1906, or immaterial souls1907). So, our persistence criteria are those of animals1908.
      3. What should be discussed here is just what these criteria are.
      4. Biological identity criteria in general are slightly wider than those of animals in particular, as they include those for plants1909 and other biological organisms1910.
      5. Locke1911 made the first stab at what this criterion might be. His view was that it was the participation in a single life1912 that made an organism1913 the same organism over time. The concept of a life is itself in need of explanation, and may not (in the absence of vitalism) be logically prior to the concept of an organism.
      6. It seems to me that the biological criterion could (theoretically, at least) allow for metamorphosis1914 (provided that the metamorphosis1915 is into another organism). There are, however, sortal1916 objections to metamorphosis1917.
      7. The jumping-off point for this topic is probably "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities". However, the book is at pains to point out that the persistence criteria for exemplars of particular species – and, indeed, their principles of individuation – differ greatly. Standard views are overly influenced by the assumption that all biological individuals are like large mammals rather than, say, strawberry plants1918. However, as we are large mammals, I’m not too worried about this fine point.
      8. Note that the biological criterion is to be distinguished from the body criterion1919, with which the psychological criterion1920 was originally contrasted.
    4. Animalists1921
      1. Who is an animalist depends on who you ask. Some are self-proclaimed, and others are claimed to be so by others.
      2. The following would definitely seem to be animalists:-
        1. Michael R. Ayers,
        2. Andrew M. Bailey,
        3. Stephan Blatti,
        4. William Carter,
        5. David Hershenov,
        6. David Mackie,
        7. Eric Olson,
        8. Paul Snowdon,
        9. Peter Van Inwagen, and1922
        10. Richard Wollheim.
      3. In addition,
        1. David Wiggins, and
        2. Bernard Williams
        are sometimes claimed (I think by Stephan Blatti).
      4. Olson in "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology" has Carter, Ayers, van Inwagen and Snowdon; but also:-
        1. Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, and
        2. Trenton Merricks.
      5. However, in "Olson (Eric) - Psychology and Personal Identity", Olson claims that – contrary to appearances – David Wiggins and Jay Rosenberg are supporters of the PV1923.
      6. "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument" agrees that Merricks and van Inwagen are animalists.
      7. "Johansson (Jens) - What is Animalism?" has Ayers, Carter, Mackie, Merricks, Olson, Snowdon, Van Inwagen, and Wiggins1924, but also:-
        1. John McDowell, and
        2. Derek Parfit.
      8. It is likely that many atheist or agnostic philosophers who don’t specifically treat of personal identity are animalists. "Quinn (Philip L.) - Review of Antony Flew's 'The Logic of Mortality'" seems to describe Antony Flew as such, though Quinn doesn’t use the term “animalist”.
      9. "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?" has a question on Personal Identity, and it seems that only just under 17% of faculty at elite philosophy departments are even inclined towards animalism, with just under 6% being convinced. No recognised Animalist appears to have responded to the survey (or at least allowed their opinions to be published). I did, however, spot that my former supervisor – Jennifer Hornsby – claimed to be an animalist, though I don’t think she’s written anything on the subject.
  2. Organisms1940
    1. Organisms feature highly in animalist discussions of personal identity, in that according to animalism1941, human persons1942 are (numerically identical1943 to) human animals1944, which are organisms.
    2. According to some philosophers – for instance Peter Van Inwagen – sorites1945 and multiple-occupancy1946 arguments yield that the only things that exist1947 are simples and organisms.
    3. Organisms are to be distinguished from their bodies1948, which have different persistence conditions1949, for example post-mortem as corpses1950.
    4. An organism seeks to maintain itself against its environment, and exchanges matter1951 with it. An organism possesses none of its matter essentially1952, and may indeed replace all – or at least most of1953 – its matter many times during its life1954.
    5. When organisms ultimately fail in the above endeavour, they die1955.
    6. Prior to this, they are alive1956; organisms are the only things that may properly be said to be alive – life is a biological process1957. Other things may exist1958, and come to an end, but they do not literally live1959 or die1960.
    7. Normally, a proper part of an organism is not an organism. Presumably organelles – such as mitochondria – are (parasitic) organisms living within, and – collectively if not individually – essential1961 parts1962 of, other organisms.
    8. In particular, a brain1963 is not an organism, but an organ. We are organisms, not organs, whatever psychological TEs1964 might imply, so we are not our brains. See my remarks on Brains1965, BIVs1966 and Brain Transplants1967 for discussion of whether we could survive as1968 our brains in a worst-case scenario and whether our brains are ‘just another organ’ as Olson1969 claims.
    9. The chapter on ‘Crowd Intelligence1970’ in "Wohlleben (Peter) - The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World" suggests that ants and bees – while organisms in their own right – might be considered as cells in a Superorganism. Also, that there is such a thing as a ‘Hive Mind1971’. This thought might also suggest that human (and other) Societies1972 are Superorganisms. Finally, it relates to the thought that some organisms can be Scattered Objects1973, that is if Superorganisms are themselves organisms.
    10. For all this, see:-
      → Wikipedia: Superorganism
      → Wikipedia: Collective intelligence
      → Wikipedia: Swarm intelligence
    11. See "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities" for a full discussion of the persistence1974 of organisms, though this considers the generality. The book thinks that the general topic is too much swayed by considerations of large mammals, which – of course – is what we are, and the only organisms whose persistence conditions I care about in this research.
    1. Life1975
      1. There are (at least) two sub-topics that fall under this topic:-
        1. Lives: Life as an (extended) event – the career of an individual.
          → See "Wollheim (Richard) - The Thread of Life"
        2. Life: Life as a biological process.
          → See "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities"
      2. I assume that lives can be had by individuals that do not have (biological) life, but think it unhelpful to talk of non-biological individuals as “alive”, except in a figurative sense.
      3. Life – and its correlate, death1976 – is a biological process, on which the word of the biologist (maybe as clarified by the philosopher) is final.
      4. I’m open to the idea that alternative biologies – other than the carbon-based exemplar ubiquitous on earth – are possible – or at least conceivable. So, anything sufficiently complex that “can extract energy from its environment, grow, repair damage to its body, and reproduce” is alive (Elliott Sober). We wouldn’t want to deny that aliens are alive, nor – just maybe – sufficiently complex machines of the far future.
      5. I have a question on the “reproductive” requirement above. At most, this must apply to “typical representatives” – else the infertile would not be alive. But – important though reproduction is for evolution1977 – I’m not sure why this is essential. Note that computer hardware is unlikely to reproduce – or at least it’s not necessary that it should, as it can be manufactured. However, computer programmes would be able to – this seems to be claimed of AIs, who are hoped to be able to produce improved versions of themselves.
      6. What I object is the notion that computer programmes are – or will eventually be – “alive” in the same sense as organisms are alive, though their hosting computers might be.
      7. I say this by analogy with my thoughts on the supposed consciousness1978 of computer programs: computer programs can’t be conscious, though the hardware that runs them might be. However, I’m not sure the analogy works, as the “living” is said to be at the program level, and not to involve any physical changes to the computer (other than the usual changes to the contents of memory locations).
      8. So, "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" has – as is indicated by the book’s title – three versions of life, but only Life 1.0 is ‘life’ in my sense; the others are – or impact on – ‘lives’:-
        1. Life 1.0: Biological Evolution1979 – no hardware or software change within a lifetime.
        2. Life 2.0: Cultural Evolution1980 – software, but not hardware, change within a lifetime. Learning.
        3. Life 3.0: Technological Evolution1981 – potential for both software and hardware change within a lifetime.
      9. "Al-Khalili (Jim) & McFadden (Johnjoe) - Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology" has recently raised the question whether quantum phenomena1982 are essential to life. This is not parallel with speculation on the association of quantum phenomena with Consciousness1983 as it seems to be based on hard science – mechanisms – rather than ‘explaining’ one mystery with another.
      10. So, interesting philosophical questions about Life include:-
        1. Just what is (biological) life?
        2. When does biological life begin? This is presumably an empirical question, the answer to which will vary from species to species.
        3. Are there borderline cases of life?
        4. When does life cease? Again, the answer to this question will be species-dependent.
        5. Can life intermit1984? Does it make sense to say that so-and-so died1985 (on the operating table, say) and then revived?
      11. Interesting philosophical questions about Lives include:-
        1. How are lives individuated?
        2. What sort of things can have lives?
        3. How closely coupled is the life of a human organism1986 with the life of a human person1987?
        4. Can a life lived courtesy of a human organism be continued after the death1988 of that organism?
      • Animation1989
        1. “Animation” is an important matter. Just when does a particular life1990 begin, and does it require any “vital force” or “infused soul1991” (as the term implies)? Of course, the scientific answer to the latter question is that it doesn’t. However, such notions are central to many religious claims, though are not assumed by Christian Materialists1992.
        2. We also need to consider:-
          1. Reanimation, and
          2. Suspended animation
        3. Both of these concepts are beloved of the Transhumanists1993, at least those who are interested in the idea that their body1994 or brain1995 might be frozen until the time comes when it is possible for their reanimation.
        4. Suspended animation – in the form of cryoscopic suspension – appears as a TE1996 in "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality", to try to demonstrate that we are “patterns in information space1997”.
      • Quantum Mechanics1998
        1. Quantum Mechanics, per se, is very peripheral to my research concerns, but is connected – or alleged to be connected – to sub-topics that are slightly less peripheral.
        2. At a first guess, these include:-
          1. Consciousness1999: either because – doubtfully – QM “explains” consciousness or – equally doubtfully, in my view – because “observers” are conscious and so consciousness is involved in the measuring process and the “collapse of the wave function”.
            • My view on the former has been that “explaining” one scarcely-understood phenomenon by another even-less-understood phenomenon has been a non-starter. Also, the mechanisms proposed have been very dubious.
            • My view on the latter is that the “observer” is any interfering macroscopic object, the record of which (eg. on a photographic plate) may or may not be viewed by a conscious observer, but has the record nonetheless.
          2. Life2000: because QM may be involved – or necessary for – various life-processes and indeed the origin of life itself.
          3. Teletransportation2001: Because of quantum entanglement.
          4. Transhumanism2002: because of quantum computing and the impact this might have on superintelligence and AI generally.
        3. The Many Worlds Interpretation of QM is sometimes said to involve either a very profligate example of Fission2003, or a spreading out of the “Quantum Self2004” across all these worlds. This is discussed in "Ball (Philip) - Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is ... Different", pp. 288-305, Chapter “There is no other ‘quantum’ you”.
    2. Plants2005
      1. I’d never imagined having to say anything about Plants under the topic of Personal Identity. However, there appears to be a movement in biology and analytic philosophy to include plants in the category of organisms2006 with minds2007, on account of their ability to take advantage of their environment.
      2. I think this is absurd and is simply changing the meaning of “mind2008”.
      3. A good place to start to consider the principles involved may be "Segundo-Ortin (Miguel), Etc - Plant Cognition - A Methodological Primer: Theories, Methods and Challenges".
    3. Evolution2009
      1. One of the arguments for Animalism2010, due to Stephan Blatti, is that from our evolutionary origins. If we’ve evolved from animals2011, then it’s likely that’s what we are2012. This requires careful consideration, because it would seem to provide the default view of what we are – but then so does common sense.
      2. Species evolve – both improving the characteristics of average exemplars of that species but also generating new species. So – prima facie – there’s no reason not to describe the emergence of human persons2013 as “more of the same” from non-person hominids, ie. just tweaking their capacities – rather than as making an “ontological change” – as Baker2014 argues.
      3. The persistence criteria2015 for species also makes an interesting topic of research, as does deciding just what “species” are: for instance, are they concepts2016 or universals2017 or are they collections of concrete individuals2018? Is the evolution of a new species a form of metamorphosis2019?
      4. There will be some considerable overlap between this discussion and that on Homo Sapiens2020.
      5. There’s also an overlap between speculations on the future of human evolution and Transhumanism2021.
      6. Evolutionary Psychology has much to say (and much that is disputed) about what makes us tick – what makes us what we are2022 in both a narrative2023 and a metaphysical sense.
      7. There’s also the question of the evolution of consciousness2024; when, why and how did it evolve?
      8. I might add a discussion of cultural evolution – see especially "Heyes (Cecilia M.) - Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking" – and how this has made us what we are2025 by extending our cognitive capacities.
      • Origins2026
        1. Our origins – just when “we” came into existence – are closely tied up with whatever “we” are2027.
        2. So, an Animalist2028 (who thinks that we are essentially animals2029, rather than persons2030, and for whom psychology2031 is irrelevant to our identity) would insist that we come into existence earlier than would a supporter of the Psychological View2032, or of the Constitution View2033 (for whom a First-Person Perspective2034 is definitive of our identity). Our psychology – and particularly a psychology rich enough to qualify us as persons2035 – comes into existence fairly late on in our development.
        3. For modal2036 reasons, endurantists2037 can’t have “us” coming into existence before the possibility of twinning2038 is past, though perdurantists2039 don’t have this worry.
        4. I would also like to discuss Saul Kripke’s views on origins-essentialism.
          1. Metaphysically, I could not have been born other than from the particular egg-sperm combination from which I was born, and consequently
          2. Practically, I could not have been conceived other than at the time at which I was conceived.
        5. There are ethical ramifications in the context of abortion2040 debates (and infanticide, for that matter), but I cannot pursue these in any detail.
      • Genetics2041
        1. Genetics would seem to be a fairly peripheral topic as far as my thesis is concerned, though it is relevant insofar as some philosophers claim that we are identical to our genome, or that our genome is an essential Property2042 of a Human Being2043 (or any other Animal2044 or Plant2045 with a genome).
        2. As such, it has connections to What We Are2046, our Origins2047 and whether or not we are Information2048.
        3. Of course, that we are NOT identical to our genome is proved by the fact of identical twinning2049. Then there’s the question of gene editing which -we may assume – doesn’t cause us to lose our identities any more than transplant2050 surgery does.
  3. Animals2051
    1. According to the Animalists2052, human animals are what we are2053. Some philosophers, eg. Baker2054, seem to think that describing us as animals is demeaning, but this seems to muddle together all the varieties of animal into one bestial bunch. Clearly, there are lots of differences between lug-worms and the great apes, and further – but much less significant – differences between the non-human great apes and ourselves.
    2. Several points need to be made here.
      1. Firstly, what all animals have in common is that they are organisms2055 and have common persistence-conditions2056 (PCs) in virtue of this fact; or at least large mammals like ourselves do. In particular, our – and their – psychology2057 – however important to us2058 – and them – is irrelevant to our persistence2059, and hence, to our numerical identity (though not to our Narrative Identity2060). The persistence of animals (and other organisms) is covered in detail in "Wilson (Jack) - Biological Individuality - The identity and Persistence of Living Entities".
      2. Secondly, the contentious point is whether aspects of the psychology2061 of some higher animals are so distinctive that (as Baker claims) an ontological2062 difference beyond the mere existence of a new species is in evidence. Baker thinks the watershed is a First Person Perspective2063.
      3. Leading on from this is the claim that the FPP2064 is so important, that we are not animals, but persons2065.
    3. A question to consider, probably under the topic of organisms2066, is whether the PCs of all organisms are the same. Plants2067 and animals are both organisms.
    4. Non-animalists raise issues about the presumed supreme moral status and cognitive abilities of human beings2068. Demonstrating that these abilities – however well or badly exemplified by humans as a species or as individuals – are on a continuum with those of the higher animals – in particular the great apes – rather than unique in kind to human beings – requires the researcher into personal identity to investigate just what the cognitive and moral capacities of animals actually are. This study is stimulated by Locke’s2069 claim that personhood2070 is a forensic property2071.
    5. It is difficult to imagine what it is like to be a non-human animal. Partly, this is because of their differing sensory modalities. I’ve found "Yong (Ed) - An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" particularly enlightening in this regard (much more that "Nagel (Thomas) - What is it Like to Be a Bat?").
    6. Another recent find worth pursuing is "Wandrey (Mona-Marie) & Halina (Marta) - The Evolution of Animal Consciousness", touching additionally – as it does – on the topics of Consciousness2072 and Evolution2073.
    1. Animal Rights2074
      1. The motivation for including this topic – which is in its primarily ethical aspect largely tangential to my Thesis (which focuses on metaphysics) – is at least fivefold:-
        1. Firstly, as Locke noted, personal identity is a forensic2075 matter.
        2. As I’m inclined towards animalism2076, the status of other animals is relevant – in particular in resisting the claims of those (eg. Lynne Rudder Baker) that when a First Person Perspective2077 comes into existence, we get a major ontological2078 change.
        3. Some animal rights theorists – eg. Gary Francione in "Francione (Gary) - Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation" – want to give (at least some) animals the legal and moral standing of persons2079.
        4. Other contemporary philosophers – eg. Peter Carruthers in "Carruthers (Peter) - The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice" – argue that animals have no rights at all.
        5. My view is somewhere in the middle. I’m not a fan of rights (in the absence of a contract) but think that human beings have duties to one another and to the higher animals in virtue of the others’ needs.
      2. A passage in the advertising blurb for "Calarco (Matthew) - Thinking Through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction" is:-
        • The rapidly expanding field of critical animal studies now offers a myriad of theoretical and philosophical positions from which to choose.
        • It uses three rubrics — identity, difference, and indistinction — to differentiate three major paths of thought about animals.
          1. The identity approach aims to establish continuity among human beings and animals so as to grant animals equal access to the ethical and political community.
          2. The difference framework views the animal world as containing its own richly complex and differentiated modes of existence in order to allow for a more expansive ethical and political worldview.
          3. The indistinction approach argues that we should abandon the notion that humans are unique in order to explore new ways of conceiving human-animal relations.
        • Each approach is interrogated for its relative strengths and weaknesses, with specific emphasis placed on the kinds of transformational potential it contains.
      3. A fairly recent book that catalogues the atrocities and discusses the issues is "Ricard (Matthieu) - A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion".
      4. Also deserving of a mention is "Rowlands (Mark) - The Philosopher and the Wolf" which contrasts supposed lupine virtues with simian vices. I’m not convinced.
  4. Arguments for Animalism2080
    1. I’m not currently aware of many arguments in favour of Animalism2081. Rather, Animalists argue that Animalism is – or ought to be – the default position, and try to pick off the arguments of those who have other positions on personal identity.
    2. The main argument – covered next - is Olson2082’s Thinking Animal Argument2083, which is both an argument for Animalism and intended as a refutation of the Constitution View2084.
    3. However, there are others, and saying that ‘it’s just obvious’ that we are animals is insufficient, especially since most philosophers deny this ‘obvious’ fact.
    4. The only other argument I’m aware of (or can remember) is the “Animal Ancestors Argument” as given in "Blatti (Stephan) - A New Argument for Animalism", with an attempted rebuttal by "Gillett (Carl) - What you are and the evolution of organs, souls and superorganisms: a reply to Blatti".
    1. Thinking Animal Argument2085
      1. This argument is otherwise known as the “too many minds” argument, the “too many thinkers” argument, or Olson2086’s “master argument”. For many years, Olson has trotted out this argument at every opportunity.
      2. The basic idea is that a human animal2087 thinks, and if it is not identical to the person2088, then we have too many thinkers – the animal2089 and the person2090, unless we deny that one or other of them thinks, which is at the least very counter-intuitive.
      3. Additional to this metaphysical problem, we have – Olson says – an epistemological question. Which one are we? The animal or the person?
      4. While I’m inclined to accept animalism2091, I think this argument fails, and it does the cause for animalism no good by having it as the main argument in its favour.
        1. This form of argument has been used by nihilists2092 to argue that there are no ordinary things, usually invoking vagueness2093 and fuzzy boundary considerations. Which of the many cats (give or take a few atoms) is the “real cat”? There’s no principled reason and I can’t know which. So there are no cats, or if there are, I can’t know which of the many cat-a-likes is the real cat. Since there are ordinary things, there must be something wrong with this argument form (though I don’t yet have a strong opinion as to just what it is).
        2. I accept Moore’s “two hands” argument – nothing is plainer than that I have two hands, so any metaphysical or epistemological theory that says I haven’t, or can’t know that I have, must have something wrong with it. I do know that there are arguments against the existence of hands and other “arbitrary undetached parts”, so maybe it’s safer to stick to cats. Olson (see "Marshall (Richard) & Olson (Eric) - Eric T. Olson: The Philosopher with No Hands"), as well as Peter Van Inwagen (eg. in "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts"), argue against the existence of hands, though van Inwagen is happy with the existence of cats and other organisms, so I need to address their arguments head-on to determine the subtleties thereof.
        3. Baker2094 and other supporters of the Constitution View2095 have answers to the argument used as an argument against their view (along the lines of “thinking derivatively”).
        4. There are also resources like “Lewis counting”, as in perdurantism2096 where a “soon to fission2097” entity is really two entities sharing stages. Our language is fit for purpose.

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having discussed Animalism, we can now in our next Chapter turn to the main alternative I want to consider, the Constitution View and the arguments for it.
Chapter 7: The Constitution View and Arguments for it2098

Abstract
  1. This Chapter gives an account of Lynne Rudder Baker’s thesis that human persons are not identical to human animals but are – temporarily at least – constituted by them.

Chapter Introduction
  1. Baker’s account of Constitution2099 is not the standard Mereological2100 account, of some composite body being constituted by its parts, but is her own idea that requires – and receives – detailed explication.
  2. Despite this deviation, it is worth spending some time on standard Mereology, in particular mereological Essentialism2101 (which challenges any idea of Persistence).
  3. Finally, there needs to be a discussion of Hylomorphism2102, an Aristotelian idea that has some modern supporters, and which may or may not be similar to the Constitution View2103 (CV).
  4. As a cornerstone of her Constitution View, Lynne Rudder Baker2104 reifies a useful idea – that of a First-Person Perspective2105. It is the FPP that individuates persons, according to Baker, so the FPP requires explanation as well. Baker retrofits its definition so that – according to her – it applies to non-defective Human Beings (and, no doubt, higher beings) but not to any non-human Animals.
  5. The big analogies for the CV are TEs involving Coincident Objects2106, previously seen in discussions of Contingent Identity, though this isn’t the message the CV takes because it denies that Constitution is Identity.
  6. I’ve parked in this Chapter discussion of further standard problems of Coincident Objects, starting with the Statue and the Clay2107, Dion and Theon2108 (more recently repackaged as Tibbles the Cat2109) and continuing on to classic conundrums such as The Problem of the Many2110 and The Ship of Theseus2111. They are here because of their connection to Mereology, with Constitution being introduced as an explanation, though they are relevant elsewhere as well.
  7. Baker has a commitment to Persons being Substances in their own right, rather than “Person” being an honorific title applied to substances that at other times might not deserve the honorific. She thinks that a Person comes into existence with the FPP, which make an Ontological difference. She asserts that many other views do not Take Persons Seriously. All this is covered in Chapter 3 (on Persons) but could as well be covered in this Chapter.
  8. One suspects that Religious2112 commitments strongly influence the philosophy of many supporters of the CV, who tend to be Christian Materialists2113 and who want a way for Christians to persist through Resurrection.

Main Text
  1. Constitution2114
    1. At first sight, it might seem that a full understanding of constitution – by which I mean Material Constitution – is required to understand Lynne Rudder Baker’s2115 Constitution View2116 (CV) of Personal Identity.
    2. There are many accounts of the mereological type of Constitution, in particular:-
    3. However, the concept of Constitution required by the CV seems to differ from the normal mereological2117 view of material constitution.
    4. As a way in to this subject, which is geared towards the topic of Personal Identity, I intend in the first instance to focus on two chapters from "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", namely:-
      1. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution", and
      2. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Coherence Of the Idea of Material Constitution".
    5. I will then look at two chapters from Baker’s book "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism" that deal, respectively, with these two aspects of Constitution, namely:-
      1. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Constitution Revisited",
      2. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Mereology and Constitution".
    6. I will, of course, have to consider other accounts. I had supposed that Baker’s view was idiosyncratic, though "Wasserman (Ryan) - The Constitution Question" considers it to be widely held.
    7. Wasserman outlines the traditional2118 view as follows:-
      1. Adequacy conditions on any proposed answer to the Constitution Question.
        • First, constitution requires spatial coincidence — x constitutes y at t only if x and y have the same spatial location at t.
        • Second, constitution requires material coincidence — x constitutes y at t only if x and y have all the same parts.
      2. The formal properties of the constitution relation (are)
        • First, the constitution relation is transitive. So, consider a representative clay statue (Statue) and the lump of clay (Lump) from which it is made. If Lump is constituted by a certain aggregate of elementary particles and Statue is constituted by Lump, then Statue is also constituted by that particular aggregate of elementary particles.
        • Second, the constitution relation is irreflexive, for the defenders of the constitution view traditionally deny that objects like Lump and Statue constitute themselves.
        • Finally, the constitution relation is asymmetric; while Lump constitutes Statue, Statue does not constitute Lump.
      3. Constitution is not mere coincidence, for coincidence (the sharing of spatial location or parts) is both reflexive and symmetric.
      4. In summary, constitution requires material (as well as spatial) coincidence and that it is a transitive, irreflexive, asymmetric relation.
    8. Various papers by Eric Olson, of course, also consider the topic, which he considers would be fatal to animalism – as it would be were it true. I should probably start with "Olson (Eric) - Composition and Coincidence".
    9. There may also be an overlap between Constitution and Supervenience2119.
    10. The various cases of ‘coincidence’ – addressed later in this Chapter – highlight the question whether the constitution-relation is or is not the identity-relation. Is there anything left out in the description of a thing once we’ve said what it is made up of, and how these parts link together? Those – like Baker – who hold that one whole thing can be constituted by another whole thing deny identity. For instance – Baker says – a stature is something over and above its clay because it requires an external relation – to an art-world, or at least to people who care about statues – before it is a statue.
    1. Mereology2120
      1. While Baker’s2121 understanding of constitution2122 is distinct from a mereological one, it is necessary to understand mereology. I would include the following reasons relevant to my Thesis:-
        1. Lots of arguments relevant to multiple occupancy theses depend on mereological issues. See Dion and Theon2123 and the like. These are collated under the topic of Coincidence2124.
        2. Mereological Essentialism2125 has an impact on the whole notion of persistence. If it is taken seriously, we may have to countenance Scattered Objects2126 or no physical thing would persist for long on this view.
        3. The DAUP (Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts) impacts on whether such things as brains exist. I2127 can’t be a brain2128 if brains2129 don’t exist.
        4. It impacts on issues of vague identity2130 and Olson’s2131 Thinking Animal Argument2132.
      2. As a general principle I will discuss here whether proper parts of things exist and – if so – how they make up the things of which they are parts. The note on Constitution2133 – which overlaps with that on Coincidence2134 – will focus on how one whole things can “constitute” another whole thing. All with a focus on Personal Identity, of course.
      • Essentialism2135
        1. The topics of relevance to my Thesis to cover under this head will include:-
          1. Mereological2136 essentialism; the doctrine that wholes have all their parts essentially – that is, that a whole ceases to exist at the moment it loses or gains a particle, however small; mutatis mutandis for abstract objects.
          2. A second topic will be essential properties2137; those whose loss cause their owner to cease to exist.
        2. Mereological2138 essentialism
          1. Whether we have any essential parts depends on what we are2139.
          2. If we are fundamentally psychological beings, then it’s unclear whether we have proper parts – particularly if we are souls2140; at least Descartes thought we didn’t, given that the mind is not extended. However, we would not survive the loss of our psychology2141, but – and this is a problem for any psychological view2142 – it is vague2143 just how much psychology is enough to ensure our survival2144.
          3. If we are organisms2145, then we can lose – indeed do lose2146 – all our parts over time.
          4. Provided change2147 is gradual, and enough of lost particles are replaced, we persist2148. There is an argument within the animalist2149 camp whether our brains are “just another organ” or whether their regulatory function means they are essential to our survival2150.
          5. If we are brains2151 – or proper parts thereof – then our brains would seem to be essential parts of ‘us’, though there might be some quibbling about whether they might be chiselled down a bit.
          6. "Chisholm (Roderick) - Which Physical Thing Am I? An Excerpt from 'Is There a Mind-Body Problem?'" – seemed to think we are mereological atoms, though the identity of the atom is obscure. If there is such a thing, it would be our only essential part.
        3. Property2152 essentialism
          1. If “being a person” is a property that we have, and we are human animals2153, then – animalism2154 claims – we would survive even when we no longer qualify as persons2155 (and also existed2156 before we became persons).
          2. Most philosophers who aren’t animalists2157 say that we are essentially persons2158, so can’t survive if we are no longer persons, or even if our personality2159 has changed too radically. Some of our mind’s2160 properties may be essential, others not so.
          3. I’m not sure whether Lynne Rudder Baker treats the First Person Perspective2161 as a property of the person, or the person itself. But, if it is a property, it will be an essential one.
    2. Hylomorphism2162
      1. This Aristotelian idea is very peripheral to my concerns, though it appears somewhat similar to – or a rival to – the Constitution View2163, as is discussed in "Quitterer (Josef) - Hylomorphism and the Constitution View".
      2. "Keles (Serap) - Personal identity and persistence over time : the hybrid view with regard to hylomorphism" looks important in attempting to bring together Animalism2164 and the Constitution View2165 as a Hybrid Theory2166 in the context of Hylomorphism.
      3. "Cohen (S. Mark) & Reeve (C.D.C.) - Aristotle’s Metaphysics" discusses the topic of Hylomorphism in Section 7 (Substance and Essence) and Section 8 (Substances as Hylomorphic Compounds).
      4. Wikipedia has a sound-looking article ("Wikipedia - Hylomorphism"), from which I’ve extracted a few quotations (pending my writing something of my own):-
        • Aristotle defines X's matter as "that out of which" X is made. For example, letters are the matter of syllables. Thus, "matter" is a relative term: an object counts as matter relative to something else. For example, clay is matter relative to a brick because a brick is made of clay, whereas bricks are matter relative to a brick house.
        • Change is analyzed as a material transformation: matter is what undergoes a change of form. For example, consider a lump of bronze that's shaped into a statue. Bronze is the matter, and this matter loses one form (that of a lump) and gains a new form (that of a statue).
        • Aristotle applies his theory of hylomorphism to living things. He defines a soul as that which makes a living thing alive. Life is a property of living things, just as knowledge and health are. Therefore, a soul is a form — that is, a property or set of properties — belonging to a living thing. Furthermore, Aristotle says that a soul is related to its body as form to matter.
        • Hence, Aristotle argues, there is no problem in explaining the unity of body and soul, just as there is no problem in explaining the unity of wax and its shape. Just as a wax object consists of wax with a certain shape, so a living organism consists of a body with the property of life, which is its soul. On the basis of his hylomorphic theory, Aristotle rejects the Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation2167, ridiculing the notion that just any soul could inhabit just any body.
        • It is unclear whether Aristotle identifies the soul with the body's structure. According to one interpretation of Aristotle, a properly organized body is already alive simply by virtue of its structure. However, according to another interpretation, the property of life — that is, the soul — is something in addition to the body's structure. Likewise, according to this second interpretation, a living body is alive not only because of its structure but also because of an additional property: the soul is this additional property, which a properly organized body needs in order to be alive. John Vella uses Frankenstein's monster to illustrate the second interpretation: the corpse lying on Frankenstein's table is already a fully organized human body, but it is not yet alive; when Frankenstein activates his machine, the corpse gains a new property, the property of life, which Aristotle would call the soul.
  2. Constitution View2168
    1. The Constitution View is that human persons2169 are constituted2170 by their bodies2171 but are not identical to them, though a lot more needs to be said here.
    2. The primary source of this View is (or was) Lynne Rudder Baker2172, starting with "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View".
    3. Baker’s account of constitution is not the standard mereological2173 account, of some larger body being constituted by its parts, but is her own idea that requires explication. She appears to have a non-mereological view of constitution which is hard to unravel, involving the relation of one complete thing to another (or to a context).
    4. I also need to discuss her concern for primary kinds2174, and the concept of “having of properties2175 derivatively”.
    5. It’s unclear to me whether the brain2176 has a special place for Baker; as far as I remember, she uniformly refers to “bodies2177”.
    6. Baker also has a commitment to Persons2178 being substances2179 in their own right, rather than personhood being an honorific title applied to substances that at other times might not deserve the honorific.
    7. She also reifies a useful idea – that of a First-person Perspective2180. It is the FPP that individuates persons, according to Baker, so the FPP requires explanation as well.
    1. Lynne Rudder Baker2181
      1. Lynne Rudder Baker was2182 notable for defending her version of the Constitution View2183 of Personal Identity, which is important in its own right, but also in opposition to Eric Olson2184’s Animalism2185.
      2. Baker is a “Christian Materialist2186 in that she denies that we are (or have) immaterial souls (see "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism").
      3. However, she is against physicalism2187 in the philosophy of mind – see "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism".
      4. Her view on Personal Identity is, to quote "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Materialism with a Human Face", that “Persons are constituted by bodies with which they are not identical. The metaphysical difference between persons and their bodies is that persons have first-person perspectives2188 essentially. ”
      5. Her concept of a First-Person Perspective2189 strikes me as important and substantially correct2190. However, she thinks of personhood2191 not merely as a property of certain beings, but as making some sort of ontological2192 difference.
      6. Because a person is constituted by – but not identical to – the being that constitutes it, she claims that a particular person is portable from one of these beings to another. I don’t think she would allow a person to exist disembodied, as though the Cheshire Cat’s smile could exist in the absence of the cat, but I still think she is reifying a property2193.
      7. From my perspective, her most important work is "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", but also see "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'" in "Baker (Lynne Rudder), Etc. - E-Symposium on 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'".
      8. However, "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Big-Tent Metaphysics", part of "Olson (Eric), Etc. - Abstracta Special Issue on 'The Human Animal'", and analysed here2194, is as good a place as any to start.
      9. That said, her more recent book – "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism" – may give a more technical account of some of her ideas.
    2. First-Person Perspective2195
      1. The concept of a “First-Person Perspective” (FPP) is central to the Constitution View2196 of personal identity, which I reject. However, the concept of a FPP is important in its own right, and explains the attraction of Psychological Views2197 of personal identity. It also motivates Hybrid2198 Accounts.
      2. Just what the FPP is needs spelling out – what does Lynne Rudder Baker2199 think it is, and why does she think it so ontologically2200 important? She seems to be obsessed by the thought that beings that can contemplate their own deaths2201 are ontologically different from those that are presumed not to be able to do so. Why is it that it is this, rather than simply a phenomenally conscious2202 perspective, that counts as the ontological watershed? I suppose either both or neither might count ontologically. Also, both might have enormous significance, yet not imply that an ontologically distinct entity had come on the scene. Note that – for Baker – it’s the moment the FPP (or maybe the as-yet-unrealised capacity for an FPP) comes on the scene that marks the ontological change, not the emergence of the constituting2203 individual2204.
      3. We might instead posit another property2205 – that of consciousness of Self2206 – as the critical moment in the ontological ladder leading to persons2207. I suspect some philosophers of rigging the qualifications for personhood2208 so that only human beings2209 – and maybe some others even more exalted (like God and angels) – qualify. Non-human animals2210 must be excluded to ensure the uniqueness and specialness of humans.
      4. Also, can we really use this term to explain2211 personal identity, as “person2212” appears in it? If it’s supposed to be elucidatory of personal identity, we seem to have a circle.
      5. Really what’s important – it seems to me – is that we have animals with certain properties that are important to them. We can’t reify the property and make it a stand-alone thing, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile. Nor can we assume without a lot of careful argument that this property can hop from one infrastructure to another – as in uploading2213 or resurrection2214.
      6. An argument I’m fond of is that – despite whatever psychological2215 differences there may be between me and my future self2216 – I can both rationally anticipate his experiences and should display rational concern for his well-being. That is because we share the same “window on the world” (which is just the FPP without the tendentious terminology). I just need to try out the future great pain test2217 on the individual resulting from some adventure and see if I'm worried!
      7. Now is this “window on the world” the same as a FPP? After all, it may be that my senile old self2218 no longer qualifies as a person2219, though is phenomenally conscious2220, and I should be concerned for him whatever his ontological status; only the absence of phenomenal consciousness2221 would remove all that matters2222.
      8. In summary, I think the FPP is a useful concept, and represents our window on the world, and what matters2223 to us in survival2224. But it is a property of a human animal2225, and that animal’s persistence2226 doesn’t rest upon it.
    3. Coincident Objects2227
      1. Coincident objects are those – presumed to be distinct – that (appear to) occupy the same space – or substantially the same space – at the same time.
      2. There are a number of classic puzzles that have worried about such things, and which appear below.
      3. Additionally, the alleged problems with coincident objects feature in Olson’s2228 Master Argument (Thinking Animal Argument2229) in favour of Animalism2230 and contra the Constitution View2231.
      4. The classic consideration of the topic is "Wiggins (David) - On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time".
      5. "Gallois (Andre) - The Puzzle Cases" draws together some of these and more, though in the cause of a deviant logic of identity2232.
      • The Statue and the Clay2233
        1. This topic arises in the theory of material constitution2234 when we are considering whole objects (rather than their parts) that appear to be co-located because they are (or seem to be) of different kinds2235, or (seem to) have different persistence conditions2236.
        2. This issue was exploited by "Gibbard (Allan) - Contingent Identity" in the cause of supposed contingent identity2237.
        3. Supporters of the Constitution View2238 of Personal Identity (are sometimes said to) hold that persons2239 are constituted by their bodies2240 much as statues are constituted by lumps of clay.
        4. Some – eg. Trenton Merricks – get rid of this whole problem by adopting eliminativism2241 – there are no such things as statues, only clay arranged statue-wise. See "Merricks (Trenton) - No Statues".
      • Dion and Theon2242
        1. ‘Dion and Theon’ is an ancient conundrum that has been revived by Peter Geach, Michael Burke and others – in the form of “Tib and Tibbles2243” – and is put to a variety of uses.
        2. It is so closely associated with one version of Tibles the Cat2244 that I’ll describe them together, though a variant form of Tibbles the Cat will be discussed under its own Note.
          1. The conceit is that there is a whole man (Dion; or cat, Tibbles) and a partially overlapping thing (Theon or Tib) that is identical to Dion (or Tibbles) apart from its right foot (or tail). It is, of course, moot whether this “thing” is a man (or cat) – or even whether it exists at all.
          2. Subsequently Dion (or Tibbles) suffers the misfortune of losing the relevant member.
          3. Post-ectomy, it appears that Dion is identical to Theon (and Tibbles to Tib).
          4. What are we to make of this apparent contradiction, as it would seem that beforehand the respective pairs were non-identical?
        3. The solutions to this puzzle, taken from "Burke (Michael) - Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle", include:-
          1. Restrict the principle that different objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time. Some philosophers, following Locke2245 and David Wiggins2246, modify the principle so that it applies only to objects of the same sort.
          2. Embrace mereological essentialism2247, the doctrine that each of the parts of an object is essential to its identity. Popular in antiquity, but not supported these days.
          3. Deny that the concept2248 of a torso is a proper one, or deny that there ever was such a thing as Theon.
          4. Invoke the doctrine of temporal parts.
          5. Relativizing identity2249, whether to time or to sort2250. George Myro and Peter Geach both would say that the amputation has left just one (man-sized) object, an object that is both a man and a torso. Is that object Dion? Or is it Theon? Myro's answer would be "both."
          6. Michael Burke’s solution: Post amputation there is just one object; it is (predicatively) both a man and a torso; this one object is Dion, who once was two-footed and now is one-footed; Theon has ceased to exist.
      • Tibbles the Cat2251
        1. There appear to be two puzzles involving Tib and Tibbles, both due to Peter Geach.
          1. Tibbles and Tib – his tail-less concommitant – feature firstly as a variant of Dion and Theon2252.
          2. There’s also a variant of the Problem of the Many2253, in which Tibbles loses 1,000 hairs one by one.
        2. I’m not sure there’s much that will need to be added here that’s not to be covered in one or other of those two Notes.
        3. I note in passing that "Parsons (Josh) - Dion, Theon, and DAUP" refers to "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts" and the problem of Descartes’ Foot, another variant on this theme.
      • The Problem of the Many2254
        1. This problem is to do with objects – whether clouds or human beings – that have vague boundaries. What is wrong with saying that instead of just one object there are many overlapping ones; or, if we hate this idea, what’s the solution so that we only have one (as we first thought)?
        2. Clearly, this topic overlaps considerably with that on Vagueness2255, but is a particular symptom thereof.
        3. There are also connections to:-
          1. Dion and Theon2256, and
          2. Tib and Tibbles2257
        4. Whereas these are rather “The Problem of the Few”, some of the same issues arise. However, it’s easier to come to a principled decision as to which is the “real” person (or cat) in these cases.
        5. The problem doesn’t just arise with living2258 things, so can’t be solved (I don’t think) by moving from a substance2259 to a process2260 metaphysics, though it’s worth investigation.
      • The Ship of Theseus2261
        1. There’s no Stanford entry on this topic per se, so see "Wikipedia - Ship of Theseus" for an introduction.
        2. Versions:-
          • The original version, recounted by Plutarch, just considers whether an artifact (specifically a ship) can continue the same thing if its parts are gradually replaced until all the original parts have been replaced.
          • Hobbes added the further paradox of collecting up the replaced parts and assembling them into a rival claimant to be the original ship.
          • There are various “minimalist” cases in popular culture whereby half of an artifact is replaced, followed by the other half, and maybe the process is then repeated.
            1. The traditional example is “grandfather’s axe” (the blade and the handle being successively replaced).
            2. A more recent one is “Trigger’s Broom”, from Only Fools and Horses, where the broom handle and head are successively replaced.
        3. I’m greatly attracted to David Lewis2262’s solution2263 to the Hobbesian version of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment2264, but need to consider alternative solutions that don’t depend on Perdurantism2265, and whether this case is really relevant to personal identity.
          • Is there anything special about artifacts2266 that makes identification arbitrary or a matter of convention2267, while the continued identity of a person2268 (from the first-person perspective2269, whatever society2270 – which only has a third-person perspective – may say) is not arbitrary?
          • Organisms2271 – it is said – do replace (most of) the matter making up (most of) their parts in the course of their lives, yet we are sure that the organism persists. Also, the matter that is lost and replaced are not “parts” in the way that planks of a ship are parts. It’s only in transplant2272 surgery when parts properly so-called are replaced.
          • However, is there a fact of the matter whether the repaired ship or the reconstructed ship is the “true” ship?
          • The minimalist case is interesting because it presses our intuitions2273. Personally, I don’t think half or any large part of an artifact2274 can be replaced while the thing remains the same, but this may just be a prejudice. Habituation comes into consideration – just as assimilation of new matter is important to organisms2275. If we become habituated to some major change in a building, say, then we may agree that it has persisted2276. Then we may become habituated – over generations – to the replacement of the other half. Then – if persistence is identity-preserving – we must be prepared to say – given the logic of identity2277 – that the original building is identical to the current one, even if it looks nothing like it.
          • I have had such a conundrum with my house, where it was decided to rebuild the front and most of the rear walls, and the “Trigger’s Broom” variant of the Ship of Theseus paradox was mentioned by a mortgage adviser.
          • As discussed in the Note on artifacts2278, Eastern traditions are much less fussy about material continuity in the persistence of buildings. See "Han (Byung-Chul) - Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese".
        4. Returning to the specific case of the Ship, and generally where individuals2279 lose parts2280, we need to consider what the status of the lost part is:-
          • When a bicycle is disassembled with the intention of reassembling it again later, its parts are not released but merely dispersed and it becomes a scattered object2281.
          • However, when an object loses a part in the normal case of wear and tear, that part – unless the artifact can be mended by having the part re-attached – is not dispersed but is returned to the environment for use elsewhere and is no longer associated with the object of which it once formed a part.
          • The same can be said where parts – in particular, planks – are removed and replaced. The ship (in this case) no longer has a lien over them.
          • If this account is correct, it solves Hobbes’s problem of the Ship of Theseus without the need for perdurantism2282, though this theory of persistence2283 may still be useful for other puzzles of fission2284.
  3. Christian Materialism2285
    1. This Note focuses on those philosophers who profess both some form of Christianity and some form of materialism2286, though it also lists those other philosophers associated in one way or another with the philosophy of Personal Identity who have professed Christian faith.
    2. The form of materialism2287 I have in mind is that we human beings consist wholly of matter2288, without the need to posit a soul2289 to ensure our post-mortem survival2290 and, in particular, our posited resurrection2291.
    3. I will also discuss those Christian philosophers who are dualists or hold other non-materialist accounts of human identity, and who resist Christian Materialism2292.
    4. Obviously, no Christian with any claim to orthodoxy believes that all persons2293 are essentially2294 embodied – as God is, and presumably angels are, taken to be persons and immaterial.
    5. I also suppose that Christians may differ as to what they think of as the intermediate state between death2295 and resurrection2296 (ignoring those that think that the future state is incorporeal2297).
    6. They may also differ as to whether they think matter requires animating2298 by the breath of the Spirit in a literal sense.
    7. Lists of Christian Materialists and Related Philosophers
    1. Religion2300
      1. This Note has to do with the – historical and contemporary – ways in which religious questions and commitments have influenced philosophers in their discussions of Personal Identity.
      2. I disagree fundamentally with philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga who claim that belief in God is “epistemologically basic”. Instead, I claim that philosophy asks questions that are prior to any others except, possibly, metaphilosophical questions, which are also philosophical, so part of philosophy itself.
      3. But – it seems to me – Christians allow their prior beliefs to constrain which results of their philosophical endeavours are acceptable. Worse; having decided on pre-philosophical grounds what to believe, they use the techniques of philosophical argument to bolster these beliefs. They don’t follow an argument where it goes but argue on a casuistical basis2301.
      4. Also, despite there being little agreement on Christian doctrine amongst the various denominations and sects, philosophers seem to find the arguments they’ve dreamt up for their own sectarian beliefs the most convincing.
      5. This applies to “damnable doctrines” such as Hell, which seems to be discussed academically and unselfconsciously on the pages of Faith and Philosophy2302, just as much as to comfortable ones like Heaven.
      6. I’ve briefly investigated Michael Sudduth, who wrote on the topic of ‘Reformed Epistemology’ (in "Sudduth (Michael) - Reformed Epistemology and Christian Apologetics"), but has since moved away from Calvinism and the Christian faith generally. I intend to look into his reasons and determine what he thinks of his earlier writings.
      7. There has been some concern amongst Christian Materialist2303 Philosophers as to whether heaven is a “place we can get to”. I’m not aware of the same concern for Hell, nor of just what metaphysics of the human person2304 is needed to allow eternal conscious torment.
      8. Locke2305’s thoughts on personal identity were initially motivated by worries about the metaphysics of Resurrection2306 – seen as necessary in order to right the wrongs inflicted on the righteous in this life – as well as theodicy and other forensic2307 concerns.
      9. I will focus on those philosophers who are still living or who were active in the latter quarter of the 20th century and / or thereafter, during which period it has been relatively unusual for a philosopher to openly espouse theism (except in the USA).
      10. A useful source of relatively contemporary theists ought to be "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?", though there were virtually none that I recognised.
      11. "Plantinga (Alvin) - Twenty Years Worth of the SCP" claimed (in 1998) that there were 1,000 members of the Society of Christian Philosophers.
      12. I’ve discussed, and listed, Christian Materialists under the Note of that title2308. Below, I simply list all the significant living or recently deceased philosophers I know of with Christian affiliation, divided into those whose opinion on materialism I know and those I don’t, to be checked & corrected in due course.
      13. I’ve not given much time to considering the philosophy motivated by religious beliefs antithetical to Christianity, other than to Hindu and Buddhist2311 thought on the topic of Reincarnation2312 and Karma.
      14. I’ve not yet made much of a study of Jewish views where these diverge from Christian views on the topic of personal identity and the future state.
      15. No doubt Muslim philosophers have similar concerns and motivations, but I have not investigated them yet.

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having now discussed both Animalism and the Constitution View, we can now turn to the arguments against these views, starting in the next Chapter with those against Animalism.
Chapter 8: Arguments against Animalism2313

Abstract
Chapter Introduction
  1. There is effectively a 1-1-match between this Chapter and the Note Animalism – Objections2314, though I imagine that this Chapter will be more focussed and less exploratory than that Note.
  2. The main objections to Animalism are those of incredulity to the Animalist claim that “matters of psychology are irrelevant to personal identity”, when most philosophers have thought – and still do think – that it’s constitutive of it. As I’ve said previously and often – this is to confuse What Matters to us with What we Are.
  3. Then we have the Brain Transplant Intuition – that we go with our brains. It is very difficult to resist this intuition – for reasons I’ve given under my Note on Forward Psychological Continuity, though Eric Olson insists that the Animalist must deny it as a brain isn’t an Organism.
  4. Then, there are awkward pathological cases where it’s not clear quite what the animalist should say. I’ve collected these under the Note on Dicephalus2315.
  5. Finally, there’s the question of what’s going on during Pregnancy2316, which Animalists have allegedly failed to address. Is the Fetus2317 a part of the mother? If so, we’d have a case of Fission at birth. Traditionalists would deny this, so the problem ‘goes away’, but it needs to be considered carefully from the actual biology (covered in the previous Note and those on Zygotes2318 and Embryos2319).
  6. I’ve also included the topic of Abortion2320 as part of this Chapter, though it’s maybe either misplaced, or not sufficiently relevant.

Main Text
  1. Arguments against Animalism2321
    1. A convenient starting-point for reviewing objections to Animalism is in "Olson (Eric), Etc. - Abstracta Special Issue on 'The Human Animal'", reviewed in this Note2322.
    2. The most obvious objection is to the initial implausibility of Animalism’s basic contention that – because I was once a fetus2323 and may one day be a vegetable2324 – psychological continuity2325 or connectedness2326 can have nothing to do with my persistence criteria2327. Animalists can be accused of not taking persons sufficiently seriously2328.
    3. Additionally, Animalists are said to have a “corpse problem2329”. Because I am co-located with my “corpse-to-be”, the Animalist is hoist by his own petard, in that he has the analogue of the “fetus problem2330” he alleges against the Constitution View2331.
    4. A spin-off from the alleged irrelevancy of psychology for human identity is the need to deny the Brain Transplant2332 intuition – that “I go where my brain goes”. The Transplant Intuition has been defended from an animalist perspective in "Madden (Rory) - Human Persistence".
    5. In "Olson (Eric) - Human Atoms", Olson mentions four “favourite objections”, though these strike me as being rather feeble, and I suspect them of being straw men:-
      1. If you were an animal, you would be identical with your body (or at any rate with some human body). But no human body can think or feel or act, as you can.
      2. Persons and animals have different persistence conditions: the organism that is your body could outlive you (if you lapsed into a persistent vegetative state), or you could outlive it (if your brain were transplanted and the rest of you destroyed). But a thing cannot outlive itself.
      3. Persons and animals have different criteria of synchronic identity: any human animal could be associated with two different persons at once (as cases of split personality). Thus, no person is an animal.
      4. These experiences – the ones I am having now – are essentially mine. But they are only contingently associated with any particular animal. Hence, I have a property that no animal has.
    6. The above paper is intended, however, to rebut the argument against animalism in "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience", which have the unlikely consequence that we are “mereological atoms”.
    7. "Hudson (Hud) - I am Not an Animal!" argues against animalism via the “Elimination Argument”, which I’m yet to investigate and understand. "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument" seeks to rebuff it.
    8. Elselijn Kingma has accused animalists of not taking Pregnancy2333 as an important issue for Animalism. She thinks that the Fetus2334 is a part of the mother. My view is that animals can share parts, as seems to be necessary for Conjoined Twins2335, which are another supposed objection to animalism if it could be successfully argued that there is only one animal in these cases.
  2. Dicephalus2336
    1. This Note is more general that Dicephalus, but I can’t think of a better title. There are several related pathological conditions in which the number of animals2337 and the number of individuals2338 may fail to align. In order of increasing severity of the “condition”:-
      1. Conjoined Twins: "Wikipedia - Conjoined Twins". Varies from a fairly loose conjunction of individuals, who may be separated, to more severe forms with shared organs and limbs. This article is of interest not least because it discusses the issue of fission2339 versus fusion2340, with the latter now the favourite suggestion.
      2. Craniopagus: "Wikipedia - Craniopagus Twins". The babies are joined at the skull. Contrast the case where both twins are persons2341 with the degenerate case "Wikipedia - Craniopagus Parasiticus".
      3. Polycephaly: "Wikipedia - Polycephaly". Animals or humans with apparently more than one head. Dicephaly is the limiting case. Usually an extreme version of conjunction. See, for example, BBC - Rare two-headed snake. Note that the description “two headed” seems more plausible in the case of reptiles than humans, given their presumed reduced mental experience. That said, given that dicephaly is – according to this article – a case of incomplete fission2342 of an original single individual – this descriptive decision may be correct.
      4. Diprosopus: "Wikipedia - Diprosopus".
        1. Animals, including humans, with two faces. There may be one or two brains, but only one skull. The important thing – and what differentiates the diprosopus from the dicephalus – is that there is much less duplication of body parts, so it is very much two brains sharing one body – though it can also be the relatively superficial – though tragic – case of one brain, one body and two faces.
        2. For more on diprosopus2343 see:-
        3. The Mail Online diprosopus article above quotes the following “Medical Facts” from the Embryo Project Encyclopedia:
          • The rare condition diprosopus is also known as craniofacial duplication.
          • Diprosopus refers to a baby born with a single torso, normal limbs and facial features, which are duplicated2344 to a degree.
          • In mild instances the baby may have a duplicated nose and the eyes may be spaced far apart. But in extreme cases the entire face can be replicated2345, hence the name diprosopus - Greek for two-faced.
          • Most babies born with diprosopus are stillborn, and there are fewer than 50 cases documented since 1864.
          • Where a baby is born with two complete identical faces, the condition is considered a rare variant of conjoined twinning.
          • But while conjoined twinning is the result of an incomplete separation of two embryos, diprosopus is caused by abnormal activity of the protein Sonic Hedgehog (SHH).
          • The protein is responsible for signalling craniofacial patterning during embryonic development, and among other things governs the width of facial features.
          • Where the protein is found in excess, a baby will have wider facial features, and in extreme cases it can cause the duplication of those features.
          • Diprosopus can be detected via ultrasound in pregnancy, or via CT scanning.
          • One of the first indications of the condition is the detection of abnormally high amount of amniotic fluid present within the amniotic sac.
          • There is currently no treatment to cure the condition and because of its rarity few treatment options or corrective surgery techniques exist.
        4. This doesn’t seem to explain why there should be two brains, however. An actual search of the Encyclopedia delivers a much briefer and less informative article.
    2. All these situations – and in particular the paradigm case of dicephalus, wherein it appears that we have a human animal2346 with two heads – are often cited as a prima facie problems for Animalism2347.
    3. The claim is that while we have multiple persons2348, we only have a single animal2349, so the animalist2350 claim that persons are numerically identical to their organisms2351 is false.
    4. Of course, the above claim is somewhat bald. Animalism2352 – at least in the form expounded by Eric Olson – has no truck with psychology2353 as necessary for our persistence2354. While Olson often refers to “people” this is just shorthand for “some of us2355”, rather than “persons”, the plural of person2356.
    5. So, if the animalist claim is that we are human animals, then the question is – in the case of dicephalus and related conditions – how many of us2357 are present, and how many human animals2358 are present. Animalism2359 needs the numbers to be equal.
    6. That said, these cases add to the prima facie case for animalism – that we are human animals – as our animal nature is pointed out by the unfortunate errors that have arisen during the gestation of the animal.
    7. The cases under consideration have the advantage over standard Thought Experiments2360, in that they are real-life cases. What is actual must be possible, and a standard argument against TEs is thereby avoided, namely that some of them, at least – whatever our intuitions may say – may not in fact be possible2361 because the TEs are under-described.
    8. That said, there’s still a temptation to push the boundaries, and to consider cases in this general area that are not actual yet are not quite as science-fiction as the usual TEs2362.
    9. Cases of dicephalus are fairly rare, and often one “twin” is degenerate (contrast "Wikipedia - Craniopagus Parasiticus" with "Wikipedia - Dicephalic Parapagus Twins") so it’s not clear that we have two persons2363 or two of “us2364”. However, the case of the dicephalus twins2365, Abigail and Brittany Hensel, where one body appears to be coordinated by two brains (see "Wikipedia - Abby and Brittany Hensel") shows that this is not necessarily the case. Here we definitely have two persons2366, but maybe only one animal2367. This is probably a real-life case of either incomplete fission2368 or of fusion2369.
    10. There are two issues with these cases:-
      1. How should they be best described?
      2. How should the animalist respond?
    11. Description:
      1. I need to research this further, but it seems to me that we have a sliding scale of pathological cases – from that of Siamese twins (who are often fairly loosely connected, and can often be surgically separated) to the much more extreme cases of diprosopus.
      2. I presume, also, that we can have either fission2370 or fusion2371, or indeed both serially – as the case may be – an empirical matter.
      3. In the case of (incomplete) fission2372, the twins2373 will be identical, as the situation is one where the twinning process has not completed.
      4. But (I imagine) we can also have a case of fusion2374, where the twin-embryos2375 – whether identical or fraternal – that were separate have subsequently partially fused. Note that if the twins are identical, we will have had a case of fission2376 followed by fusion2377. I don’t know whether there have been any actual cases of this.
    12. Response:
      1. The most likely response from the animalist2378 is that the dicephalus is not a single organism2379, but two organisms that share some body-parts.
      2. The force of the arguments in this kind of case depends on “relevant similarity” – if the dicephalus-case is sufficiently similar to the general case, it can be used to show things about the general case. But this claim can be rejected.
      3. In the case of diprosopus, it is more difficult to claim that there are two organisms2380. Now – in practice – there are never two persons2381 either (as in all the 30-odd cases recorded since 1860, the condition has proved quickly fatal, so there were no persons2382 present). But this might not always be so. Also, Lynne Rudder Baker might claim that the rudimentary persons were indeed persons2383 – as there was a possibility that they would develop into robust persons. Failing that, it might be the case in the future there is a case where the diprosopus survives to develop personality2384. There does seem to have been an actual case of survival into adulthood, but there was only one person, and one disfigured individual. Finally, we have to decide how to describe the situation where there is one brain stem but two ‘brains2385’ (presumably two sets of cerebral hemispheres2386). There don’t seem to have been any actual cases of this in humans, but there might have been2387.
  3. Pregnancy2388
    1. At first sight, this topic sounds utterly tangential to my research interests, but I’ve included it because Elselijn Kingma complained – in "Kingma (Elselijn) - BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy (B1)" – that "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology" contained not even a footnote on the topic of pregnancy and the metaphysical issues it raises, in particular for animalism2389.
    2. Following Kingma, the discussion will focus on the relationship throughout pregnancy between the mother and the fetus2390. The key question is whether the fetus is a part of the mother or is a separate individual2391 inside her. Additionally, we need to consider whether this status changes as pregnancy progresses.
    3. I have to admit immediately that (contra Kingma) – my initial view2392 is that the relationship is more “bun” (the “container model”) than “bump” (the “part model”), though this separation seems clearer as pregnancy progresses, following the implantation of the Zygote2393 (prior to which there is clear separation – though I suppose we might consider the zygote a small bundle of maternal cells, despite their genetic distinction – a situation that occurs in other cases).
    4. It looks like Kingma’s view is of pregnancy as a case of fusion2394 (at the point of implantation of the Zygote; I will discuss the ontological status of the zygote shortly) followed by fission2395 (at birth).
    5. Another point to consider is the possibility of technological developments to enable gestation in an artificial uterus (see Wikipedia: Artificial womb). Would the same arguments imply that the fetus is a part of the machine? Is this plausible?
    6. Having said all the above, just what is the problem for animalism?
    • Zygote2396
      1. A Zygote ("Wikipedia - Zygote") – is the immediate post-fertilisation product.
      2. In humans, the zygote develops by division until it implants as the embryo2397. Until then it is called a pre-embryo ("Wikipedia - Pre-embryo"); a morula (Wikipedia: Morula) after 4 divisions – 16 blastomeres – and a blastocyst ("Wikipedia - Blastocyst") by the 5th day. The implanted embryo is called a fetus2398 after 11 weeks.
      3. In the philosophy of personal identity, the question arises when the human being2399 or the human person2400 arises. Additionally – and relatedly – was I2401 ever a zygote (or an embryo2402, or a fetus2403).
      4. Most philosophers agree that a zygote isn’t a person2404, because it does not possess the appropriate psychological2405 attributes.
      5. Many philosophers contend that a human zygote isn’t a human being2406 either – in that it hasn’t the appropriate set of organs.
      6. In addition, the question whether I was ever a zygote is complicated by two considerations:-
        1. Twinning2407: is a special case of fission2408. Why should the zygote be numerically identical to one – rather than the other – of a pair of monozygotic twins? Modal2409 considerations apply if I am in fact not a monozygotic twin.
        2. Difference over the definition – or maybe ontological2410 category – of “person2411”. Some philosophers insist that an individual2412 can be a person2413 on account of its expected future capacities2414, or actual or once anticipated past capacities, irrespective of its present capacities.
      7. A question raised by the philosophy of Pregnancy2415 is – in the case of human beings and mammals generally – what is the ontological status of the Zygote? Is this bundle of free-floating cells a part of the mother or is it a separate individual? It is genetically diverse from the vast majority of the mother’s cells, which would suggest a separate individual – but there are cases of Micro-Chimerism2416 where genetically-diverse cells would be considered part of the mother (I suppose).
      8. As a footnote, in single-celled animals the zygote may constitute the entire animal. I once had “necessarily asexually-reproducing” here. The Wikipedia entry has it that such single-celled organisms reproduce asexually by mitosis. But if all such organisms arise in this way, in what way are they correctly described as “zygotes” which involves the “yoking together” of two distinct and differentiated gamete cells? Is it possible that some organisms reproduce both sexually and asexually? And – if so (as I believe) – is it true in this case? Do I care?
    • Embryos2417
      1. In humans, the immediate post-fertilization product – the zygote2418 – develops by division until it implants as the embryo ("Wikipedia - Embryo"). It is called a fetus2419 after 11 weeks.
      2. In the philosophy of personal identity, the question arises when the human being2420 or the human person2421 arises. Additionally – and relatedly – was I ever an embryo?
      3. Most philosophers agree that an embryo isn’t a person2422, because it does not possess the appropriate psychological2423 attributes2424.
      4. Many philosophers contend that a human embryo isn’t a human being2425 either – in that it hasn’t the appropriate set of organs.
      5. In addition, the question whether I was ever an embryo is complicated by differences over the definition – or maybe ontological category – of “person2426”, as was noted in the discussion of Zygote2427.
    • Fetuses2428
      1. A Fetus is a developing but unborn mammal subsequent to implantation and some further development. See my notes on Zygotes2429 and the Embryo2430.
      2. In humans, the implanted embryo ("Wikipedia - Embryo") is called a fetus ("Wikipedia - Fetus") after 11 weeks which remains the favoured term of reference until the individual2431’s birth – whether full-term or induced – when it is referred to as a neonate (or a baby!). Referring to the fetus as a “baby” is tendentious but common in the pro-life movement.
      3. Fetuses feature a lot in the philosophy of personal identity. Are they persons2432, or merely potential persons, given that they probably fail the conditions for personhood2433?
      4. Was I2434 ever a fetus? At least, was I an early-term fetus?
      5. This latter question is addressed by animalists2435 – who think that we were indeed fetuses – as a poser for supporters of the psychological view2436 (or constitution view2437) of personal identity (since fetuses lack psychological connectedness2438 to adult persons, and even lack psychological continuity2439 to them on the presumption that early-term fetuses lack all psychological experience).
      6. But, it’s also alleged as a problem for animalism2440, or at least a matter that has not been properly addressed by them. What was the relation of the fetus to its mother. Was the mother merely a container, or was the fetus a proper part2441 of the mother, who thereby fissioned2442 on the baby’s birth? See Elselijn Kingma and "Finn (Suki) - Bun or bump?".
      7. It strikes me that2443 the “fission at birth” view is too implausible – the fetus – especially near term – certainly looks like an independent being that’s being hosted on life support by the mother.
      8. So, maybe we can come to a compromise understanding whereby the fissioning2444 happens earlier, though the separation would clearly be more vague2445 than the cutting of the umbilical cord. ‘Viability’ would be an appropriate point – something like 21-24 weeks’ gestation – though the earliest viability depends on the state and availability of medical technology (see Wikipedia: Fetal viability).
    • Abortion2446
      1. The morality of abortion is a large and important issue, but is not my major concern except insofar as it impinges on the topic of Personal Identity.
      2. Our views on Personal Identity will have an impact on our views of the morality of abortion, though not in any straightforward manner.
      3. More importantly – and regrettably so in my opinion – views on the morality of abortion can have an impact on one’s views of personal identity. This is the wrong way round, and violates the fact / value distinction. While ethical, political or religious2447 views might influence our preference for certain metaphysical views, they should not constrain our actual beliefs, which should be responses to how things are, and to which our other beliefs should conform, however disappointing that might be.
        1. This remark assumes that there is a “way things are” that is independent of the desires and motivations of human beings. This is denied by – for instance – Yuval Noah Harari; but see – for a robust realist view – "Blackburn (Simon) - Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed".
        2. I do not wish to deny that our ethical, political and religious views can be responses to how things are, just that they were often responses to how things seemed to us – or to people we respected – at formative times of our lives, and then got entrenched and we remain impervious to evidence to the contrary.
      4. I’ll leave further discussion for now. Enough to say that I’ll not intend to wade in too far into this moral morass, though I will need to review the foundational papers on the moral implications of abortion.
      5. The note on Pregnancy2448 raises questions of what (to put it rather positively) abortion actually achieves. According to the standard “container model”, abortion kills a distinct, though temporarily dependent, being. However, according to the “parthood model”, abortion only removes a part of the whole (removing the so-called “foster” from the “gravida”: see "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?").

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having now discussed the arguments against Animalism, we now in our next Chapter turn to the arguments against the Constitution View.
Chapter 9: Arguments against the Constitution View2449

Abstract
  1. A discussion of the arguments against the Constitution View, focusing on those mustered by the principal animalists, with a critique.
  2. Additionally, I intend here to critique Olson’s “Thinking Animal” Argument2450. While this is largely an argument for Animalism2451, though I think it unnecessary to establish the case for Animalism, and this aspect is covered in Chapter 62452, Olson uses it against the Constitution View, though it ‘works’ – if at all – against any alternative to Animalism.

Chapter Introduction
  1. Like the previous Chapter, there is mostly a 1-1-match between this Chapter and a single Note – in this case Constitution View – Objections2453. That’s because Olson’s Master Argument – which is both an argument for Animalism and an objection to the Constitution View – has its own Note but appears in Chapter 7.
  2. The Note on Holes & Smiles2454 is relevant because it illustrates how a property – like the Cheshire Cat’s smile – cannot exist in the absence of the infrastructural body that makes it possible, nor can they be transferred from one body to another and remain the same property. So, I would argue, a First Person Perspective is the property of a particular human body, and cannot be transplanted from one body to another.


Main Text
  1. Arguments against the Constitution View2455
    1. The two obvious issues are:-
      1. The “too many minds” objection (otherwise known as the “thinking animal argument2456”), and
      2. The “fetus problem2457”
    2. Thinking Animals2458
      • In saying that an Individual2459 is a human animal2460 and that also that that Individual is a person2461 that is ontologically distinct from, and merely constituted by2462, the human animal, Eric Olson argues that we have too many thinkers and therefore the constitution view2463 is false.
      • I don’t like this argument, in that the form would prove too much. I see analogies with various mereological2464 arguments:-
        → Peter Unger’s argument that “there are no ordinary things”,
        → The Sorites2465 arguments against the existence of material objects with parts, and maybe with
        → Tib/Tibbles2466, and
        → Dion/Theon2467
      • All these arguments seem to have the same form – there are alleged to be too many co-located items, leading to the denial of some seemingly obvious premise.
      • Yet maybe I accept a version of this in disliking immaterial souls2468 (again, too many thinkers – if the brain2469 thinks, why do we need a soul that thinks as well). However, the degree of ontological2470 distinctness between “the self2471 and its brain2472” is greater than that between the person2473 and the human being2474 that (maybe temporarily) constitutes2475 it. I will reconsider this collection of arguments in due course.
    3. Fetus Problem2476
      • This is the question whether I2477 was ever a Fetus. According to the Constitution View2478, I was not, as the Fetus had no First Person Perspective2479 (FPP), not even a rudimentary one, and since the FPP is constitutive / individuative of me.
      • But, if I was not the Fetus, where did I2480 come from?
      • I’m not hugely impressed by this argument either. It’s also a problem for Animalism (it is said) – is the early fetus an animal2481? Was the fetus a proper part of the mother? See "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?".
    4. So, should I accept the Constitution View2482? I think not. I am an animal2483, and objections to Animalism2484 can be overcome. The whole idea of Constitution2485 as conceived of by the CV is very odd, and the CV was invented to provide the hope of resurrection2486. I need to justify these assertions, of course!
  2. Holes & Smiles2487
    1. I was unsure whether to title this Note as “Holes” or “Smiles”, so decided on a combination. While only the former is a recognised philosophical topic, the latter is a recognised as a problem for the Constitution View2488.
    2. The relevance to my Thesis is somewhat tangential, but the idea is that there are features2489 of other things that are – most likely – not separable entities but which still have persistence conditions2490. It makes sense to ask whether a particular hole is the same hole as it was a week ago, or a particular smile the same smile as a few seconds ago – smiles “wear thin” if the photographer takes too long. But neither holes nor smiles can exist separately to their host. The Cheshire Cat’s smile is not to be taken at face value.
    3. I see an analogy with this situation and persons2491 or First Person Perspectives2492. Often, when a non-philosopher doubts whether someone is the same person2493 as they had been previously, they are thinking of a radical personality change. A personality2494 is like a very complex and enduring smile – a property2495 of something else. It cannot exist on its own, disembodied2496, or pass from one body2497 to another.

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having now discussed the arguments against both Animalism and the Constitution View, we now in our next Chapter turns to the question of Thought Experiments in general, and how they bear on this topic in particular.
Chapter 10: Thought Experiments2498

Abstract
  1. Any discussion of personal identity needs to give an account of what is going on in the various thought experiments that have been considered relevant to the topic.
  2. It’s also the area that’s most fun. Indeed, I think that the entire Thesis will be an exercise in inference to the best explanation of what’s going on in these thought experiments.
  3. Any theory of Personal Identity needs to account for our intuitions (if there is a universal response) or explain them away as confused.
  4. I will briefly consider the propriety of using thought experiments in this domain of enquiry, and then consider the usual suspects.

Chapter Introduction
  1. In this chapter we will consider all the usual suspects, as itemised in the list of Notes and text below.
  2. This is a long Chapter, and starts with a general discussion of Thought Experiments2499 – though further consideration will need to be given at the end of the Chapter in the light of the discussion of examples – because some philosophers maintain that our Concepts were not designed to work in situations far from those in which they were developed. This objection does – in this context – seem to suggest that questions of Personal Identity are merely Semantic rather than matters of fact. So, it’s worth giving the method a go, to test our Intuitions2500 – though I think these should be modifiable in the light of this theoretical experience as well as well as guiding our interpretation of these TEs.
  3. The TE that I have found the most useful – and the first I came across – is Bernard Williams’s Future Great Pain Test2501, as it forces us to take maybe glib intuitions seriously.
  4. It is to be noted that some – for instance Commissurotomy – are more actual experiments than thought-experiments, though quite a lot of armchair thinking is involved in working out their import. Consequently, I’ve made this distinction in the list below. We start with the ‘actuals’.
  5. Clones2502 are relevant in distinguishing Identity from exact Similarity, and for confuting those who think that we are Information.
  6. This leads directly on to Fission2503, including a natural example thereof, namely Twinning2504, which may be a special case of Duplication2505. This whole nexus is important to the Reduplication Objection2506 to certain putative cases of persistence, where there is, or can be, more than one Survivor.
  7. Pregnancy and birth in placental mammals – as we discussed in Chapter 8 – might be described as Fusion2507 (when the Zygote implants) followed by Fission (when the umbilical cord is cut).
  8. Organ Transplants2508 are clear – though maybe not very exciting – examples of Fusion involving Human Animals, which nevertheless need to be given an account by Animalism.
  9. Otherwise, it is not clear whether there are any further naturally-occurring cases of Fusion relevant to personal Identity. The obvious possibilities are the pathological cases of conjoined twins covered by my Note on the extreme case of Dicephalus, though it’s unclear whether these are cases of incomplete Fission or incomplete Fusion.
  10. Finally under this discussion of ‘natural’ TEs are Psychopathological2509 cases. I have a general Note on Clinical Observations2510 to cover this area, with specific Notes on Commissurotomy2511 and Multiple Personality Disorder2512. Both are putatively examples of Fission on the Psychological View, but of little concern to Animalism. Multiple Personality Disorder might be better situated in Chapter 9 as a critique of the idea of an individuating First-Person Perspective.
  11. We then move to the various ‘artificial’ TEs, starting with Brain State Transfers2513. Then come Brain Transplants2514, which come in various forms. We need to distinguish Whole-Brain Transplants (WBTs) from single or double Cerebrum transplants, and these from brain-tissue transplants. Brain Transplants are vastly more difficult to perform than Head Transplants, which have allegedly been around the corner for some years. All these options are covered by the same Note but I have another on Brains in Vats which fall into the same general area.
  12. The above TEs maybe shade off into Siliconisation2515, which is the gradual replacement of organic brain tissue by computer chips, though what can be deduced from such TEs without begging lots of questions is unclear.
  13. For a bit of light relief, I’ve added a general consideration of Dracula2516, particularly of the various metamorphoses he’s supposed to be able to undergo.
  14. We then get to my favourite – Teletransportation2517, which – at best – I take to be an example of Replication2518 (which may be the same as Duplication, only more tendentiously-termed).
  15. Finally, I’ve added the hopes of Transhumanism2519 as a coda to the Chapter, though it might be combined with the previous section. Transhumanism is a very wide topic, and is different to the other notions, in which we are and remain wholly organic. I’ve divided these hopes into those that are ‘nearby’ and those that are ‘far off’.
  16. The ‘nearby’ hopes include Chimeras2520, which involves a kind of Fusion of animals of different species; either xenotransplants – which have been ‘actual’ for many decades – or the importation of human DNA into non-human animals for organ forming, or other reasons. The latter raise questions about the Ontological and Moral status of the DNA-recipients.
  17. The second case in this section is that of Cyborgs2521, which have inorganic somatic augmentation; this may also be ‘actual’ to a limited degree, though not to the degree sought by the Transhumanists.
  18. Finally, we have the less imminent hopes – in particular Uploading2522 to Computers2523 – which I find very unlikely, and not even desirable. But if it turns out to be possible, we might end up as Androids2524; just adding a robot body to a computer mind. If uploading turns out to be practically or metaphysically impossible, we might still have Androids completely discontinuous from human beings, though modelled on them.

Main Text
  1. Thought Experiments2525
    1. In general, I’m in favour of using thought experiments in philosophy.
    2. However, I’d like to consider – following "Wilkes (Kathleen) - Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments" – whether some thought-experiments in pursuit of clarifying issues in personal identity
      1. Propose impossible scenarios,
      2. Trade on under-specification, or
      3. Put us in circumstances where our concepts2526 no longer apply (or where we could no longer play the appropriate language-game using them – see "Gale (Richard) - On Some Pernicious Thought-Experiments").
    3. Sometimes our intuitions2527 are unreliable as to the truth or possibility of what we intuit.
      1. Some doubt the possible phenomenal consciousness2528 of artificial systems2529, however complex, but is this anything other than a fallacious argument from personal incredulity?
      2. Descartes2530 argued for the real distinction2531 between mind2532 and body2533 by thinking he could imagine their separation, but could he really?
      3. Sometimes, our intuitions2534 may give us no clue one way or the other, or only a gentle lead (as Williams seems to be suggesting in "Williams (Bernard) - The Self and the Future").
    4. "Snowdon (Paul) - Personal Identity and Brain Transplants" gives a helpful critique of Wilkes’s and Johnston’s (see "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings") arguments against thought experiments.
    5. "Wilson (Jack) - Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities" thinks that TEs should be avoided where possible, and real examples used. At least in actual circumstances we know that the situation is possible2535 (“actual implies possible”), and we know, or can discover, all the background conditions.
    6. The trouble is that there may not be enough naturally-occurring situations, or practically or ethically available experimental circumstances, to provide the occasions to put maximum pressure on our concepts2536.
    7. Then again, were our concepts2537 designed to be put on the rack? What would their failure really tell us?
    8. The topic of Transhumanism2538 is replete with TEs, given that the expected advances are yet to take place.
    1. Intuition2539
      1. The topic of Philosophical Intuition is somewhat related to that of Thought Experiments2540.
      2. I decided to give this topic its individual note in response to "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality". Therein, Andy Clark has the strong intuition that we2541 are “patterns in information space2542”, and he specifically contrasts this with the “me, here, now, animal” intuition shared by animalists2543 such as myself.
      3. There are – of course – arguments for animalism2544. Are there corresponding arguments for Clark’s view, or is it a foundational belief, like belief in God has been said to be?
      4. Philosophical intuitions occur in all sorts of philosophical arguments. One central to my own concerns is the “brain transplant2545 intuition” – that “we go where our brains go”. I’m not sure whether to share it or not.
      5. The primary source for this topic is probably "DePaul (Michael) & Ramsey (William) - Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry".
    2. Future Great Pain Test2546
      1. This is a test invented by Bernard Williams in "Williams (Bernard) - The Self and the Future" though the actual terminology seems to be due to Peter Unger.
      2. It is a means of teasing out whether or not we really think – either by Intuition2547 or through some convoluted reasoning – that we will be some future individual2548. It is cashed out in terms of the prospect of “being mercilessly tortured in the morning”.
      3. If we think that the unfortunate individual will be us, our attitude will be qualitatively different to if we think it will be someone else (though maybe there are exceptions – mothers and their children, maybe – but even there, it may depend on what is to happen – reference Winston Smith and the rats in Room 101 in "Orwell (George), Davison (Peter), Taylor (D.J.), Ed. - Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Annotated Edition" – Wikipedia: Ministries of Nineteen Eighty-Four - Room 101).
      4. Of course, while this may tease out what we think will be the case in any situation, this doesn’t imply that it will be the case. Lots of people think that teletransportation2549, were it to be technically feasible, would be a form of travel, rather than death2550 and duplication2551. I happen to think their view mistaken. But it either is or isn’t irrespective of anyone’s view. If I was forced to go through the procedure and found my First Person Perspective2552 persisted – as only I could know2553 – I’d change my mind, and my philosophy of PID.
      5. In my view, this is important when alloyed to the FPP2554 in rebuffing Parfit2555’s view that identity doesn’t matter2556 in survival2557. The footnote earlier raises epistemological worries, but the metaphysical certainty remains.
  2. Principal Examples - Natural
    1. Clones2558
      1. Cloning features in2559 several TEs2560.
      2. We need to contrast two forms of cloning:-
        1. The metaphysical possibility of atom-by-atom cloning.
        2. Biological cloning which uses existing structures, and interferes unnaturally in a fairly minor way.
      3. I am not concerned (as far as my thesis goes) with the medical ethics of biological cloning. There is never any suggestion that clones in this sense are logically identical, any more than so-called identical twins are.
        1. That said, there is something of a link – in the metaphysics, if not the ethics – with a critique of Parfit2561’s “identity doesn’t matter” account of personal identity.
        2. Since my clone has my (innate) properties and capacities, Parfit might think I have all that matters (or much of what matters) to me if my clone, rather than I myself, survives and I do not.
        3. The following papers seem to follow this approach:-
          → "Agar (Nicholas) - Cloning and Identity", and
          → "Brennan (Andrew) - Survival"
        4. In particular, the paper by Andrew Brennan suggests that persons might be types rather than tokens which – while an interesting proposal – is about as far from the truth as you can get. Tokens suffer, types do not, qua types. One token of the same type may be luxuriating while another is being tortured.
      4. What I am interested in is whether atom-by-atom cloning (where the original exemplar is destroyed) can ever preserve identity2562. Because of the logical possibility of the non-destruction of the “original”, I take it that it cannot. This argument depends on modal logic2563 – and the rejection of the possibility of contingent identity2564. For further discussion, see under Teletransportation2565.
      5. We may also need to discuss causality2566 to further explain why identity is not preserved during a cloning event. This is particularly the case when discussing Dean Zimmerman’s Falling Elevator model of resurrection2567, where – it is supposed – there is a causal connection between the expiring body2568 and its clone in the next world.
        1. Is it agreed that this is indeed a clone, as it seems to be, or …
        2. Is this body supposed to be the same body, created by supernatural processes by immanent causation – albeit across space and maybe other dimensions – much as a body at one time is self-identical to a body at a later time by natural metabolic processes?
        3. This would imply – in the absence of perdurantism2569 – the non-identity of the living organism2570 and the post-mortem corpse2571.
        4. See "Hershenov (David) - Van Inwagen, Zimmerman, and the Materialist Conception of Resurrection" for the argument that Zimmerman’s resurrected body is a duplicate2572.
        5. For Zimmerman’s arguments, see:-
          → "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model", and
          → "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited".
      6. The very term ‘Cloning’ seems to deny the possibility of the logical identity of an original and its clone. It implies that there are two things – the original and the clone – and two things can never be one thing, so cannot be logically identical2573.
      7. I note here – for want of a better place – that there’s a “no-cloning” principle2574 in Quantum Mechanics2575, which forbids the making of an exact copy of an unknown quantum state. This – it seems – is relevant to the difficulties for error-correction in Quantum Computing.
    2. Fission2576
      1. Fission is important in the philosophy of identity – especially of personal identity – in that it provides many thought-experiments2577 (TEs), and some real-life examples, that test out the various theories.
      2. The paradigm case of Fission is of two half-brain2578 transplants2579.
        1. It is difficult to consider this case without slipping into the “psychological view2580”. Each hemisphere seems to preserve what matters2581 to the fissioned individual2582, and a perdurantist2583 account can maintain identity2584 after fission.
        2. An alternative account is to claim that the two half-brains2585 always were separate persons2586 (and Roland Puccetti has maintained that they are separate persons, in all of us, even prior to the commissurotomy2587 in this TE and in everyday life), in a way slightly different from the usual Lewis2588 view of non-identical spatially-coincident2589 individuals2590 (because the hemispheres aren’t spatially coincident, though the shared body2591 is).
      3. We need to consider how the original person2592 was unified2593. We can press the realism of the thought experiment2594 by asking how important are the spinal cord and Peripheral Nervous System generally to the psychological2595 integrity of the human organism2596? The case of dicephalus2597 twins may be relevant – where the functions of walking and even typing seem to be carried out perfectly adequately despite the coordinated limbs being controlled by different brains2598.
      4. We also need to consider whether the two half-brains2599 continue to constitute a single scattered2600 person2601, just parked in separate bodies2602. A single embodiment is important because it ensures synchronisation of experience, and external communication between the hemispheres (in the absence of the usual internal communication across the corpus callosum). Presumably, this could be achieved in other ways.
      5. We can – as in "Dennett (Daniel) - Where Am I?" – imagine a Brain in a Vat2603 linked by radio transmitters/receivers to a remote body2604.
        1. The brain2605 is part of the body2606 – so a single physical thing can be spatially discontinuous.
        2. Why, if A fissions into B and C, can’t we consider B & C to be parts of the same person?
        3. They could fight / argue … but so can someone in two minds2607 about things.
        4. What if one killed the other?
        5. They would have different perceptual experiences, but so (presumably) does a chameleon, with its eyes pointing in different directions (and sheep and other herbivores, and fish, with eyes on the sides of their heads).
      6. I need to consider in detail what is supposed to be going on in fission – ie. press the original thought experiment2608: there needs to be segregation / redundancy prior to separation – this can happen over time (or we would have plain duplication2609). At some point the person will split into two, with incommunicable consciousnesses2610 (cf. Locke2611’s day-person and night-person).
      • Duplication2612
        1. Duplicate objects are – to use the definition in "Sider (Ted) - Naturalness, Intrinsicality, and Duplication" – “exactly similar, considered as they are in themselves”. That said, it misses off the question “which is the original?”. A “duplicate” is – by implication – a copy of the original. I don’t think there’s the same implication in the term “double”, though saying that person X is person Y’s “double” – while it doesn’t imply precedence of one over the other – doesn’t even imply exact similarlity2613 – just that one might be mistaken for the other (and maybe not even that, quite).
        2. There is considerable overlap between this topic and two other topics:-
          1. Replication2614, which is really the same thing (though not restricted to a mere doubling), and
          2. Reduplication Objections2615
        3. The motivation for this discussion – and those above – comes mainly from the above (Re-)duplication objections – where some putative change appears to preserve identity, but cannot for logical reasons2616.
        4. In Teletransportation2617, something distinguishes the forward going psychological continuity2618 of the original and the initial backward-looking psychological discontinuity of the duplicate, but I don’t know what it is. Handwavingly, it’s the “wrong sort of causal chain2619”, and it’s this causal-chain failure that defeats such Thought Experiments2620.
        5. If I were to accept Lewis’s perdurantist2621 thesis, the straightforward objection to the identification of the duplicate with the original is undermined – they simply share stages. However, there are still causal chain2622 problems to address, and those of physical continuity2623.
        6. While cloning2624 falls under this head, there is no identity2625 preservation, even under a perdurantist2626 thesis, as there are no shared stages, just shared genetic material.
        7. Also, philosophical Zombies2627 are supposed to be physical duplicates of their conscious2628 analogues. But this is a TE that cannot really be conceived of.
      • Twinning2629
        1. There are two forms of twinning:-
          1. Dizygotic twinning ("Wikipedia - Dizygotic (fraternal) twins"), wherein two separately-fertilized eggs simultaneously develop (to term), is uninteresting from the perspective of my Thesis.
          2. Monozygotic Twinning ("Wikipedia - Monozygotic (identical) twins") wherein a single fertilised egg splits into two separately-developing fetuses2630 is a special case of Fission2631.
        2. Monozygotic Twinning is an important factor – modally2632 even when there is no twinning in fact – in the topic of Personal Identity.
        3. The possibility of monozygotic twinning is said to be the reason why no existing individual2633 can be numerically identical to an earlier zygote2634:-
          1. A zygote is capable of fissioning into two qualitatively identical, but numerically distinct daughter zygotes.
          2. So, a particular zygote has the modal property of developing into two monozygotic twins.
          3. Given that it cannot be identical to both of them – see the Logic of Identity2635 – it cannot be identical to either (given that they are exactly similar there is no reason why one should be its closest continuer2636 rather than the other).
        4. Conjoined-twinning would appear to be a case of fusion2637 (maybe with prior fission2638). This case is also be touched on in the discussion of Dicephalus2639, which is the most extreme case of conjoined twinning.
      • Reduplication Objections2640
        1. The problem of reduplication relates to a systematic problem in the logic of identity2641, that of fission2642, whether actual or potential.
        2. I have another Note in this general area, that of Replication2643. Is this the same issue? The latter Note will deal with what Replication is and how it differs from Identity, while this Note will deal with the problems it causes for potential solutions to the problem of Personal Identity.
        3. So, this Note is about an objection. An objection to what?
        4. The case is probably best put in "Seibt (Johanna) - Fission, Sameness, and Survival: Parfit’s Branch Line Argument Revisited". Reduplication objections arise in various Thought Experiments2644, especially:-
          1. Teletransportation2645: you couldn’t survive because either the information2646 can be used multiple times, or the original “you” might be left behind (the “Branch-line” case).
          2. Brain-state Transfers2647: you cannot be the mental contents2648 of your brain2649, because they could be copied onto multiple “wiped” recipient-brains. This might seem to defeat the Psychological View2650.
          3. Cerebrum Transplants2651: You cannot be a brain2652, because idempotent cerebra2653 (or maybe half-brains) could be donated to two recipients, who would have equal claims to be your closest psychological continuer2654.
        5. These responses to the TEs2655 argue that we would not survive2656 certain the vicissitudes in question. The force of these objections rests on the logic2657 of identity as classically understood.
        6. Joanna Seibt herself thinks that Reduplication objections – in particular the “Branch Line cases” – “entail according to Parfit2658 a conceptual distinction between the notion of identity2659 and the notion of survival2660”.
        7. As noted elsewhere, I hope this is a misunderstanding of Parfit. What he ought to be saying – and probably is – is that we can have most of what we want2661 from survival without surviving2662. Because you - that very individual2663 – don’t survive unless you are the very same individual pre- and post- whatever contingency is under consideration.
        8. Reduplication objections also arise in the abortion2664 debate, and the argument over when “we” – assumed to be human animals2665 – begin2666. The reduplication objection implies that this cannot be before the possibility of twinning2667 is past.
        9. All these Reduplication objections are – I think – fully answered by adopting Perdurantism2668, though there might be other objections to the stances adopted.
    3. Fusion2669
      1. Like Fission2670, though to a lesser degree, Fusion is important in the philosophy of identity – especially of personal identity – in that it provides many Thought Experiments2671 (TEs), and some real-life examples, that test out the various theories.
      2. We need to consider the merger of the two psychologies2672: Parfit thinks we might like to inherit some of the better characteristics2673 of our partner, as in a marriage – but the creation of a single consciousness2674 from two seems difficult to conceive of (much more so than the creation of two consciousnesses from one, as in fission2675). Do we end up with a single first-person perspective2676, or with two? This needs to be related to multiple personality disorder2677.
      3. Also, consider Parfit2678’s seasonal people that alternately fission2679 and fuse. How conceivable are these TEs2680?
      4. We also need to consider physical as well as psychological fusions, as in the case of the dicephalus2681 and brain transplants2682. These are in any case easier to imagine – or to think we can imagine – and apply to real and hypothetical cases.
      5. A non-pathological case of fusion – also discussed under Pregnancy2683 and Chimera2684 – is that of the very early fusion of non-identical twin2685 embryos2686. Then, the adult may contain cells with different genotypes, which would normally have ended up as two individuals2687. Things get slightly odd when the twins2688 were of different sexes as the organs can develop from one or the other (or both). There’s also the normal case where ‘foreign’ cells (mostly red blood cells) wander across the placenta and end up in the body of either the mother or the fetus2689. All this is covered in "Ball (Philip) - How to Grow a Human: Reprogramming Cells and Redesigning Life", pp. 81-5.
      • Transplants2690
        1. From the standpoint of Personal Identity, the most significant transplants are Brain Transplants2691. While the transplantation of cerebrums2692 and larger brain2693-parts, including WBTs2694 will be covered elsewhere, here we should cover Thought Experiments2695 involving smaller brain-tissue transplants, which are supposed to transfer psychological2696 elements from one person2697 to another and not identity as such.
        2. In the context of animalism2698, however – where it is said (by Olson2699) that the brain2700 is just another organ – there is less reason for Brain Transplants to receive centre-stage. Some animalists2701 resist the “Transplant Intuition” – which is that “we go where our brains go”, but I will discuss that when discussing Brain Transplants.
        3. But, the animalist must still consider whether an organism2702 can survive2703 the transplant of “lesser” organs, and which – if any – transplants it cannot survive. We certainly accept that major-organ transplants – and even a complex of organs such as heart/lungs – preserve the Human Animal2704 (and person2705).
        4. Are there any limits beyond which we cannot go? Do we have to allow for a case of fusion2706 in extreme circumstances? Is there a “core” of the animal2707 that preserves identity while peripheral organs are swapped out?
        5. What about inorganic transplants? Is the Human Animal2708 preserved, and does it incorporate the transplanted organs, or are they useful appendages (like clothes) that are external to it? Alternatively, do we then have a cyborg2709? What about implants that affect our mentation2710?
        6. I can’t delve far into the ethics of transplantation, but only the metaphysics thereof. That said, I’ve read, enjoyed and briefly commented on "Ishiguro (Kazuo) - Never Let Me Go".
    4. Psychopathology2711
      1. Psychopathological cases are useful as real-life Thought Experiments2712 for teasing out issues in the topic of personal identity, as in psychology2713 generally, though it’s strictly-speaking of more interest to those espousing varieties of the Psychological View2714 than to animalists2715 like myself.
      2. The underlying assumption is that pathological cases have lessons for the general non-pathological case. It is only when a hidden process goes wrong that we get clues as to how it works.
      3. It is somewhat moot – though maybe not hugely relevant to my concerns – just what conditions count as pathological. Not everyone agrees that the latest edition of DSM2716 has it right, as many social and political factors enter into the choices.
      4. The topic of aphasia – loss of the ability to speak – is of particular interest given the inclusion of language2717 – on some accounts – as a defining characteristic of persons2718.
      5. The same might be said of deficits of memory2719 or of sense of self2720 (autism, maybe controversially).
      • Clinical Observations2721
        1. Clinical observations may be a better guides than Thought Experiments2722 (TEs) as test cases for our theories of personal identity, because at least we know they represent a real possibility.
          • One of the main objections to TEs is that they are underspecified and confused.
          • However, even with actual clinical observation, we still have the trouble of the correct interpretation of the clinical data, which affects the conclusions we can draw from it.
          • See "Wegner (Daniel) - The Illusion of Conscious Will" for the sort of controversy that arises in these circumstances. Briefly, B. Libet’s experiments supposedly revealing that we act before the experience of willing the action can be variously interpreted.
        2. Examples of relevant clinical cases are
          1. Commissurotomy patients2723 and
          2. Those with Multiple Personality Disorder2724 (MPD).
          Is a commissurotomy or MPD patient “home to” one or two Persons2725?
        3. I will argue elsewhere that PATIENT2726 – like PERSON2727 – is a Phase Sortal2728 of the Ultimate Sortal2729 HUMAN BEING2730.
          • One Human Being2731 can simultaneously be multiple patients (dental and chiropody, for instance), or a multiply-enrolled student.
          • Does this situation mirror those of our more seriously damaged human beings?
        4. One thing can’t be two things (in the sense of “be identical to”), even if the two things are of a different kind2732 to the one thing.
      • Commissurotomy2736
        1. A commissurotomy involves cutting the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two cerebral hemispheres2737 of the brain2738. The procedure is used to treat epilepsy, but is invoked by philosophers as a Thought Experiment2739 (TE) to provide an alleged real-life example of Fission2740. The real-life situation usually has to be improved upon to overcome the laterality of the brain, and the two hemispheres are assumed to be idempotent, with nothing of philosophical significance alleged to ride on this idealisation.
        2. As with all TEs2741, what we can learn from this one depends on our level of description of what is supposed to be going on. The idea is that each hemisphere fully supports the mental life of the subject(s), and consequently that there are, or can come to be, multiple subjects (Selves2742) – and hence multiple persons2743 – within the same human animal2744.
        3. Commissurotomy is therefore used as an objection2745 to animalism2746. Some philosophers argue that (for modal2747 reasons) there are always two Persons2748 within the same Human Being2749.
        4. Clearly, this is not obviously the case in the normal asymmetric brain2750. See, no doubt, "Kinsbourne (Marcel) - Asymmetrical Function of the Brain", though this is rather an old book. So, in these Thought Experiments2751 – and prior to this idealised idempotency – there has to be a period of equalisation and duplication2752 of function. This sounds like it would lead to causal over-determination, but maybe the way it could be described is as with fault-tolerant computer2753 systems, so that one hemisphere always takes the lead (or maybe they alternate) – in fact, this is said to be the case with marine mammals, to enable them to sleep2754 without drowning: see, for instance, "Hecker (Bruce) - How do Whales and Dolphins Sleep Without Drowning?". The non-dominant hemisphere is just kept up to date – either continuously or periodically – with whatever data and current state is represented in the dominant hemisphere. In such a situation, there are already – prior to the commissurotomy – two exactly similar (other than that they are mirror images of one another) but non-identical half-brains2755.
        5. Of course, the last sentence above begs some questions. It is only the cerebral hemispheres2756 that are separated and duplicated2757 – but they are still physically connected via the brain-stem – even if the logical connections are greatly reduced. It is said – see "Rosen (Victoria) - One Brain. Two Minds? Many Questions" and the references therein, which summarises the controversy between Yair Pinto and Michael S. Gazzaniga – that severed hemispheres can still communicate with one another via cues passed externally to the brain2758. Indeed, the case of the dicephalus2759 suggests that this co-ordination is possible with two complete brains, where the hands can be coordinated to drive a car and even type, despite being controlled by different brains.
        6. A recent paper – "Pinto (Yair) - When you split the brain, do you split the person?" – has suggested that the research for which Sperry received a Nobel Prize has not been replicated2760 – in the case of two patients – and that this raises questions about the nature of consciousness2761. I have my doubts. Might the corpus collosum not have been entirely severed in these cases, or might one of the above situations apply? Rosen claims that Yair Pinto thinks that other fibers are involved.
      • Multiple Personality Disorder2762
        1. MPD – otherwise known as Dissociative Identity Disorder – is a condition traditionally viewed as psychopathological2763, to be treated by therapy, though there are dissenting views. It occurs where a Human Being2764 is, or appears to be, “home” to more than one Person2765, or at least more than one Personality2766.
        2. These Persons2767 / Personalities2768 may be radically dissimilar, and are (as the alternative designation implies) dissociated from one another. They can be like Locke2769’s night and day man “incommunicable consciousnesses2770”, unaware of one another’s existence – hence being in Lockean2771terms different Persons2772; or, they can be aware of one another, but as of distinct Persons2773.
        3. No doubt one could complain that the clinically2774-recorded cases are exaggerated, fabrications or otherwise unreliable. But there seems nothing wrong with them as TEs2775, and ones least open to cavil given their approximation to reality.
        4. Effectively, we are supposed to have a Brain2776 running more than one “Mind2777-program” (on the “mind-as-software” approach); or a brain segregated into more than virtual machine (on the “mind as hardware”) approach to the mind-brain relationship.
        5. MPDs pose no problems to those espousing the Psychological View2778 of Personal Identity – other than ethical issues concerning “therapeutic” suppression or unification of the alleged multiple Persons2779 (see "Shoemaker (David) - Moral Issues at the End of Life"), but what is the response of the Constitution View2780? Can we have more than one Person2781 – with more than one First Person Perspective2782 – constituted by the same human Body2783? Animalism2784 ignores psychological2785 factors altogether as far as identity is concerned, so won’t be troubled.
  3. Principal Examples - Artificial
    1. Brain State Transfer2786
      1. The idea behind a Brain State Transfer is that we can – at least in principle as a Thought Experiment2787 – copy the Information2788 from a Brain2789 to a backup device and then restore it to another (or the same) brain – as in "Williams (Bernard) - The Self and the Future" – without changing the identity of that brain.
      2. This seems fanciful to me, as I’m sure it does to most people not enticed by Transhumanism2790, but seems to be a natural Intuition2791 to them.
      3. My scepticism is partly because I am antipathetic to functionalism2792. The Information2793 stored in Brains2794 appears to be in highly distributed representations along connectionist lines rather than according to classical AI. The very physical structure and topology of the brain changes along with what it represents. There is no simple software / hardware distinction in a realistic Psychology2795 of Human Beings2796. Of course, even in a digital Computer2797 there are physical changes to the various gates and storage media. But there is no growing or disassembling of connections.
      4. Consequently, this is a case of an under-specified TE2798 that Kathleen Wilkes so objects to. When we try to flesh out the details, we find that the TE doesn’t really work. Any backup will need to be molecule by molecule to retain the informational richness of the original, and consequently any restore will not really simply modify the existing brain, but will destroy it and replace it with a replica2799 of the brain whose contents are supposedly being transferred. It will not simply feed information2800 into a pre-existing brain.
      5. Hence, I now think that Bernard Williams’s intuitions2801 about the post-transfer A-body-person remaining a “mixed up” A-person are incorrect. Nor does A-body-person end up as B, but as a fusion2802 of a replica2803 of B’s brain2804 and A’s body2805. The situation is best described as a transplant2806 of (maybe only part of) a replica of B’s brain into A-body-person’s head. A-body-person may end up confused, but only because – it seems to him – he’s obtained a new body.
      6. Of course, this TE2807 retains all the difficulties associated with Brain Transplants2808. A particular brain2809 is wired up to control a particular body2810, and won’t work adequately with a new one.
      7. Note that “uploading”2811 differs from – and builds on – BSTs because it requires the person2812’s psychology2813 and phenomenal consciousness2814 to be realised (I would say merely simulated) on a digital computer2815, making a two-phase project, whereas BSTs – superficially at least – just require the copying phase.
    2. Brain Transplants2816
      1. Brain Transplants, even if currently technically infeasible, are considered to be important Thought Experiments2817 in the philosophy of Personal Identity. They seem to give the same answer to both the holders of the Psychological Continuity2818 View and the Bodily Continuity2819 View of what ensures the persistence2820 of the person across time. Both say that the Person2821 goes where the Brain2822 goes.
      2. This assumption is the “Transplant Intuition”. However, some animalists2823 (say they) fail to share this intuition. They (Eric Olson for instance) consider the Brain2824 to be “just another organ”, albeit a very important one. I find this counter-intuitive2825.
      3. In evaluating these claims it is important to understand just how the Brain2826 works, so that we can determine just how fanciful our TEs2827 are. I will discuss this under the Note on the Brain2828. An assumption I make is that as we are interested in the question What We Are2829, it is important to be empirically accurate.
      4. Note that there are three conceptually distinct versions of the idea of a brain transplant2830.
        1. The first is a Whole Brain Transplant (WBT), though it becomes somewhat arbitrary quite where the brain2831 is supposed to terminate – ie. just how much of the Spinal Cord is included. I include “head transplants” in this category. Note that these might otherwise described as “Body2832 Transplants”. Both descriptions are tendentious and theory-laden.
        2. The second is the Cerebrum2833 Transplant (single or double).
        3. Finally, there’s a “Brain Tissue” transplant, presumably with the intention of transferring particular psychological2834 properties2835.
      5. It might be objected that the TEs2836 of WBTs are under-specified. A lot of motor-control is delegated to the non-brain parts of the Central Nervous System (CNS); apart from the brain, the CNS is, mostly, the spinal cord (see "Wikipedia - Central Nervous System"). To ensure motor-control, the brain and the CNS – and even the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) need to work in tandem. The PNS consists in those elements of the nervous system other than the brain and the spinal cord (see "Wikipedia - Peripheral nervous system"). Yet a transfer of the entire CNS - which includes the spinal cord, let alone the PNS – which includes all the peripheral nerve endings (both sensory and motor) – stretches credulity somewhat.
      6. We need to consider just what the TEs2837 are supposed to prove, and just why we sometimes consider WBTs rather than just Cerebrum2838 transfers. I presume the preference for WBTs may stem from the presumed assurance that the seat of consciousness2839 is transferred, which might not be the case if only a cerebrum or two are transferred.
      7. It may be we don’t care too much whether the recipient of the transferred brain is fully functional – though if we want assurance that this individual is an animal2840, we might want the regulatory functions of the brain2841 to remain intact. But whatever brain parts perform these tasks, provided the resultant individual has a full brain, however cobbled together, we might have what we want if the wiring problem can be solved.
      8. A Whole Brain Transplant might better be described as a maximal body transplant, while it is much less clear what’s going on in a Cerebrum2842 Transplant. The latter are useful for cases of fission2843 (with the added assumption of the idempotency of the two hemispheres), but it’s not fully clear just what psychological2844 functions are left behind in this case. Because not all regulatory functions are in the cerebra2845, it’s more difficult to argue that the human animal2846 is transplanted with one or more cerebra2847 than it is with a WBT.
      9. I’ve not heard of anyone arguing for animal fission2848 by a fission of the whole brain2849, but maybe they have. I suppose the simplest case of Animal Fission would be the separation of Dicephalus2850 twins, taken (rather implausibly) to be a single Animal2851 with two heads. But this case might better be described as two animals sharing parts, which are then apportioned in the process of achieving separation.
    3. Siliconisation2852
      1. “Siliconisation” is a name – there may be others – for Thought Experiments2853 involving the gradual replacement of neural tissue by silicon computer2854 chips.
      2. An example is Peter Unger’s “zippering”. Unfortunately, I can’t find the reference for this, so it is possible I’ve either misremembered the term, or forgotten the author. Unger does discuss the gradual replacement of neurons by silicon in pp. 122-123 of "Unger (Peter) - The Physical Approach To Our Survival", but I couldn’t see the term used there.
      3. Anyway, this is a subtle argument. We don’t – of course – know whether this TE2855 is metaphysically2856 possible2857. We don’t know whether silicon can sustain consciousness2858, though functionalists2859 assume that it can. Gradually, it is said, we no longer have a human animal2860, but one that will – behaviourally at least – be indistinguishable from one.
      4. I think the situation is best viewed as an increasingly mutilated human animal2861 with an ever-growing prosthesis. The term for such is a “Cyborg2862”.
      5. I doubt that the silicon would maintain phenomenal consciousness2863 but just be a “zombie2864” simulacrum.
      6. Any replacement that would maintain phenomenal consciousness2865 would be indistinguishable from natural part-replacement. But I think this is a contingent, empirical matter, a long way off from an answer.
      7. A question I’ve considered is whether siliconization would preserve the First Person Perspective2866, irrespective of whether it impacts on consciousness2867.
      8. I just note here that “silicon” is used as a proxy for any non-carbon-based intelligence2868. Germanium, or Qubits might do as well (or better), though quantum2869-computing2870 might change the game somewhat.
    4. Dracula2871
      1. In October 2022, while tossing and turning with Covid in the dead of night, it occurred to me that the fictional Dracula might be a useful case study for various issues in the general area of Personal Identity. This Note is the end result.
      2. Count Dracula is only a Fiction2872, but the vicissitudes he is supposed to be able to survive may be worth some brief considerations to determine whether they are metaphysically possible – or even make logical sense.
      3. I have no great interest in what supposedly causes vampirism – whether it’s a virus or whatever, nor on how it’s passed on. Nor do I care about Dracula’s abilities to climb walls or fly through the air. Nor about his supposed aversion to garlic or crucifixes.
      4. However, the vampire is supposed to only maintain his Existence2873 by drinking blood – preferably human, but animal blood – particularly of rats – will do at a pinch. I presume there’s some refection of ancient ideas that ‘the Life2874 – or Soul2875 – is in the blood’, which was not to be eaten.
      5. Dracula is described as ‘undead’. That is – he has died at some point – in fact at many points in later retellings in order to keep the sequels running – but is neither claimed to be alive nor dead. We might reflect on how such an idea squares with our normal ideas of what Life2876 and Death2877 are.
      6. The fictional claims that really interest me relate to Dracula’s Metamorphoses2878. The first question is what he ‘really’ looks like. In the book, and film thereof, Dracula in has castle looks as you might expect someone over 400 years old to look. But when he appears in public, he looks young and handsome. Then – in the dénouement – when he is mortally wounded in the guise of his ancient self – he reverts to his youthful self in response to Mina’s kiss, after which he is ‘released’ by beheading. A question is – is he metamorphosing, or supposed to be influencing the vision of his beholders? As the latter would be needlessly complicated in busy London streets, I assume the former, especially as he is supposed to be able to transform himself in other – more radical - ways. Enough to say there’s nothing metaphysically problematical about such identity-preserving Metamorphosis2879, as it’s presumably ‘just’ a rearrangement of Matter2880, with some need for an energy source to effect the same. One needn’t worry about the details.
      7. The more interesting metamorphoses involve Dracula’s supposed Metamorphosis2881 into a large dog-like animal on leaving the ship at Whitby, and into a mist, into bats, and rats.
      8. Transformation into a dog (and back) would be a trans-species Metamorphosis2882. I’ve not much special to add here. If Dracula still falls under the Natural Kind2883 concept Human Being2884, and the natural kind is an essential property of the Individual2885, then he would cease to exist as the dog, but – if Intermittent Existence2886 is allowed – might subsequently ‘exist again’. The same might apply to the other transformations.
      9. It is supposed that Dracula transforms himself into many bats (or rats). Bats and rats are much of a muchness. The interesting common feature is the one-to-many ratio. If Dracula cannot survive – logically speaking – Metamorphosis2887 into a dog, he certainly can’t survive transformation into a single rat or bat, let alone many of them. Each rat – we may suppose – is an independent sentient being. Can they collectively constitute another being? Would this ‘distributed’ being be an Individual2888? Are we to suppose Dracula to be conscious in this state? It is true that Organisms2889 are constituted by a multitude of cells, but these cells aren’t independent beings. More could be said – maybe along the lines of Societies2890.
      10. Transformation into a mist is very odd. Presumably this is disassembly into microscopic constituent parts. Can an Organism2891 – as distinct from a bicycle2892 – survive such an adventure? "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave" thinks not. Would he cease to exist in the interim or exist as a Scattered Object2893?
      11. It’s not in the book, but – at least in Hammer Horror – human blood dropped onto his ashes allows Dracula to regenerate. This would seem to be an example of Resurrection2894. At least there’s some physical Continuity2895 mediated by the ashes.
    5. Teletransportation2896
      1. In what follows, I’ve used the term “Teletransportation” because that is the term used by Derek Parfit2897 in "Parfit (Derek) - Reasons and Persons". However, in Star Trek, the function is performed by the “Teleporter”. See:-
        → "Wikipedia - Teleportation" and
        → "Wikipedia - Teletransportation paradox"
      2. I also note that "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction" uses the equally tendentious term “Teleclone2898”.
      Original Case Study - “Beam me up Scottie”
      1. There are two obvious supposed mechanisms for teletransportation:
        1. Transferring both matter and information; or simply
        2. Transferring information, utilising local matter.
      2. I gather that in the Star Trek series itself, it's plasma that's transmitted, but as this is unlikely to get to its destination without causing havoc, the information-only transfer is more reasonable. However, even in the plasma-transfer case, I'm unconvinced that I'd survive2899, for two reasons:
        1. Some things (eg. bicycles, and analogous artifacts2900) can survive disassembly and re-assembly, but only if they are disassembled into recognisable parts. If a bicycle is disassembled into iron filings and latex goo, and then re-manufactured, we might be reluctant to say it's the same bicycle.
        2. As a matter of empirical fact, fundamental particles are not distinguishable, so the labelling cannot be undertaken even in principle. If it doesn't matter which particle fits where, provided they are of the right sort, the case seems to collapse into the information-transfer variant. On consideration, I’m not 100% confident on this point. In any case, since we are biological organisms2901, the particular atoms that make us up aren’t important, provided they are replaced gradually, and the structure is maintained.
      3. We now turn to the information-transfer case. My main worries initially here have to do with the possibility of duplicates2902. We all know that a counterfeit, however well done, isn't the same as the original. The logic of identity2903 is constraining. A thing is identical to itself and to nothing else, so if a thing is identical to two "other" things, these "two" must be identical to one another. Given that my two beamed-up versions aren't identical to one another, at least one of them can't be identical to me. And, since they are exactly similar2904, why choose one rather than the other? So, neither is me. Both are exactly similar2905 to me, but identity is to be distinguished from exact similarity. This situation is comparable to the case where the "original" human being isn't destroyed. This sort of thought experiment2906 is referred to as the “Branch-line Case”: see section 75 in "Parfit (Derek) - What We Believe Ourselves To Be", in "Parfit (Derek) - Reasons and Persons". Canonically, it's where I've only a few days left to live (because the scanner has done me a mischief). Would I be happy in the knowledge that my duplicate2907 would go on and on, and take up with my partner and career where I left off? Is this as good as if I survived? Not likely, unless we’re Parfitian2908 saints! Note, however, that the case is tendentiously described (ie. as teletransportation) to lead to this seemingly obvious conclusion that this is a form of transport. Note that the technology is described tendentiously with the opposite intuition as “Telecloning” in "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction". The "main line" candidate would be perfectly happy that his rival back home was about to perish.
      4. Philosophers split into two main camps in response to these situations (though - jumping ahead a little - even if perdurantism2909 is true, we still might not have the teletransportation of a persisting2910 individual2911, because of the wrong sort of causal2912 link leading to a lack of forward continuity2913 of consciousness2914, or even of physical continuity). So there are multiple bifurcations, but we keep things simple here and just follow those who think that I either survive2915 or have what matters2916 in survival:-
        1. 4-dimensionalists (Perdurantists2917): A thing is really a 4-dimensional worm through space-time, which consists in a set of instantaneous 3-D stages. In this situation, where multiple teletransportations occur, all copies are me. They are different 4-D worms, but they share all their pre-beaming-up stages. There were always at least 2 people present.
        2. 3-dimensionalists (Endurantists2918) claim that while I'm not identical to the beamed-up person, yet I have what matters2919 in survival2920.
      5. Note that there's a modal2921 argument to the effect that even in the usual case where only one copy is beamed up, and the original is destroyed, because there might have been multiple copies, this means that identity isn't preserved even in the case where there's only one teletransportation-result created. This seems to lead to paradox. Imagine the situation - I'm beamed up and think I've survived2922, and am then told that the machine has malfunctioned and produced a duplicate2923, and hence, contrary to my experience, I haven't survived after all! Unfortunately, some philosophers go along with a "closest continuer2924" theory of identity across nasty cases of fission2925 or fusion2926. I'm identical to (or even “survive as2927”) the continuer that most closely continues me, either psychologically2928 or physically2929, according to taste. How can my survival depend on what happens to someone else, the thought goes? See the “Only 'X' and 'Y' Principle2930”. While this does seem odd, in fact you can’t trust the feelings of the teletransportees – for even if multiple copies are made, they all subjectively feel like the original.
      6. There are two questions outstanding.
        1. Do I survive the transfer? And, if I don’t,
        2. Does it matter that I'm not identical to the post-beamed person?
        I’m here ignoring the (as it seems to me) illogical “survival2931 without identity” option.
      7. We have seen that it is possible that it appears to me that I survive, yet I do not. On the endurantist2932 view, the logic of identity2933 means that I cannot trust my experience. So, it seems possible that the person “waking up” is not me. I never wake up – in the sense that I lose consciousness, but never experience a re-awakening - but someone else with my past in his memories is created in my stead.
      8. So, is survival2934 itself what matters2935? Well, on the perdurantist2936 view, survival is not even sufficient for me to have what matters in the sense Parfit2937 intends. Imagine the case where the machine goes haywire and 1,000 exactly similar teletransportees are created. All these share my pre-teletransportation stages, so are all me (except that “I” was always 1,000 co-located individuals – and maybe more – who knows how often the machine may go wrong in the future!). In this case 1,000 individuals would be squabbling over the same friends, relations, job etc, and that might be rather a nuisance, and it seems that I wouldn’t really have what most matters to me, though no doubt I would be able to rebuild my life from scratch. However, this isn't fundamental to whether I do or don't survive, and it seem that what really matters to me is survival itself. If I'm a violin virtuoso or a body-builder, I might not find it much fun surviving as a brain in a vat2938, but that would just be tough. The standard philosophical test is the "future great pain test2939". I believe that the future continuant will be me, whether I like it or not, if I'm as terrified of that continuant being tortured as I would be if I were to be tortured in the normal course of events. Our BIVs2940 would be even more upset at the prospect of torture-simulation being fed into their brains than at the loss of their beautiful bodies. Our fears have to be moderated by logic, however. But this is no worse than ignoring a revivalist rant on Hellfire. If I’m not identical to a particular teletransportatee, I won’t survive2941, and if I don’t survive2942 I won’t feel anything. I may have a moral obligation not to land others in a pickle, but it won’t be the selfish problem of avoiding landing myself in one.
      9. I can imagine fissioning2943, by the bungled-beaming-up process, into 1,000 continuants, none of which (on a 3-D view) is identical to me, but all of whom seem to themselves to continue my first-person perspective2944. I can imagine (just about) going into the machine, and coming out again 1,000 times (when the life-histories of the 1,000 then start to diverge). While the psychologies of the 1,000 are initially identical, they are not connected to one another, though they are each connected continuously to the pre-beamed-up person. So, if even one of them were to be threatened with torture, I'd be terrified if I thought that that one (even amongst all the others) would be me, in the sense that my experience continues into that body.
      10. But, do I survive2945? I don't think I do, for reasons given above. It’s not that I reject perdurantism2946, it’s just that even accepting perdurantism there’s too radical a discontinuity. It's clear that a duplicate2947, looking backwards, wouldn't be able to tell apart the situation from the normal one of (say) just having woken up after a dreamless sleep. However, I imagine it's possible (even in a supposedly successful teletransportation) for – moving forward2948 – there to be nothing it's like for me after the beaming - it's as though I never woke up, though someone else woke up thinking he was me. This would be a tragedy but, we'd never know about it, because (on this hypothesis) I wouldn't be around to tell the tale, and my duplicate2949 would claim everything was fine (he remembered going to bed and waking up, as it were).
      11. This worries me slightly about our every-night bouts of unconsciousness. How do I know that “the me” that wakes up is “the same me” that went to sleep, and would it matter if it wasn't? Was my mother right in saying “it’ll be all right in the morning”, in the sense that I’d have no further experience of the current problem, or indeed of anything at all? Is this worry parallel to beam-me-up case? Or is sleep a pain-free death?
      12. I suspect the answer to these questions is that for a physical thing to persist, there needs to be appropriate physical continuity, and this continuity guarantees its persistence (though this intuition is a bit of a feeble response). On the assumption that my brain2950 supports my conscious experience, this is enough to reassure me that, as it's the same continuing brain in my skull overnight, it's the same me that's conscious in the morning. I don't have the same reassurance in the case of beaming-up. So, I wouldn't go in for it, even if it came to be seen as a cheap form of transportation.
      John Weldon's "To Be"
      1. This is a 10-minute animated cartoon2951 that discusses the question of teletransportation.
      2. In it, a mad scientist invents a teletransportation device as a means of free travel. The necessity of destroying the original is discussed, initially to avoid overpopulation, and then to prevent disputes as to who is who. The branch-line case, where the original is destroyed five minutes after the replication2952, also features. There, it is clear that the original is a different individual to the teletransportee, and clings to life. Destroying the original is (in retrospect) murder – but what’s the difference between this situation and the one where the original is immediately destroyed? There’s obviously the anticipatory angle – in the “normal” case, the original thinks of the situation as one of travel, and no-one thinks that identity is not preserved in the process, whereas in the branch-line case the confusion is exposed, and the original knows that the teletransportee is a clone2953. So, maybe the branch-line case is clearly a case of murder, whereas the “normal” case is a case of accidental homicide where the perpetrator is unaware that he’s killed someone?
      3. The twist in the tail is that the heroine, overcome with guilt after the branch-line case (which she’d originally just thought of as a logical demonstration) – and now understanding the metaphysics of teletransportation – thinks she can now
        1. atone for her crime,
        2. escape the guilt and
        3. escape her creditors by being herself teletransported.
        For (i) she dies and is cloned2954 and (ii) / (iii) the teletransportee is a different individual to the original, so why should this individual have any moral connection to the other? There seems to be something fishy about this, but maybe it’s perfectly sound reasoning. However, …
      4. In the animation, the original and the teletransportee get muddled up (after all, both look alike and think alike), so for practical purposes we are in a situation similar to Locke’s “amnesiac drunkard” case – society2955 has to find the drunkard guilty for his forgotten crimes (in that case because of the possibility of dissimulation); so, maybe the possibility of dissimulation or devious intent (as in the animated case) would for practical purposes mean that the teletransportee would inherit the moral and legal baggage of the original – and surely they would, or the practical consequences of people routinely escaping their debts would be grave.
      5. Yet, metaphysically, it’s no different from escaping your debts by committing suicide, because the teletransportee is not the same individual. And, I think the Branch-line case shows that it’s not the same person either, unless we allow the non-substance term “Person” to have multiple instances – as immediately post teletransportation, both the original and the teletransportee would seem to be the same person (however this is defined non-substantially) even though they would rapidly diverge into two different persons. Just as in the case of suicide, society2956 has in the past tried to show that you “can’t really escape” – because of the prospect of Hell, so in the teletransportation case the same myth would be propagated. The teletransportee would be deemed to inherit the moral baggage of the original and, if not up to speed on the metaphysics, would think rightly so. But the original would have escaped for all that!
      • Replication2957
        1. Replication arises where an obvious copying process takes place. I would claim that Teletransportation2958 falls under this head. I'm currently not clear whether there's a distinction between replication and duplication2959, other than that duplication would seem to be restricted to doubling, whereas replication is more open-ended.
        2. Does amoebic division count as replication? When an amoeba divides, this is not a case of fission2960 but of reproduction. So, there are three amoebae involved – the original one and the two daughters. This is not the same situation as in fission.
        3. The above said, does this case depend:
          1. on how the case is described2961 and
          2. on how – empirically – the replication occurs?
        4. If the amoebic division occurs by budding of a daughter, so that we can continually "track" the parent, then we have straightforward reproduction. If the division is symmetrical, the case could be correctly described as replication, though maybe on a perdurantist2962 view we originally had two coincident2963 amoebae that both persist.
        5. We need to watch out for closest continuer2964 descriptions of the case.
        6. I feel I need to investigate the science of all this a bit more.
          1. On amoebae: see "Wikipedia - Amoeba (genus)"
          2. Their standard division is as all eucaryotic cells – by Mitosis ("Wikipedia - Mitosis") and Cytokinesis ("Wikipedia - Cytokinesis")
  4. Transhumanism2965
    1. Transhumanism is the thesis that we human beings2966 can – in principle at least – transcend our animal2967 nature and escape or at least augment – in whole or part – our animal bodies2968.
    2. The movement hopes – amongst other things – to extend our lifespans – either considerably or indefinitely.
    3. One particular strand of this hope is to escape our mortal bodies altogether by “uploading2969 ourselves” to a digital computer2970.
    4. Of course, there’s lots more to the movement, especially with somatic and mental augmentation to expedite our evolutionary2971 progress via Cyborgisation2972.
    5. I’m very doubtful about the possibility – practical or theoretical – of most of these aims, as well as their desirability. However, while this topic is on the borders of sci-fi, it is a challenge to animalism2973 in that it presupposes that “we2974” can transcend our biological origins2975 in some way or other.
    6. The premier transhumanist of my acquaintance is Nick Bostrom. He has also argued that we might be (and indeed probably are) living in a computer2976 simulation. See:-
      1. "Bostrom (Nick) - Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?",
      2. "Weatherson (Brian) - Are You a Sim?", and
      3. "Bostrom (Nick) - The Simulation Argument: Reply to Weatherson".
    7. Light-hearted introductions to the ideas and personalities are:-
      1. "O'Connell (Mark) - To be a Machine", and
      2. "Tegmark (Max) - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
    8. And the main text for this topic is "More (Max) & Vita-More (Natasha) - The Transhumanist Reader". It’s probably best to start with the Introductions to the book’s nine Parts.
    9. Enough to say here that I’m not sympathetic to these aims, nor to the possibility of Uploading2977, even in principle.
    1. Nearby Hopes
      • Chimeras2978
        1. Chimeras are animals2979 – or maybe humanoids – the mythical centaur is an example – made up of parts of animals from different species.
        2. The original Chimeras were mythical beasts ("Wikipedia - Chimera (Mythology)"), improbable amalgams of lion, goat and snake, though mules ("Wikipedia - Mule", the progeny of a male donkey and a female horse) are chimeras as the parents are of different species with different numbers of chromosomes.
        3. My only reference for this topic was originally "Savulescu (Julian) - Should a human-pig chimera be treated as a person?". This brief paper focuses on the ethics of using (future) pig-human chimeras as sources of (human) transplant2980-organs or neural2981 matter.
        4. The paper’s rhetorical question is rather ludicrous as there would never be any intention of engineering pigs with the attributes needed to qualify as a person, nor the need to do so even in the case of neural tissue (which would remain in the petri-dish). However:-
          1. Admittedly, "Ishiguro (Kazuo) - Never Let Me Go" considers the cloning of human beings so their organs can be harvested, but this is presumably because it is deemed to be the technologically simplest solution.
          2. I’m admittedly unclear about the question of neural tissue. But the idea of developing neural structures within a pig-human chimera and transplanting these structures into a human head is as far-fetched as brain transplants2982, so can be ignored for now.
        5. Whether such a beast – whether hybridised with a human or not – were to qualify as a person2983 ought to be based on its cognitive capacities and not merely on its chromosomes.
        6. It is possible that this topic might relate to transhumanism2984. Rather than adding small quantities of human to pig, we might add quantities of animal to human. This would be the case in organ transplants – where an essentially normal organ is transplanted – but it might be the case that augmentative strategies could be adopted whereby humans are enhanced with bodily features (or, say, the physiological infrastructure) of animals, much as in the case of cyborgs2985, but with organic rather than inorganic parts.
        7. I’ve noted the extended usage of the term “chimera” to designate human beings with body parts or cells originating from different human beings. I’m not sure this is helpful, or that it has much significant to say about identity conditions. Genetic uniformity is not sufficient for numerical identity (because of identical twins2986) and I doubt it is necessary either. Examples given are women after (or possibly during) pregnancy and human-human transplant recipients.
        8. The following useful material comes from notes made on the RIP-version of "Kingma (Elselijn) - Were You Part of Your Mother?".
          1. Micro-chimerism (See "Wikipedia - Microchimerism"): Fetal-maternal & Twin-twin transfer. Pregnant women usually pick up fetal cells during pregnancy, which remain in their bodies for decades.
          2. Macro-chimerism: Kidney donation; blastocyst fusion (see "Wikipedia - Chimera (Genetics)"). This link distinguishes Chimeras from Hybrids and Hybridomas. In a Chimera, each cell is genetically uniform, whereas:-
            • Hybrids: form from the fusion of gametes from two species that form a single zygote with a combined genetic makeup. See "Wikipedia - Hybrid (Biology)".
            • Hybridomas: result from the fusion of two species' cells into a single cell and artificial propagation of this cell in the laboratory. See "Wikipedia - Hybridoma Technology".
            In the latter case, two blastocysts (of non-identical twins) fuse non-pathologically (the pathological cases are of conjoined twins – where there’s incomplete fusion and integration) – for all Kingma knows this might be true of her – so that some organs are formed from one blastocyst and the others, or the skin, are formed from the other. It’d be bonkers to think that such cases weren’t each a (single) organism.
        9. I’m indebted to "Ball (Philip) - How to Grow a Human: Reprogramming Cells and Redesigning Life", pp. 81-5, for further information on the above case where, because of very early fusion of non-identical twin embryos2987, the adult may contain cells with different genotypes, which would normally have ended up as two individuals. Things get slightly odd when the twins were of different sexes as the organs can develop from one or the other (or both). There’s also the normal case where ‘foreign’ cells (mostly red blood cells) wander across the placenta and end up in the body of either the mother or the fetus.
      • Cyborgs2988
        1. Briefly, a Cyborg (Cybernetic Organism) is a human being (or any organic being) with some inorganic parts (see "Wikipedia - Cyborg").
        2. Compare and contrast with Android2989, which is a humanoid robot.
        3. See also Siliconisation2990, the Thought Experiment2991 wherein we have the gradual replacement of (human) neural tissue with microchips while – allegedly – preserving consciousness2992 and mental2993 function.
        4. And again, connect to Chimeras2994. In this case, biological material from other animals is merged with human tissue to provide an enhancement, and there are other situations where human tissue is to be harvested from other animals – after genetic modification or other means – for the purpose of implantation2995.
        5. All of the above is beloved of the Transhumanists2996, who want to enhance the human condition by all means possible, even if this means that humans are no longer – strictly speaking – human beings2997.
        6. My interest in Cyborgs stems from the impact of their possibility on the truth of Animalism2998.
        7. If we are (human) animals2999, would we continue to exist if increasingly enhanced by technological implants3000 and extensions. I see no immediate problem – just a bit more along the lines of spectacles & hip replacements. But no doubt there would eventually become a tipping point when we become more inorganic than organic3001. Our persistence conditions3002 would then be mixed between those of organisms3003 and artefacts3004. Or is the situation better described by us shrinking (if our parts are replaced) or – if the technological parts are add-ons – remaining unchanged. Currently we’re unchanged by our spectacles, but hip replacements become part of us. Is this not so?
    2. Far Off Hopes
      • Uploading3005
        1. This Note will discuss the Transhumanist3006 fantasy of uploading you3007 (or your mind3008) to a computer3009.
        2. For this to be possible, the “Computer Model” of the mind – which seems to be the dominant paradigm in neuroscience – needs to be true of us, and not just a model. This is the view that the brain operates like a digital computer3010 and is disputed by, for example, "Epstein (Robert) - The empty brain".
        3. "Miller (Kenneth D.) - Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain?" points out the formidable technical obstacles to building a full model of the brain, and that consequently Uploading is not to be anticipated any century soon. The author does, however, think that it is metaphysically possible3011.
        4. I don’t believe this, for the same reason that I don’t think Teletransportation3012 – even if technically feasible – is identity-preserving. Rather than uploading you, we’d only achieve a simulation. But even if the individual ‘in’ the computer were to be conscious3013 and a person3014, it would not be you but someone else.
        5. Additionally, this Note should cover the – more realistic but still technologically very remote – possibility of uploading information3015 into our brains3016, though this overlaps with Brain State Transfer3017, though the latter is the uploading of an entire psychology rather than information.
      • Computers3018
        1. This discussion will be restricted to the role Computers play in the philosophy of Mind and Personal Identity. While I am an animalist3019, the mind3020 and brain3021 are important topics in alternative accounts – in particular the Psychological View3022 and the Constitution View3023.
        2. The “Computer Model” of the mind seems to be the dominant paradigm in neuroscience. This is the view that the brain operates like a digital computer. This is disputed by, for example "Epstein (Robert) - The empty brain".
        3. There’s a cross-over in much of the above topic with Functionalism3024.
        4. Where this gets exciting is in the Transhumanist3025 hope of uploading3026 (you3027, or your mind3028) to a computer. This will be dealt with under the head of Uploading3029.
        5. A related issue – also currently noted under Transhumanism – is whether we are (most probably) living in a computer simulations, whether or not we might have been uploaded3030 there.
        6. Also, there’s the whole question of Artificial Intelligence3031, and in particular whether computers – or maybe even computer programs – might ever become persons3032.
        7. This topic might get caught up in the “Connectionism” debate, and whether connectionism – which seeks to adopt the neural connectionist architecture of the brain – can account for the “systematicity of cognition”. I don’t want to stray too far down this interesting path.
        8. I might also add the question whether the success of self-teaching game machines3033 has anything to say about the innateness controversy – whether human beings are born with a “language3034 instinct” or whether generic associative learning capabilities are sufficient to explain the near-miraculous acquisition of language by toddlers. I used to think not – see the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument3035.
        9. The above comment is now rather outdated given the rise of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) which need to be discussed.
      • Androids3036
        1. Briefly, an Android (Wikipedia: Android) is – or would be were one to be built – a robot with no organic parts that looks and acts like a human being; those looking otherwise are simply “droids”.
          • The Android needs to behave as if it had an appropriate psychology3037 – at least one that passes the Turing Test.
          • This psychology need not involve phenomenal consciousness3038 – indeed it is one of the problems of philosophy to consider how we could ever know whether or not an android is phenomenally conscious.
          • Could it not be a zombie3039?
          • Compare and contrast with Cyborgs3040.
        2. The relevance of Androids to the topic of Personal Identity stems from whether or not Androids would be persons3041.

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having now discussed Thought Experiments in general, we now in our next Chapter turn to the question of Resurrection – the matter that first motivated Locke (and – I suspect – Lynne Rudder Baker and many others) in their discussions of Personal Identity.
Chapter 11: Resurrection3050

Abstract
  1. If mind-body substance dualism is false, and we are identical to human animals, then the only possibility for post-mortem existence is some form of bodily resurrection.
  2. Since the body is destroyed at death, it would seem that any resurrected individual could only be a copy of the original. It might think of itself as the resurrected pre-mortem individual, but it would be wrong.
  3. Consideration of arguments by Peter Van Inwagen in this respect.
  4. This chapter is likely to be controversial, so needs to be very carefully argued, and factually correct concerning what is actually believed by intellectually-aware Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists (other religions are available …), unlike what seems to be the case with most swipes against religion.
  5. It also needs to cover other putative forms of post-mortem survival: I’m considering changing the title to “Life After Death”.

Chapter Introduction
  1. While I wish in this chapter seriously to consider the religious hope of Resurrection, I do not want to get side-tracked onto matters of Scriptural exegesis, or into evidential matters of whether particular resurrections – specifically of Jesus – happened or not. In this regard, I’m interested only in what believers in resurrection take it to be, and whether they provide any detailed metaphysical account of how it is supposed to work.
  2. As in the chapter on Thought Experiments, this chapter is partly aimed at checking how (my version of) Animalism copes with the projected situations. As such, I may extend this to other posited versions of post-mortem survival, though most are ruled out by the essentially physical nature of the human person as proposed by Animalism.
  3. While not wanting to get too far off topic, especially at the end of the thesis, I want to consider some of the ethical consequences of adopting Animalism with – as I have argued – the lack of hope of post-mortem existence. The topic of “Death and Ethics” is already a bit tangential to my thesis, but there’s a set of questions in which I have an interest and on which I wonder whether my views on Personal Identity have anything to say. These two are the most important:-
    • Why is death bad (for the deceased)?, and
    • Can the dead be harmed (assuming they no longer exist)?
  4. So, we start off with a discussion of Death3051, which – like Life (discussed in Chapter 6 – I take to be a biological event (or rather a Process). We touched on Brain Death in Chapter 2. Despite its pragmatic utility (which I suspect is the main motivator for accepting it as a criterion of Death) this idea is rather confused on any Biological View of What We Are.
  5. I will also discuss certain occasional events on the periphery of Death, namely Near Death Experiences3052 and Out of Body Experiences3053. Do these events have anything to say about “where we’re going”, in the first case, or what we are, in the second?
  6. Getting closer to Death itself, I need to discuss Persistent Vegetative States3054. From an Animalist perspective, such persons are not dead – any more than (though this may be more controversial) the brain-dead are dead – but whether they should be kept alive is (I would claim) primarily a pragmatic issue to do with the use of resources, coupled with consideration of what life is like – if there is anything – for those in such a state.
  7. Then we get to the meat of the Chapter – discussion of Life after Death3055. What is it supposed to involve, where is it enjoyed, and how do we get there? Clearly, there are many options. The question is are any of them possible – and, better – actual?
  8. The two options I consider are Resurrection3056 and Reincarnation3057. In both cases, the big question is what makes it the case that the individual Resurrected or Reincarnated is the same individual as the one who died. I suspect ‘nothing’ in the absence of a Soul, though much argumentation is required to reach this conclusion in the face of objections and various suggestions for possible mechanisms.
  9. We discussed Uploading to a Computer as a (bare) possibility for Life after Death in the Previous Chapter.
  10. In this regard, we need to discuss the possible interim states between Death and putative post-mortem survival. I need to discuss Corpses3058, which – in some of the easiest cases – are (supposed to be) the mediators of continuity of identity between Death and Resurrection. Corpses also cause philosophical worries – on many physicalist accounts of Personal Identity – about where they “come from” and whether “we” end up as Corpses.
  11. We need to discuss the possibility of Disembodied Existence3059 (which I imagine is the Interregnum3060 for Reincarnation) together with a reconsideration of Intermittent Objects discussed in Chapter 5.
  12. Finally, we need to reflect on the consequences of Life after Death, which is usually taken to be Immortality3061 (though supporters of the ‘conditional immortality’ position in Christianity have Resurrection followed by destruction for those found unworthy of eternal life).
  13. Before doing so, I will reflect on the supposed difficulty – displayed by Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych3062 – of truly and practically accepting the inevitability of our own deaths, whatever logic and the facts may dictate.
  14. But, is Immortality really something to be desired? Reflection on the Makropulos Case3063 suggests that an infinite life would be unbearably tedious, even though at each possible terminus we might want to live on.

Main Text
  1. Death3064
    1. Death is important to our study because we’re considering our persistence conditions3065, whether we consider ourselves to be
      1. Human Persons3066.
      2. Human Animals3067 (members of the species homo sapiens3068), or
      3. Human Beings3069
      and death would seem to be the terminus of such existence3070.
    2. That this is so has often been resisted, which is why we must consider such matters as:-
      1. Resurrection3071,
      2. Reincarnation3072, and
      3. Disembodied Existence3073.
    3. Death should be considered a biological event, or maybe – better – a process3074. It is the termination of life3075, which is also a biological process, though usually a longer one.
    4. Other forms of – and terminations of – existence3076 may be termed “life” or “death”, but these are metaphorical expressions used by analogy with biological life or death. So, is the resurrection3077 life – if there is one – really “life” or a continued and enhanced form of existence3078? Also, is the “second death” really “death”? I suppose we would allow alternative metabolisms to count as “life3079”, so that an Android3080 that maintained itself might be said to be “alive”; and, consequently, the destruction of such a being might be classified as “death”. A case for this is made in "Lyons (Siobhan) - Death and the Machine: Intersections of Mortality and Robotics".
    5. A particular case of the above is Brain Death3081. It’s a large question for Animalists3082 – and for holders of the Psychological View3083 – whether Brain3084 Death is really death, or whether it is (for holders of the PV3085) the death (or end) of the Person3086.
    6. As a spin-off from the (alleged) Corpse Problem3087 for animalism3088 (see "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern", p. 81 for this objection to animalism3089) we need to discuss the process3090 of dying – the transition from life3091 to death. Just when does death occur (for human animals3092)?
    7. No doubt there is a degree of vagueness3093 here (though ascribing ‘vagueness’ to such a ‘terminal’ event as death seems counter-intuitive).
    8. Consideration of whether we should fear death, or the process3094 of dying, is probably beyond the bounds of this Thesis. However, for a comforting account of the normal process of dying in old age, see this “short” from the BBC: BBC: Dying is not as bad as you think. The author – a medical doctor (Kathryn Mannix – she’s now written "Mannix (Kathryn) - With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well") – talks about the “good death” and the process of dying in your bed being not so scary. The dying drift in and out of consciousness3095 and return from unconsciousness feeling much as after a refreshing sleep, so we know the coma doesn’t feel frightening and isn’t noticed when it happens. The “death rattle” shows just how relaxed you were. Normal dying is a really gentle process.
    9. Would that were the way for all, rather than as the result of a rather painful trauma3096 when you’re not ready to go.
    1. Near Death Experiences3097
      1. NDEs, if they are experiences of anything veridical:-
        1. Offer a serious challenge to those who deny the possibility or actuality of life after death3098,
        2. Appear to offer support for non-physicalist accounts of the mind and
        3. Cause problems for animalists3099 by lending support to alternative accounts of what we are3100 – maybe souls3101.
      2. Most of the phenomena – which I need to document and comment on (see "Wikipedia - Near-death experience") – can probably be explained by the usual “dying brain” / anoxia / endorphins suggestions, though this can be rather facile – partly because not all NDEs are had by those near death3102, but also because the dying brain3103 might not be up to the job of having (and remembering3104) scenes of such alleged clarity. However, see "Jarrett (Christian) - Ketamine trips are uncannily like near-death experiences", which reports on a study that makes a detailed connection between the experiences of Ketamine (and LSD) users and NDE-reports.
      3. I have my doubts about when such experiences actually occur – but the suggestion that they occur when the experiencer is “coming round” doesn’t seem to be popular.
      4. A difficult situation to “explain away” is where the NDE-experiencer claims to see something (while having an Out of Body Experience3105) they could not have seen under normal circumstances.
      5. Further “awkward” cases to dispose of are where experiences analogous to the NDE are had by / shared with friends / relatives of the dying. I presume these accounts should be rejected out of hand, along with all other incredible reports of exotic parapsychological phenomena. The Fenwicks give a sympathetic hearing to (the then) recent results of parapsychological research – but in an undocumented way and showing unawareness that the claims are of slight (though allegedly statistically significant) deviations from chance, not of the exotic phenomena exhibited in the accounts of NDEs. See "Fenwick (Peter) & Fenwick (Elizabeth) - The Truth in the Light: An Investigation of Over 300 Near-Death Experiences", which also rejects the “shoe” case, but for different reasons to that on the Infidels site ("Augustine (Keith) - Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences"): see also OBEs3106.
      6. See "IANDS - Journal of Near-Death Studies". A wealth of material to download for free.
      7. Recently (December 2025) I’ve been challenged to make something of the case of George G. Richie:-
        → "Ritchie (George G.), Sherrill (Elizabeth) - Return from Tomorrow", and
        → "Ritchie (George G.) - Ordered to Return: My Life After Dying"
    2. Out of Body Experiences3107
      1. As is the case with Near Death Experiences3108, which sometimes include them, OBEs offer various challenges to physicalist3109 accounts of the mind3110, and to animalist3111 accounts of what we are3112.
      2. OBEs may or may not be a concomitant of an NDE. They seem sometimes to occur during other crisis times of illness.
      3. An example – see "BBC, Burgess (Gary) - Why do we know so little about ME?" – was given in March 2018 by a reporter suffering from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). He stated quite casually, without any self-consciousness about the prima facie absurdity of his account – “In the middle of a piece about maternity and paternity benefits, during the 6pm news programme, I had the most wonderful sensation. I left my body, was suddenly up in the studio ceiling, and was looking down on myself, the presenters, and all of the camera crew. I was having an out-of-body experience.”
      4. The question is – of course – whether these experiences are of anything outside the mind3113. Do they really prove that something like a soul3114 can wander out of the body3115?
      5. A difficult situation to “explain away” is where the NDE-experiencer claims – as in the example above – to see something (while having an Out of Body Experience) they could not have seen under normal circumstances. The difficulty with evaluating such reports is that they are either vague and unsurprising, or anecdotal and hard to verify – so the presumption is that they aren’t veridical.
      6. There’s a famous “shoe” case where no follow-up seems to have been possible. There’s a (naturally sceptical) page on Infidels.org ("Augustine (Keith) - Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences") which references this “shoe” case amongst others.
      7. The case of our reporter is surprisingly off-hand for such a surprising claim. "Blackmore (Susan) - Beyond the Body" asserts that 10% of people claim to have had OBEs. Maybe most also believe in immaterial souls3116, and think that most other people do likewise. So, they may claim more than they strictly observed as a way of making their experience seem more important than those of rival accounts. Rather than thinking they are distorting the evidence-base for this phenomenon, they may simply take it as a fact, and want to share in the glamour associated with having experienced it. Much like alien abduction.
    3. Persistent Vegetative State3117
      1. For information on what a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) actually is, see for example "Wikipedia - Persistent vegetative state". Note that the Wikipedia article uses the PVS acronym to stand for a Permanent Vegetative State.
      2. It’s never clear whether any such state is permanent, whereas it is clear that it is persistent. In the UK, the state becomes legally “permanent” after 12 months, and the term “continuous” is used in preference to “persistent”.
      3. The medical definition is given there as “A wakeful unconscious state that lasts longer than a few weeks”. Despite the (occasional) wakefulness, there is a “complete lack of cognitive function”.
      4. The interest in the Persistent Vegetative State within the topic of Personal Identity is that when in a PVS the attributes of personhood3118 are not in evidence – and maybe not capable of being evidenced – so that it is possible to argue that the individual3119 in the PVS is no longer a person3120. It thus provides the opportunity to pull apart such prima facie co-referential terms as Human Person3121 and Human Being3122 (or Human Animal3123).
      5. One may wonder why PVS is used in philosophical Thought experiments3124 rather than Coma (a more severe condition). I suppose the issue is that in a PVS the brain-stem3125 is substantially intact (whatever other brain-damage has been incurred), so that no life-support is required other than feeding tubes. In irreversible comas, the brain-stem may be so severely damaged that the basic functions of the organism3126 cannot be carried on without life3127 support. Consequently, there’s no debate whether those in a PVS are animals3128, whereas it might be argued that those on life support in an irreversible coma are not. Hence, while the PVS definitely distinguishes human animals3129 from human persons3130 (according to most definitions), irreversible coma might not.
      6. I had originally put “vegetative functions” (rather than simply “functions”) above, but I’m unconvinced that any activity above cellular level ought to be classed as “vegetative”; but I think the Aristotelian classification is often adopted, where “animal” functions are those involving locomotion and the like, rather than nutrition, respiration, etc.
      7. I have discussed PVSs in my reviews of the following papers, amongst others:-
        → "Baillie (James) - What Am I?",
        → "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood",
        → "Fine (Kit) - The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter",
        → "Olson (Eric) - Precis of 'The Human Animal'", and
        → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?"
  2. Life After Death3131
    1. Here we must discuss possible ways in which post-mortem3132 survival3133 might be actualised, namely:-
      1. Resurrection3134,
      2. Reincarnation3135, or
      3. Immortality3136 of the Soul3137.
    2. To this list might be added the collection of hopeful possibilities expected by the Transhumanists3138.
    3. We will discuss here broad issues rather than the specifics of the particular options.
    4. We need to discuss whether life3139 after death3140 – in the sense of eternal, or at least unending, life – is to be desired, though this can mostly be hived off to the Makropulos Case3141.
    5. I’m not interested in cases of resuscitation, which are commonplace these days. The paradigm cases I’m interested in are after the total – or near-total – destruction of the body3142.
    6. Resuscitation is probably best dealt with under the head of Near Death Experiences3143, but see
      1. "Moody (Raymond A.) - Life After Life", and
      2. "Moody (Raymond A.) - The Light Beyond".
    7. Mark Johnston thinks (in "Johnston (Mark) - Surviving Death") that there’s a forensic3144 need for post-mortem survival3145 of some sort, as otherwise there’s no incentive to be good, and hopes to provide it by a radical redefinition of what the person3146 is. But this strikes me as changing the subject.
    8. "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death" is a comprehensive sceptical attack on the possibility of post mortem survival.
    1. Resurrection3147
      1. Belief in a resurrection to paradise has occasionally pernicious effects and is also important to millions of non-explosive Americans. Consequently, the metaphysical3148 possibility3149 of the resurrection of beings like us3150 is very important.
      2. This Thesis will aim to prove that resurrection requires substance dualism3151.
      3. I will need to ensure I understand just what is believed by intellectually-respectable Jews, Christians and Muslims (though the topical believers are not amongst the ranks of the intellectually-respectable).
      4. Some discussion will be had about the orthodox Christian view being that there is no continuity of matter3152 (the conundrum about the person consumed by cannibals was early recognised), and that the resurrection body3153 is said to be in some sense a “spiritual” body.
      5. The locus classicus for the canonical Christian account of resurrection is in St. Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, on which I’m preparing a commentary3154.
      6. A good place to start for an understanding of what resurrection meant to Christians prior to the modern era is "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336".
      7. The best place to start evaluating contemporary Christian philosophical views on the metaphysical possibility of resurrection is "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?".
      8. One thing that strikes me is that the resurrection of Christ, taken to be the guarantee of our own resurrection, is no such thing in the sense of “showing it can be done”. The physical3155 and metaphysical issues in resurrecting Jesus (or Lazarus, or Jairus’s daughter, or any recently-deceased3156 person whose body3157 is substantially intact) are much less than in the case of those whose bodies have been destroyed. Indeed, it might one day be possible3158 to resurrect the recently-deceased3159 by way of microscopic repair; at least this seems conceivable, whereas the resurrection of a human being whose body has become dispersed and whose parts have been recycled doesn’t even seem to make sense (on a materialist3160 account of what we human persons3161 are).
    2. Reincarnation3162
      1. "Perrett (Roy W.) - Rebirth" makes a case for the metaphysical coherence of the traditional Indian account of rebirth – preferring the term “Rebirth” to “Reincarnation” because Buddhists deny the existence of an eternal Soul3163, which may be presupposed by the concept of Reincarnation.
      2. My intuition3164 is that – as well as doubts about its actual occurrence – Reincarnation suffers from even more philosophical problems from the perspective of personal identity than does resurrection itself.
      3. However, I’m substantially ignorant of the detailed philosophy and theology underpinning these ideas, though have read the rebuttal "Edwards (Paul) - Reincarnation: A Critical Examination".
      4. The topic is addressed negatively in the following works:-
        → "Edwards (Paul) - Reincarnation: A Critical Examination",
        → "Angel (Leonard) - Is There Adequate Empirical Evidence for Reincarnation? An Analysis of Ian Stevenson’s Work",
        → "Ransom (Champe) - A Critique of Ian Stevenson’s Rebirth Research",
        → "Smythe (Ingrid Hansen) - Objections to Karma and Rebirth: An Introduction", and maybe
        → "Penelhum (Terence) - 'Reincarnation'".
      5. I have only just bought – and therefore haven’t read – "Stevenson (Ian) - Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation", much ridiculed by Edwards and others.
  3. Interim States
    1. Corpses3165
      1. The “Corpse Problem”
        • Corpses are troublesome3166 for animalism3167, which alleges (correctly in my view) that corpses are not animals3168.
        • The claim is that, at death3169, something ontologically3170 new comes on the scene – because a corpse has different persistence3171 conditions3172 (those of masses of matter3173) to those of organisms3174.
        • Some philosophers – eg. Fred Feldman, in "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death" – disagree. Feldman claims that we survive3175 death3176, but – rather disappointingly – as a corpse, which solves the “corpse problem”, but at the cost – most likely – of saying that we are bodies3177 rather than organisms3178.
        • The problem if we don’t survive death as our corpses – it is said – is to answer the question where the corpse comes from, and to answer the objection that if it was there all along – as a “corpse-to-be” – then we have a situation where we have two things of different sorts3179 in the same place3180 at the same time.
        • If this is taken seriously, then it can be used against the form of the animalist’s “too many thinkers3181” argument.
        • I’m willing to accept that this “thinking animal” argument is unsound. However, just how the analogy would work for the “corpse-to-be” needs to be spelled out. The corpse has the persistence conditions3182 of a mass of matter3183. What are the persistence conditions3184 of the “corpse-to-be”? If they are those of an organism3185, then the corpse-to-be cannot be the same individual3186 as the corpse. The Constitution View3187 might be happy with this situation, promoting the idea that persons are constitute by bodies3188 (rather than organisms) but what about Animalism?
        • I think the issue is again a parallelism in argumentation (the fetus problem for the CV versus the corpse problem for Animalism). We don’t need to follow this argumentative line.
      2. Resurrection
        • Corpses are probably also important for most Christian materialists3189 who hope for some form of resurrection3190.
        • If there is a corpse to be resurrected3191, it is easier to see how identity is preserved than if we have total destruction. This is obviously so in the case of resuscitation, but even where we have a real case of death3192 – not just clinical death, or brain death3193, but real death with a bit of mouldering – there is some physical thing that is responsible for preserving identity.
    2. Disembodied Existence3194
      1. As an Animalist3195, I don’t hold out much hope for disembodied existence for such beings as ourselves3196.
      2. It is true that most people, most of the time, seem to have thought it possible – or even certain. Presumably it is closely related to the view that we are – or at least have – immortal3197 souls3198 that survive the death3199 of our bodies3200. Maybe there are alternative “possibilities” to explain the origins of the belief. But there are worries whether disembodied existence is even coherent for concrete particulars.
      3. Note that “disembodied” is sometimes used for “disembodied brains”. Since the brain3201 is part of the body3202, I cover such possibilities under Brains In Vats3203.
      4. There is some overlap between this topic and at least one topic in Transhumanism3204. The idea behind Uploading3205 seems to be that we are “patterns in information3206 space” (Andy Clark) and these “patterns” could – in principle – be uploaded3207 to a computer3208. The entities resulting from such uploads would appear to be disembodied, at least if their experience (assuming that they are conscious3209) is of having simulated bodies3210 they don’t really have, as in The Matrix. But, all this illusion aside, are these minds3211 actually disembodied, or are their “bodies3212” (parts of) the computer3213 that “runs” them?
    3. Interregnum3214
      1. This is a term of art for the (supposed) period between death3215 and reincarnation3216, of which this is a sub-topic. I think the term is due to Paul Edwards.
      2. The problem with this period – whatever it is called – is that it may seem to imply intermittent existence3217.
      3. Alternatively, it has to rely on some alternative substrate for the existence3218 of which there is little or no evidence.
      4. The obvious candidate is a substantial soul3219. However, it seems that orthodox Hinduism thinks of a rather tenuous “astral body” as providing the link.
      5. That said, the same issue arises for any post-mortem survival3220 that is alleged to follow the total destruction of the body3221. At least reincarnation3222 has some tenuous evidence in its favour, whereas there are – as far as I’m aware – no claimed occurrences of the resurrection3223 of a totally-destroyed body3224.
      6. I suppose that theists might claim that the information3225 that constitutes3226 a person3227 is held in the mind of God during the interregnum.
  4. Immortality3228
    1. In the Biblical Christian tradition, God is the only being with natural immortality (see 1 Timothy 6:16 “God … who alone is immortal”, NIV), but Plato (and his Platonising Christian followers) had it that the (human) soul3229 is also naturally immortal. The Biblical view – at least on some interpretations – is rather that God gives or denies immortality to whoever he wishes (and there is consequently no need to eternally roast the immortal souls of the wicked).
    2. St. Paul has it that “the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53, NIV). This is in the context of the resurrection3230 of the just dead3231 (or the metamorphosis3232 of the just living) at the return of Christ.
    3. In the context of identity theory, it is doubtful whether the very same thing can at one time be perishable and at another time immortal, because a thing’s persistence conditions3233 are taken to be essential3234 properties3235 of the sort3236 it is, and a single thing cannot change sort3237,3238.
    4. As such, (as "Johnston (Mark) - Surviving Death" notes), natural immortality of the soul3239 is the only hope for post-mortem survival3240. But this hope is itself dashed by the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of the substantial3241 soul3242, immortal or otherwise.
    5. It does seem incongruous to talk about post-mortem immortality – how can something that has died be immortal? The idea, no doubt, is that it is the body3243 that the soul3244 occupied that was mortal. Hence, the soul3245 needs a new immortal body3246 to be clothed with. That seems to be the Pauline picture, though debated by the “Conditional Immortality” people.
    6. The Transhumanists3247 hope that Uploading3248 to a computer3249 might lead to indefinitely extended life3250, though this is hardly immortality. Indefinite identity-preserving life extensions might be possible using repair-microbots.
    7. In all this, I’m talking about the persistence of the individual3251. I’m not talking about “immortality” in the sense of “undying fame”. As Woody Allen quipped (I’m not sure where this is from, but see Woody Allen: Immortality) – “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment”.
    8. "Williams (Bernard) - The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality" argues that we wouldn’t even want immortality, but I’m not convinced. However, a bad immortality – uploading3252 to an evil computer3253, for instance – would be worse than no immortality, though some (eg. Miguel De Unamuno) are not even convinced of that. This topic is covered further under the Makropulos Case3254.
    9. Of course, if animalism3255 is the correct account of personal identity, immortality is not on offer, though if the transhumanists3256 succeed, and an alternative account of personal identity is correct, an indefinite extension of life might be possible.
    1. Ivan Ilych3257
      1. Tolstoy’s short novella "Tolstoy (Leo) - The Death of Ivan Ilyich" tends to feature in discussions on the philosophy of death3258.
      2. I first came upon it via "Kagan (Shelly) - The nature of death (continued); Believing you will die". The contention in Kagan’s lecture was that Tolstoy’s novella taught that no-one really expects to die, an idea Kagan rejects.
      3. My own view is that this isn’t really what the novella is about, but is rather about how we should live our lives – or at least how we should not live them.
      4. In this Note, I intend to consider two main questions:-
        1. Does Tolstoy suggest that no-one really expects to die?
        2. What is the aim of the novella?
      5. As I’m not a literary critic, I’ll be somewhat briefer with regards to the second question than Tolstoy’s work deserves.
      6. The explicit passage on the expectation of death is where Ivan – on hearing that he is about to die – observes that the syllogism beginning “all men are mortal” applies to “all men”, but not specifically to him.
      7. Of course, no-one really believes they are immortal3259 (or, at least, that they are not going to die) but the reality of personal death3260 is pushed so far into the background that it is hardly taken into account in our plans (other than in the making of rather impersonal provisions), until it is just around the corner. Our plans always extend infinitely on, without the explicit acknowledgement until the last possible minute that we – and more urgently our faculties – will not continue on for ever, and that we need to eke out our time more carefully.
      8. No doubt this is especially true of the young, but I can vouch for the fact that it’s still true of at least one person aged 623261.
    2. Makropulos Case3262
      1. This discussion is slightly off-topic, in that the focus isn’t on whether there is, in fact, any such thing as immortality3263 (for human beings3264).
      2. Rather, it is whether immortality – again for embodied human beings – would be desirable (or, indeed, tolerable).
      3. This discussion will investigate the controversy started in 1973 by "Williams (Bernard) - The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality".
      4. Williams’s conclusion – needless to say – is that immortality is not tolerable, though his reasoning is rather subtle.
      5. Thoughts on the value – or disvalue – of immortality3265 tie in with the evil – or lack of evil – of death3266. Some discussions of the disvalue of death mention the Makropulos Case in that regard.
      6. Ultimately, all discussion of the evils of death3267 will fall under this Note.
      7. Since animalism3268 strongly implies that “death is the end of us”, this may be important.

Concluding Remarks
  1. Having now discussed everything on our Agenda, we now in our next Chapter make our conclusions.
Chapter 12: Conclusion3269

Abstract
  1. This final Chapter tries to summarise the arguments of this Thesis.
  2. It is based on – indeed currently identical to – my Current Stance3270, though it will diverge from it when I focus it on the actual argument form of the Thesis.

Chapter Introduction
  1. This Chapter summarises the claims and arguments of the Thesis, namely that:-
  2. We are human animals,
  3. Human persons fall under phase sortals of the concept HUMAN ANIMAL,
  4. The person is inseparable from the animal,
  5. The animal is utterly destroyed at death,
  6. Substance dualism is false, and
  7. Consequently (given the sort of thing we are) resurrection or any other post-mortem survival is impossible for us.

Main Text
  1. What are we3271? This is one of the most important questions we need to ask ourselves. Just what kind of things are we? The question is closely related to a similar one: just what sort of adventures can individuals such as ourselves survive? This second question sheds light on the first for if there are certain contingencies that we think we would – or would not – survive, when a typical member of that kind would not – or would – survive, then that kind may not represent what we really think we are. Of course, we might be wrong in our estimations, but at least this will raise the question.
  2. Why is this not a trivial question? If we look at a dog, say, and ask what it is, the answer to such a question is obvious – it’s a dog! It may be our pet – with a name – a particular individual3272, but when we ask what kind3273 of thing it is, it’s a member of the species canis lupus. So, when we look at ourselves, the obvious answer is that we are human beings3274 – specifically human animals, members of the species homo sapiens3275. That is the answer posited by the Animalists3276, amongst whose number – broadly speaking – I place myself, who accept the biological view3277 of personal identity.
  3. If this is true, then our persistence conditions3278 – the necessary and sufficient conditions for us to continue in existence – are the same as those of other animals3279 – the great apes, say, under which category we fall, biologically speaking. Why is this not the end of the story? Well, this is because – despite being a species of great ape – human beings are special in that we have enhanced cognitive capacities. We are morally accountable. In sum, we are persons3280, and have a “first person perspective3281” (FPP) on the world – something most philosophers deny to other animals – and care about our futures3282 and – wantons3283 apart – agonise over our past mistakes. Lynne Rudder Baker claims this perspective makes an ontological3284 difference, rather than being – as I think – a special property of human beings that may or may not be had in particular cases. Baker3285 accuses the animalists of not taking persons seriously3286. I might just note that there’s a facile and confusing answer to what we are, that is “people”. You may have noticed that I used the technical term “persons” as the plural of “person”. Some philosophers annoyingly use the term “people”, but this confuses the issue. When we say there are ten people in the room, while it is clear in normal circumstances what we mean – dogs don’t count, for instance – but if there happened to be a Klingon and a visiting angel, would they count as people or not? They are – we may suppose – persons, but they are not human persons3287
  4. Since at least John Locke, this fact of our mental exceptionalism has tempted philosophers to say that it’s our psychological continuity3288 that is more important for our identity-preservation than our physical continuity3289. This view still has its supporters – not only for those such as Dean Zimmerman and Richard Swinburne who believe in immaterial souls3290 – but for the many who think that psychological continuity and connectedness3291 is constitutive of the identity of persons. It is also implicit in the ideas of the Transhumanists3292 who think that – come the Singularity3293 – we might be capable of being uploaded3294 to computers3295 and thereby live almost forever3296.
  5. Before proceeding further we have to say something brief and sketchy about identity and persistence3297. “Identity” – in the sense of “numerical identity3298” – is a relation a thing holds to itself and to nothing else. A is identical to B if A and B are the very same thing. It is an equivalence relation, being transitive, reflexive and idempotent; and, many of the sticking points in the philosophy of personal identity arise from this fact.
    1. It has nothing to do with “identity” as a sociological concept such as national identity, sexual identity or identification with a particular group.
    2. Also, John may be said “not to be the same person” since he took heroin, but he is still John and still the same individual; it’s just that his personality3299 has changed.
    3. It also has nothing to do with “narrative identity3300” which is the story we tell about ourselves in an attempt to make sense of our lives.
    4. Finally, it has nothing to do with “exact similarity3301”: my television may be “identical” to yours, but that doesn’t mean I can have yours if mine breaks. They are – or were, when manufactured – exactly similar, but are distinct.
  6. “Persisting” is what a thing does in continuing in existence. As we noted above, there are what are called “persistence conditions” – specific to a kind of thing – that set out what vicissitudes a thing can survive if it is to remain that very same thing. There are sometimes hard cases, and there can seem sometimes that there is an element of convention3302: is a particular club still the same clubs after it has lost all its original members, changed its name, and so on? But we can’t accept that our own existence is a matter of convention, though this could seem the case with the once-dominant psychological view3303 of personal identity: just how much psychological connection could I lose with my former self – philosophers wondered – and still be me? However, things seem simpler and more objective for organisms, which persist despite exchanging material with the environment and changing many of their properties3304, provided they are caught up in a complex and hopefully long drawn-out event (or process) known as a “life3305”.
  7. In the above I have assumed at least three things.
    1. Firstly, that “things” – or at least some things – exist. There’s a philosophical position known as “Process Metaphysics3306” (or “Naturalised Metaphysics”) that gives the focus to process rather than ontology, particularly in the case of organisms. I’m not sure how fatal this is to my approach, since I admit that animals are individuated by their lives, which are processes.
    2. Secondly, that we exist. This would seem hardly worth mentioning, other than that certain philosophers – nihilists3307 – have argued that we (whatever we are) or – for similar reasons – various common things like hands – don’t exist.
    3. Finally, I assume that things do indeed persist, at least some of the time.
    I can’t really address these foundational issues here, but will just say a few words on the second issue. There are a lot of interconnected issues to do with the philosophy of time and change, in particular the problem of temporary intrinsics3308. How can the leaf that was green yesterday be the same leaf if it is brown today? How can the old bald bloke I am today be the same individual as the hirsute teenager all those years ago?
    1. Some philosophers – the exdurantists3309 – say that there’s no relation of identity across time, but merely a weaker counterpart relation analogous to that between an individual and its counterpart in another possible world.
    2. Others – in particular Derek Parfit3310 – have said that even if there is identity across time, it’s not what matters3311.
    In what follows, I assume that we exist and that we continue to exist self-identically across time and that this identity relation is important. We could not carry on our lives without these assumptions even if – philosophically-speaking – they were false; but I think they are true: I don’t want to distinguish the “strict and philosophical” from the “loose and popular” senses of identity first raised by Joseph Butler. I also assume the standard logic of identity3312 and reject all heretical accounts that are invented from time to time as radical solutions to the difficult questions of persistence. In particular, I reject the view – known as occasional identity3313 that – while (say) I am not identical to my younger self – yet I was that person, just not any more.
  8. Now back to the main thread. Most Anglophone philosophers these days are physicalists3314 (though maybe most non-philosophers are unreflective dualists3315). This gives physicalist philosophers a problem if they have hopes of post-mortem3316 survival3317. If the human organism is totally destroyed – eg. by cremation, explosion, or eating of worms – just how does the very same individual get from this life to the next3318? Christian Materialists3319 have had a go at thinking this through, and acknowledge the difficulties. Peter Van Inwagen attempted to show that it is at least logically possible by having God snatch away the dying body immediately pre-mortem, replacing it with a simulacrum. Dean Zimmerman – while himself a dualist – has suggested a “falling elevator” model to help out his materialist friends, whereby there is immanent causation3320 (by some unknown natural or supernatural process) between the dying body and the resurrection3321 one so that the dying individual escapes in the nick of time to the next world without loss of numerical identity3322. Others claim that God’s omnipotence is sufficient and is sovereign even over the laws of logic, so that problems raised by identity being an equivalence relation can be overcome by brute force. Maybe so, but without the constraints of logical possibility3323, we have no way of arguing the matter, so let’s not bother.
  9. However, most Christian materialists prefer an alternative. They recognise that getting from here to the next world with temporal or spatial gaps raises difficult questions as to whether the numerical identity of the individual is preserved but adopt an alternative solution – the Constitution View3324. On this thesis, the person is distinct from the human animal – “just as” the statue3325 is distinct from its constituting3326 marble – so that the very same person – tagged by the unique “first person perspective” noted above – can be constituted first by its earthly body, and subsequently by its heavenly one.
  10. Some Animalists have what they think of as a knock-down argument against the Constitution View. Eric Olson calls it the “Thinking Animal3327” argument. If the person and the animal are distinct things, albeit co-located, there are too many thinkers – because the animal can certainly think, as can the person, so we have two thinkers where we thought we had one – which is one problem; and there’s another – how do we know which we are, the person or the animal? I’m not impressed by this argument. There are several “multiple occupancy” conundrums that have been claimed at one time or another to deny the existence of things we are sure do exist. Dion and Theon3328, Tib and Tibbles3329, the “problem of the many3330” and so on. We just need to sort out our rules for counting. Also, the whole question of three- versus four-dimensionalism3331 (4D) – whether a persisting thing is wholly present at a time – or whether only a temporal part is present, the thing as a whole being a “space-time worm” – bears on the question of counting. If different things can share stages – say the person and the human animal, or the statue and the clay – then we have to be careful how we count. In the case of a future fission3332 – whereby two space-time worms share their past stages, but will ultimately diverge – we might not know how many to count at a time, but this will often not matter for practical purposes.
  11. I think the idea of a first-person perspective is important. It is this that provides the pull against animalism3333 when linked to various thought experiments3334 (TEs) that we’ll come on to presently. However, I still don’t like the Constitution View3335. My objection is that the FPP is a property of something else – like a smile – in this case of a human animal, though the smile might belong to a cat. You can’t take the very same smile from one cat and place on another (it would be at best an exactly similar smile) – let alone have a disembodied smile like that of the Cheshire Cat. Similarly, you can’t take the very same FPP from one body and plop it onto another. True, it might be a qualitatively exactly similar FPP, but not the same one. What’s to stop that FPP being plopped on several resurrection bodies? Which would be numerically identical to me, given that they can’t all be, in the absence of 4D?
  12. What are the temptations for not sticking with the animalist approach – which ought these days to be the default position in the absence of anything more compelling? As noted, the apparent lack of rational expectation of an afterlife is one incentive to look elsewhere, so “elsewhere” is a favourite for those who can’t bear the thought of their selves3336 expiring with their bodies3337. We’ve noted the Christian dualists and materialists, but what about the Transhumanists? There’s the relatively metaphysically uninteresting case of cryoscopy followed by repair and resuscitation; there we have material continuity, and no possibility of reduplication3338, though some might claim there is too much outside interference for identity to be preserved. But, what about the “hope” of “you” being uploaded to a computer? There seems to be an idea about that “we” are really software (or data), when we are clearly material beings. If we are software, it is said, then we might “run” on different hardware. I have two issues with this, apart from the immense technical obstacles to be overcome both in “scanning” the “real you” and providing a computer of sufficient power to run your program and the virtual world for you to experience, Matrix-like.
    1. Firstly, what sort of thing is a program? It’s an interesting question whether a program has persistence conditions. Is Windows 10 the same program as Windows 0? Whatever the answer to this question is, a program would seem to be a kind of universal3339 rather than a particular, and “we” are particulars.
    2. This leads to the second issue – a reduplication objection. Say we developed a sophisticated program that could run on an open-ended number of exactly similar robots. No two of these would be numerically identical to one another – they would be distinct, though exactly similar. So, were the program to be a simulation of your brain, it could run – presumably – on an open-ended number of computers – and these computers (or computer partitions) would not be identical to one another, so none of them could be you, as you could only be one of them, and there’s no principled way3340 of saying which. The same objection prevents Star Trek-like teletransportation3341 – were it possible – being identity-preserving. I might also add that no “program” is – in itself – conscious3342, though a machine that runs it might conceivably be. Mind you, there are arguments here as well – originated by John Searle – at least for digital computers.
    Incidentally, the transhumanists seem to imagine unending computer life as a secular heaven, but it could just as easily be a secular hell.
  13. So, I remain wedded to my view that we are human animals with the persistence conditions of such. “Person” is not a substance3343 term, but an honorific that refers to some substance during some periods of its existence when it has the requisite mental and moral properties3344 to qualify. “Person” is a Phase Sortal3345 (like “teacher”) that – in the case of “person” – applies to most humans most of the time, but need not apply to all humans all the time. There are ethical consequences for this view, but they are not as dramatic as is sometimes urged. Non-persons don’t have moral responsibilities, as is already recognised for demented or infant humans, and all non-human animals. The obverse – that persons allegedly have no moral obligations towards non-persons3346 – or that non-persons have no rights – is the sticking point, and ought to be reflected in a more humane treatment of all non-persons rather than that we might contemplate sending human non-persons as well as non-human non-persons to the slaughter-house.
  14. So, what are the problems for animalists3347? There are several. Some – like the so-called “corpse problem3348” (is my corpse me – only dead – if not, where does it come from? It doesn’t have the persistence conditions of an organism) are probably relatively easy to overcome. Recently, I’ve discovered that animalists – like (but for different reasons) those who think we are essentially persons – allegedly have a “fetus problem3349”. Animalists – saying that we are essentially animals – have (it seems) to say that we were once foetuses – which appears to be what our animal once was. But was this fetus once a proper part3350 of its mother? There’s work currently going on to suggest that this is so – and if so, just when did the new human animal come into existence? However, I don’t think any of this seriously threatens animalism. Maybe animalists should have considered the problem more than they have, but animals do come into existence sometime – presumably by the time of birth at the latest – and that’s enough for an animalist.
  15. The real problems for animalism stem from the force of thought experiments such as the “brain transplant3351 intuition”. An animalist seems forced to say that I would not “go with my brain” in the circumstance where my brain is transplanted3352 into another body, when it seems to most people that I would. The alleged reason for this is that at least some animalists consider the brain to be “just another organ” that we might lose like we might lose a kidney, provided the animal is kept alive. Doubts about this have led some to think that we are not “really” whole human animals but proper parts thereof, maybe not brains3353 as such, but brains and a few other bits. This does seem comical. Just how large am I – would I fit into a hat-box, as Olson3354 asks?
  16. My view is as follows. I am currently (thankfully) a whole human animal. My wife worked in the NHS with amputees, and I think it is right to say that they also are whole human animals, though they lack parts that most of us have. No doubt they could lose more parts – and some diabetics sadly do. So, we might view a “brain in a vat3355” – one ready for transplant – as a “maximally mutilated” human animal. Maybe – in the case of a brain transplant – a prior animal has fissioned (divided into two) when the brain is extracted and we now have a case of the fusion3356 of two animals (the brain from one fusing with the body of the other). It might be argued that our identity-logic isn’t quite up to deciding3357 who is who in such circumstances, but the stakes seem high enough to demand an answer, for which read on.
  17. I doubt whether the transhumanist hopes of augmenting our physical or mental attributes by effectively converting us into cyborgs3358 is much of a threat to animalism. We don’t worry about our spectacles or our mobiles phones making us any less mammalian. Closer integration with AI applications is only the next step for the extended mind.
  18. So, is there any purchase in thought experiments that putatively have my first person perspective persisting in cases where there is no identity preservation. Could it be the case that “it seems to me” that I have survived some vicissitude – a cerebrum3359 transplant, say – but I am mistaken? Some philosophers argue that this happens every night – I go to sleep3360, and when I wake up I just assume that I am identical to the individual who got into bed, but how do I know? I might be intellectually convinced by third parties – those other than the sleeper and the waker – one way or another, but how would this affect how it seems to me? Take the teletranportation case. Because of the reduplication objection (unless we are 4-dimensionalists), we should say that numerical identity is not preserved. But – if the technology works, and I am the teletransportee – the individual (or 77 duplicates) would (all) wake up convinced they were me, yet they must be deceived. Thankfully, reduplication is not a problem for whole-brain transplants, but it is for idempotent half-brain transplants, though I think the identity problem there occurs during the fissioning process rather than when the half-brains are implanted.
  19. I continue to think that there is a distinction to be made between forward and backward psychological continuity3361, though I don’t see how third parties – or even first or second parties – could tell the difference. It makes all the difference to me if I go to sleep and someone else wakes up thinking they are me – as against the normal case where I go to sleep and I wake up. In the former case – for me – there’s just an endless nothingness, of which I know nothing, while in the latter case my experiential life carries on. However, backward psychological continuity – what it feels like looking back – is the same for a survivor and one who only thinks he’s survived.
  20. In the case of the split brain transplant, however, how is it all supposed to work, experientially? Neurosurgery is – even today – carried out on substantially conscious patients, as that way there’s a quick feedback loop to tell the surgeon whether he’s destroying any important areas of cognitive function. What would it be like to “fission”? Maybe I lack the imagination, but it seems to me that my First Person Perspective would go along with whatever was the dominant hemisphere, assuming this “seat of consciousness” is initially located in one hemisphere or the other. If it is not, then it would presumably be destroyed and two new ones would be created in this miracle operation. Either way, this would sit comfortably with the logic of identity which would not be violated, as at most one of the recipients would be me. I can imagine being ripped apart psychologically, but I can’t imagine going two ways.
  21. Of course, there are physical and metaphysical issues with the whole idea of brain transplants – the physical structure of the brain3362 reflects “its” body, and mental faculties are not fully localised, so it’s not just the immensely complex task of “wiring up” the brain to its new body that presents a challenge. Half-brain transplants are even more problematical as in the TEs the brain stem is not split, but only the cerebra are supposed to be transplanted. It’s not clear to me whether there is pervasive confusion here and that these thought experiments are underspecified to the degree of incoherence. Some philosophers – eg. Kathleen Wilkes – think TEs are unhelpful in the philosophy of personal identity, and that our concepts are not up to being probed in this way. I’m not so sure – the TEs are about us, not our concepts3363.
  22. There is finally the question whether there is any such thing as “the Self”, which is what is supposed to have this FPP. Some contemporary philosophers argue that the Self is an illusion that the brain generates. Others – such as David Hume – have argued; and others – such as Galen Strawson – do argue that when they introspect they find no evidence of a persisting Self. I don’t know where they are coming from, as I can’t think of anything more certain. But a Buddhist-inspired3364 “no-self” view makes the animalist’s task easier, if maybe less interesting.
Appendix: Outstanding Tasks
Actions – Textual / Research


In-Page Footnotes

Footnote 4: Footnote 247: Footnote 249: Footnote 274: Footnote 276: Key texts include:-
  1. "Baillie (James) - Problems in Personal Identity"
  2. "Haslanger (Sally) & Kurtz (Roxanne), Eds. - Persistence : Contemporary Readings"
  3. "Hirsch (Eli) - The Concept of Identity"
  4. "Kolak (Daniel) & Martin (Raymond), Eds. - Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues"
  5. "Martin (Raymond) & Barresi (John), Eds. - Personal Identity"
  6. "Munitz (Milton) - Identity and Individuation"
  7. "Noonan (Harold) - Personal Identity"
  8. "Noonan (Harold), Ed. - Identity"
  9. "Noonan (Harold), Ed. - Personal Identity (Readings)"
  10. "Paul (Ellen), Miller (Fred) & Paul (Jeffrey), Eds. - Personal Identity"
  11. "Perry (John) - Identity, Personal Identity and the Self"
  12. "Perry (John), Ed. - Personal Identity"
  13. "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg), Ed. - The Identities of Persons"
  14. "Shoemaker (Sydney) & Swinburne (Richard) - Personal Identity"
Footnote 300:
  1. "Todman (Theo) - Locke on Personal Identity".
  2. The literature on Locke – even restricted to this topic – is vast.
  3. We start from "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity", of course.
  4. Then "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity".
Footnote 377:
  1. Note, however, that for Lynne Rudder Baker the FPP is bound to her concept of a Person. The ‘P’ is ontological rather than merely grammatical.
  2. So, for her, non-persons may have a window on the world, but not a FPP.
Footnote 405:
  1. I want to make this more than just an Intuition, one that many – but by no means all – philosophers share.
  2. See "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?".
Footnote 408:
  1. On an endurantist account of persistence.
  2. I treat of the distinction between endurantism and perdurantism in Chapter5: Persistence and Time.
Footnote 409:
  1. I don’t think this – ‘duplicating’ – is here a tendentious term.
  2. The intended use of the machine is to produce an exact copy without destroying the original.
  3. So, this isn’t the same as Dennett’s “Telecloning” machine in "Dennett (Daniel) - The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul: Introduction", where the destruction of the original is intended, yet (despite the ‘cloning’ label) the machine is used as a means of transport.
  4. The Teletransportation TE is covered in detail in Chapter10: Thought Experiments.
Footnote 427: In "Clark (Andy) & Kuhn (Robert Lawrence) - Aeon: Video - Andy Clark - Virtual immortality".

Footnote 454:
  1. In "Snowdon (Paul) - The Self and Personal Identity".
Footnote 477:
  1. In Paul Broks’s contribution to "Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules) - Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?".
Footnote 482:
  1. “To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”
    → Hamlet, Act-III, Scene-I, Lines 66-68
Footnote 485: Footnote 640: According to most interpreters.

Footnote 646:
  1. Though the Note on Siliconisation focuses on the replacement of neural organic matter by silicon, the general idea could (more easily, as the technology is already partly there) be extended to the replacement of other body parts.
Footnote 658:
  1. This is to get round the “Corpse Problem” noted previously.
Footnote 681:
  1. Where? I need to check this out.
Footnote 683:
  1. I need to check this.
  2. The idea is that in some lower animals, regulation is distributed throughout the body, with the brain playing a less central role.
  3. This is true of the octopus – a highly intelligent animal – with many neurones distributed throughout its tentacles.
  4. The same is also true (though to a lesser extent) of human animals – the PNS undertakes various co-ordinating functions, which is why brain-transplant TEs are somewhat simplistic.
  5. However, maybe I need to distinguish between different neural functions – regulation, coordination, sensation, etc.
Footnote 699:
  1. Hasn’t someone said this? Who? Wiggins?
  2. This is not to be confused with there being no criteria for identity – ie. for the relation itself – which is due to Merricks (eg. in "Merricks (Trenton) - There Are No Criteria For Identity Over Time").
Footnote 701:
  1. And, of course, “X and Y are both persons”, to cover the case where the brain is insufficient to support the property of personhood.
Footnote 708:
  1. Much of this discussion has empirical aspects to it, and depends on the capabilities of real brains – though we might get into the choppy waters of more intricate TEs, and wonder what might be the case if the biology went differently – but then we would most likely not be talking about our identity criteria, but of some other being.
Footnote 710:
  1. These worries about fission are essentially set to rest by adopting a perdurantist account of persistence.
  2. But, some consider the costs (mainly semantic, I think) of adopting this approach are too great.
Footnote 727:
  1. Or – if not software as such – at least an implementation of a computer program running on appropriate hardware; see subsequent discussion
Footnote 758:
  1. I wrote a pre-submitted essay for my BA Finals “What is Descartes’s argument for the ‘real distinction’ between mind and body? Is it a good one?”.
Footnote 774:
  1. There is no unanimity on what a person is; but it will be worth taking candidate definitions and see whether we would be willing to assign selfhood to some non-persons.
Footnote 778:
  1. We are referred to "Seth (Anil Kumar) - Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self".
Footnote 779:
  1. We are referred to "Ehrsson (H. Henrik) - The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences".
Footnote 780:
  1. We are referred to "Haggard (Patrick) - Human volition: towards a neuroscience of will".
Footnote 782:
  1. We are referred to "Frith (Christopher D.) & Frith (Uta) - Mechanisms of Social Cognition".
Footnote 783:
  1. For a recent discussion of this test, and what it does or doesn’t have to say about a sense of self, see "Morell (Virginia) - What do mirror tests test?".
  2. This paper quotes a large number of others that give the history of the test, and which other animals have been said to pass it.
  3. The view of Frans De Waal, and of the paper’s author, is that – whatever the Mirror Test may demonstrate – all animals need a self-concept. This seems like common-sense.
  4. It’s also suggested that evolutionary considerations imply a gradualist – rather than binary – approach to self-conception.
Footnote 795:
  1. See her "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism".
Footnote 802:
  1. Or, rather than “embodied by”, “embodied “as”?
Footnote 804:
  1. For Modularity of Mind, see especially "Fodor (Jerry) - The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology".
Footnote 841:
  1. Of course, this is disputed – and I agree with the objections.
  2. Animals that pass the mirror test are usually assumed to have at least a rudimentary sense of self.
  3. See "Desmond (Adrian) - The Ape's Reflexion".
Footnote 854:
  1. Quotation from the cover blurb of "Preyer (Gerhard) & Siebelt (Frank) - Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis".
Footnote 863:
  1. This relates the the problem of other minds.
  2. See "Avramides (Anita) - Other Minds".
Footnote 899: See the introduction to "Unger (Peter) - The Mental Problems of the Many" (2004) for a recantation.

Footnote 910:
  1. See Wikipedia: Succession of the 14th Dalai Lama for a discussion of the succession from 14th to 15th Delai Lama.
Footnote 967:
  1. This is – of course – a tricky area, given the long behaviorist tradition of training pigeons.
Footnote 972:
  1. There is no doubt some truth in this.
  2. However, not all wrong-doers had bad starts in life, and I suspect that many who did would prefer to take the punishment if the alternative is the real loss of freedom in a rehabilitation programme.
  3. Compare the Soviet view that dissidents are insane and need curing.
Footnote 974:
  1. See "Todman (Theo) - Aristotle - Sea Battle".
Footnote 1023:
  1. See in Dennett, and also my main Note on Persons.
Footnote 1029:
  1. See "Todman (Theo) - Review - Frankfurt - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person".
Footnote 1073:
  1. No doubt if this fanciful event could be planned or anticipated we would count differently.
Footnote 1095:
  1. Mark Johnston: see:-
    → "Johnston (Mark) - Personites, Maximality and Ontological Trash", and
    → "Johnston (Mark) - The Personite Problem: Should Practical Reason Be Tabled?".
  2. I need to chase up the references in Olson.
Footnote 1111:
  1. For my commentary on this, see "Todman (Theo) - Review - Wong - Relativism".
Footnote 1163:
  1. No doubt there’s a convention as to which is the “first” and which is the “second” of Leibniz’s Laws, but they are often confusingly combined into one law with two parts.
Footnote 1169:
  1. Not that Eric Olson is the inventor or even the primary exponent of the concept of numerical identity,
  2. Nor that Marya Schechtman is not a philosopher!
Footnote 1203:
  1. I need to consider more carefully what change, and how rapid a change, a thing can undergo and remain the same thing.
  2. This will be discussed in the next Chapter.
Footnote 1215:
  1. Or at least was thereby brought to my attention as an undergraduate.
Footnote 1282:
  1. This may be a difficult task, but it is important and the promise needs to be made good.
  2. The problem is doubtless not with the form of the argument, but with its application.
Footnote 1396:
  1. There’s an extensive literature on this topic, stemming from Richard Dawkins, which I’ll not pursue here.
  2. There’s a claim in "Harari (Yuval Noah) - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" that the cohesive power of human societies and hence the rise of homo sapiens as a species is down to our shared belief in “fictions”.
  3. Yuval Noah Harari’s use of “fiction” is pejorative and non-standard, as he uses it for anything from religious beliefs to limited companies.
  4. Even those philosophers of religion who use the term “myths” for religious beliefs are keen to assert that “myth” does not men “fiction”, even though some myths are fictions as well.
Footnote 1599:
  1. In "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History - A Philosophical Inquiry with Dr Sophie Botros", section on Time.
Footnote 1630: See Wikipedia: Philosophical Presentism.

Footnote 1631: See Wikipedia: Eternalism (Philosophy of Time).

Footnote 1632: See Wikipedia: Growing Block Universe.

Footnote 1633: See Wikipedia: Moving spotlight theory of time.

Footnote 1634:
  1. I’m warned by a philosopher-friend that “I would beware of stating anything about modern physics as though it were set in stone – have a look at the work of Lee Smolin. There are many contradictions which still need resolution. ”
  2. But, serendipitously, I came across the following passage in Aeon: Baggott - But is it science? (sub-titled “Theoretical physicists who say the multiverse exists set a dangerous precedent: science based on zero empirical evidence”), which shows how embedded the theories of Reativity are in our everyday lives, unbeknownst to the vast majority of us:
      Successful theories are essential to this progress. When you use Google Maps on your smartphone, you draw on a network of satellites orbiting Earth at 20,000 kilometres, of which four are needed for the system to work, and between six and 10 are ‘visible’ from your location at any time. Each of these satellites carries a miniaturised atomic clock, and transmits precise timing and position data to your device that allow you to pinpoint your location and identify the fastest route to the pub. But without corrections based on Albert Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, the Global Positioning System would accumulate clock errors, leading to position errors of up to 11 kilometres per day. Without these rather abstract and esoteric – but nevertheless highly successful – theories of physics, after a couple of days you’d have a hard time working out where on Earth you are.
Footnote 1635:
  1. This ‘rant’ was inspired by a first reading of "Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Enquiry".
  2. Of course, the book requires closer consideration and its arguments formally refuted.
  3. For now, see my comments on the transcript of the promotional video"Botros (Sophie) - Truth, Time and History - A Philosophical Inquiry with Dr Sophie Botros".
Footnote 1636:
  1. See, for instance, Barry C. Smith’s analogous argument about the philosophy of the Senses and neuroscience in Aeon: Video - Smith - Aristotle was wrong and so are we: there are far more than five senses.
Footnote 1637:
  1. A GUT … but maybe a ToE is what I mean.
  2. See:-
    → Wikipedia: Grand Unified Theory, and
    → Wikipedia: Theory of everything.
Footnote 1638:
  1. So, if I say “there will be a sea-battle tomorrow”, and that happening is contingent, then this is just a speculation with a greater or lesser probability of truth, though it may subsequently turn out to have been correct or incorrect as the case may be.
Footnote 1709:
  1. Baker’s definition of FPP is very ‘thick’, where ‘first person’ isn’t simply a grammatical term but absorbs the full sense of ‘Person’.
  2. I propose nothing more than a ‘window on the world’ that can be had by non-Persons.
Footnote 1763:
  1. See:-
    → "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal: Introduction", pp. 4-5 and
    → "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal: Alternatives",
    both in "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology".
Footnote 1804:
  1. Like Mozart’s Requiem (Wikipedia: Requiem (Mozart)) or "Wittgenstein (Ludwig) - Philosophical Investigations".
Footnote 1836:
  1. I’m not clear on whether Wiggins is or is not an Animalist.
  2. "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity" has him as a Human Being Theorist.
Footnote 1922:
  1. The evidence for this – by way of self-confession – is in "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity".
Footnote 1924:
  1. David Wiggins is a difficult case, as is discussed at length in "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity".
  2. Wiggins has his own Note later.
Footnote 1953:
  1. See "Frisen (Jonas), Etc. - Retrospective Birth Dating of Cells in Humans" for the argument that cerebral grey-matter retains its carbon atoms from infancy, and hence that neurons are as old as the individual. However, other cells are replaced – sometimes frequently.
Footnote 2118:
  1. This makes it sound as though the CV goes back centuries!
  2. Wasserman uses the term “traditionally” when he probably just means “usually” or “standardly”.
Footnote 2146:
  1. That I mean here is that the matter that constitutes our various proper parts changes over time.
  2. This is an empirical matter but is largely true.
  3. We can also lose parts of our bodies or have them replaced. At least some parts, in some circumstances.
Footnote 2182:
  1. Sadly, she died on 24th December 2017.
  2. I’ve retained the “historic present” in the rest of this discussion.
Footnote 2190:
  1. Where I would depart from her is that she makes the FPP too prescriptive and stringent.
  2. I think a grammatical FPP (but including sentience) rather than one explicitly invoking a high view of personhood is what is needed.
Footnote 2301:
  1. I need to provide evidence for these claims. For now …
  2. For ‘not following arguments where they go’: see Kevin Corcoran (or Trenton Merricks, I forget).
  3. For casuistry, see William Lane Craig
Footnote 2302:
  1. To their credit, the Society of Chistian Philosophers have made their journal Faith and Philosophy freely available on-line.
  2. See Faith and Philosophy.
  3. I need to reference the discussion on Hell, not that it’s really relevant to my Thesis.
Footnote 2309:
  1. I’m not sure how committed (if at all) E.J. Lowe was to Christianity, nor how important he was as a philosopher (he died in 2014).
  2. He did once argue for the modal ontological argument against Graham Oppy (where?), but in "Bourget (David) & Chalmers (David) - The PhilPapers Surveys: What Do Philosophers Believe?" he’s only down as “leaning towards” theism.
  3. The TLS Obituary (Times Higher Education: Jonathan Lowe - Obituary) described him as “one of the leading philosophers of his generation” but made no mention of any religious faith.
Footnote 2310:
  1. I could probably make a guess at the “materialistic” affiliation of these philosophers – in that the default position is dualistic – but will wait until I’ve looked at their work.
Footnote 2343:
  1. All this needs tidying up.
  2. It’s probably best to take the Wikipedia article in full and link it to these reports and extract the relevant biological facts and cut out all the social stuff that is irrelevant to the metaphysical issues.
Footnote 2553:
  1. Oh dear! I’m now uncertain about this! Maybe this is a good thing, from an Animalist perspective. Or not.
  2. The point is that – after a period of unconsciousness – say normal sleep – when I awake can I really be sure that it’s I who awake, or merely that whoever it is in my bed awakes.
  3. That it is I in my bed can only really be ascertained by reference to third parties, who assure me that there has been no intervention (so I’ve not been replaced by a simulacrum complete with my memories).
  4. Of course, in the current state of technology, such worries would be highly irrational.
Footnote 2559:
  1. No doubt it does, but I need to specify which!
  2. See "Gale (Richard) - On Some Pernicious Thought-Experiments", which is also a vague reference!
Footnote 2565:
  1. Teletransportation is sometimes rather tendentiously referred to as “Telecloning”.
  2. Yet, calling it “Teletransportation” is equally tendentious, and
  3. “Telecloning” has at least the virtue of being the correct description!
  4. See "Brennan (Andrew) - Survival".
Footnote 2574:
  1. See "Ball (Philip) - Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Mechanics is ... Different", pp. 267 – 272.
Footnote 2716:
  1. I have DSM3
    → "American Psychiatric Association - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R)", and
    → "Spitzer (Robert), Skodol (Andrew), Gibbon (Miriam) & Williams (Janet) - DSM-III Casebook: A Learning Companion to DSM III",
  2. But the latest edition is DSM-5-TR (Text Revision), published in March 2022.
  3. See Wikipedia: DSM.
Footnote 2726:
  1. This seems confused. A patient with MPD is still one patient, though may be multiple personalities, or even Persons.
Footnote 2872:
  1. While Dracula is today a Fictional character, there is of course a historical antecedent in Vlad the Impaler. See Wikipedia: Vlad the Impaler. I have no professional interest in the historical facts, however.
  2. My considerations include not only the inventions of Bram Stoker but also the later additions of Hammer Horror. See:-
    → Wikipedia: Dracula,
    → Wikipedia: Count Dracula,
    → Wikipedia: Hammer Film Productions - Dracula,
    → Wikipedia: Hammer Film Productions - Dracula 2., and others,
    → Wikipedia: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film),
    … and also, as an indication of what senior vampires are supposed to be able to do …
    → Wikipedia: Interview with the Vampire (film).
  3. Unsurprisingly, I had nothing philosophical on this topic when I first considered it. Even a trawl of JSTOR revealed nothing of relevance. There was lots on the history, politics, sociology and sexuality of Dracula, but nothing I could see that discussed the Metaphysics.
  4. There is a Cambridge Companion to Dracula which I have access to via Cambridge Core but this has little of interest to me. See The Cambridge Companion to Dracula. The editor is Roger Luckhurst, from Birkbeck – though not from the Philosophy Department. See Wikipedia: Roger Luckhurst.
Footnote 2892:
  1. Actually, it is doubtful that a bicycle can survive ‘atomisation’ followed be ‘reconstitution’.
  2. The disassembly and reassembly of bicycles and watches are paradigm cases of the persistence of artifacts. But this isn’t the same as being turned into mulch and then being re-manufactured.
Footnote 2951:
  1. I originally came across this on YouTube, but it was periodically taken down with the legend “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by National Film Board of Canada”.
  2. However, it now seems to be freely available from the source. John Weldon’s "To Be".
  3. It seems to be aimed at 12–18-year-olds, but is none the worse for that.
Footnote 3033:
  1. AlphaGo and AlphaZero.
  2. I have "Sadler (Matthew) & Regan (Natasha) - Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI", but it is mostly about chess!
Footnote 3096:
  1. Consider (random examples at a time in 2018) Wikipedia: Ray Wilkins & Wikipedia: Eric Bristow dying of cardiac arrest “before their time”, plus far too many young blacks (and those mistaken for being young blacks) dying from puncture wounds.
Footnote 3261:
  1. When I originally wrote this in February 2016.

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