Persons in the Material World
Baker (Lynne Rudder)
Source: Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 1, pp. 3-88
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Write-up1 (as at 28/09/2022 10:24:58): Baker - Persons in the Material World

Introduction
Author’s Abstract2
  1. Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. According to the Constitution View4 of human persons, as I call it, a human person is a person5 in virtue of having a First-Person Perspective6, and is a human person7 in virtue of being constituted by a human body (or human anima)8).
  2. Thus, the Constitution View9 aims to give our animal natures their due, while recognizing what makes human persons ontologically distinctive. The Constitution View10 contrasts with two other leading accounts of human persons: Animalism11 and Immaterialism. Like Animalism12 but unlike Immaterialism, the Constitution View13 holds that human persons are material beings; like Immaterialism but unlike Animalism14, the Constitution View15 holds that we are not identical to the animals that constitute us. Of course, this involves self-reference, but it is self-reference of a distinctive kind.
  3. On the one hand, human persons are constituted by human animals16, and hence cannot escape their animal natures; on the other hand, there is more to human persons than their animal natures. What sets human persons apart from other animals has nothing to do with anything immaterial; rather what sets us apart is the ability that underlies our asking, “What am I17?” That ability is a First-Person Perspective18. First-Person Perspectives may well be the result of natural selection; but what is relevant here is not where they came from, but what they are and the difference that they make in what there is.
  4. So, there are two theoretical ideas needed for the Constitution View19 of human persons: the idea of a First-Person Perspective20, the property in virtue of which a being (human or not) is a person, and the idea of constitution, the relation between a human person and her body.
  5. Parts:-
    1. “The Metaphysical Background” (Chapters 1-3), explores and defends the two theoretical ideas.
    2. “The Constitution View21 Explained” (Chapters 4-6), uses these two ideas to give an account of human persons.
    3. “The Constitution View22 Defended” (Chapters 7-9), argues for the coherence of the general idea of constitution-without-identity and the coherence of the application of that idea to the notion of human persons; finally, it argues directly for the Constitution View23 by contrasting it with its competitors, Animalism24 and Immaterialism.
  6. Chapter 1 sets out the task. Persons and Bodies will answer three questions:
    1. What am I25 most fundamentally?
    2. What is a person?
    3. How are human persons related to their bodies?

Sections
  1. Three Questions
  2. Beyond Biology
  3. An Overview
  4. A Philosophical Stance


Comments on the above Abstract25
  1. Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. According to the Constitution View of human persons, as I call it, a human person is a person in virtue of having a first-person perspective27, and is a human person in virtue of being constituted by a human body (or human animal).
    • Note that Baker seems to think it a small matter whether it’s the animal or the body that constitutes the human person. Yet these would seem to have different persistence conditions, so are not the same sort. This distinction is important to Olson.
    • I’m tempted to equate organism and animal here, though others might not. This is what drives a wedge between bodies and animals, because animals are organisms, whereas bodies are not.
    • Baker’s book has “Bodies” in its title, rather than “Animals” or “Organisms”. How important is this (for Baker)?
  2. Thus, the Constitution View aims to give our animal natures their due, while recognizing what makes human persons ontologically distinctive. The Constitution View contrasts with two other leading accounts of human persons: Animalism and Immaterialism. Like Animalism but unlike Immaterialism, the Constitution View holds that human persons are material beings; like Immaterialism but unlike Animalism, the Constitution View holds that we are not identical to the animals that constitute us.
    • The text terminated with a fragment here: “of course involve self-reference, but it is self-reference of a distinctive kind”. I’m not sure28 where, if anywhere, this was supposed to go. Presumably it should start with “This”.
    • The OSO text now seems to have disappeared.
    • As usual with Baker, “our animal natures” has a pejorative note. She doesn’t really accept that we are just ‘really special’ animals, so that what is ontologically distinctive is the animal, with its special properties, and not some other new thing.
    • Does Baker define what she means by animalism? I take it that it’s the view that we are (identical to) animals, and may (at stages of our lives) be persons – a quality or property rather than an ontological kind. As such, we human animals may at times have a first-person perspective29 (FPP).
    • Does Baker hold that human persons are essentially material beings, and essentially human?
    • What does Baker mean by immaterialism? Is it the psychological view30 (almost certainly not, as this can be materialist31), dualist (pseudo-Cartesian?) or idealist? Or, since Baker doesn’t hold any of these views, does it matter which? I expect, though, she means the view – popular amongst Christians – that we are (or have) immaterial souls32 that are usually embodied, but need not be.
  3. On the one hand, human persons are constituted by human animals, and hence cannot escape their animal natures; on the other hand, there is more to human persons than their animal natures. What sets human persons apart from other animals has nothing to do with anything immaterial; rather what sets us apart is the ability that underlies our asking, “What am I33?” That ability is a First-Person Perspective34. First-Person Perspectives may well be the result of natural selection35; but what is relevant here is not where they came from, but what they are and the difference that they make in what there is.
    • Just what are the animal natures we can’t escape? Has this to do with sin?
    • Baker doesn’t take seriously the view that animals differ. Both slugs and elephants are animals, and it seems that elephants understand death – because they mourn (as do primates) – so how do we know they don’t anticipate their own deaths? Would Baker be happy with non-human animal persons? If so, the contrast isn’t really with animals, but with non-persons; and this might just reduce – as previously noted – to personhood as a special property of animals (and maybe other beings).
    • Why is asking the question “What am I36?” so very (ontologically) distinctive? Do all (normal) human beings ask this question? What about feral children? Is it cultural? How do we know?
    • I agree that origins aren’t the issue; but it’s about whether we’re talking of a thing, or a property of a thing, however it came about.
  4. So, there are two theoretical ideas needed for the Constitution View of human persons: the idea of a first-person perspective37, the property in virtue of which a being (human or not) is a person, and the idea of constitution38, the relation between a human person and her body.
    • So, Baker admits the FPP39 is a property of a (human) being.
    • Baker insists that the constitution relation is between a human person and her body, rather than animal.
    • Constitution is covered later, but it looks as though human persons have (according to Baker) lots of animal properties (derivatively). Are these aspects of their (human) personhood, or just of their animality?
    • Might I not accept all this – the ontological pretensions aside? Is a student constituted by anything; the animal or the person? Yet the whole view seems to give ontological priority to “something that’s not a thing at all”. The thing is the human being, which has the property of being a student.
    • Note that the “student” counter-example is raised by Olson, and rejected by Baker.
  5. Part I, “The Metaphysical Background” (Chapters 1-3), explores and defends the two theoretical ideas.
    Part II, “The Constitution View Explained” (Chapters 4-6), uses these two ideas to give an account of human persons.
    Part III, “The Constitution View Defended” (Chapters 7-9), argues for the coherence of the general idea of constitution-without-identity and the coherence of the application of that idea to the notion of human persons; finally, it argues directly for the Constitution View by contrasting it with its competitors, Animalism and Immaterialism.
  6. Chapter 1 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons in the Material World") sets out the task. Persons and Bodies will answer three questions:-
    1. What I am40 most fundamentally?
    2. What is a person?
    3. How are human persons related to their bodies?
    • Olson doesn’t like the “most fundamentally” rider. Is this question simply asking what is my primary kind? I think Baker uses this expression. So, Baker is saying that PERSON is a kind – but if so, wouldn’t all persons have the same persistence conditions? Maybe (for Baker) they do. Olson notes that gods and animals have different PCs, but this is qua gods and animals. Qua person, according to Baker, they persist as long as they maintain the same FPP41. Of course, it’s obscure just what this sameness of FPP42 consists in.
    • Since Baker didn’t have much to say on Chapter 1 in her Precis, nor did I above. I’ve therefore started a detailed analysis of Chapter 1 below.


This text below is my detailed review of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons in the Material World", Chapter 1 of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View". The main text is my interpretation of what Baker says, with my specific comments and objections appearing as footnotes.

0. Introduction
  1. Descartes – we are thinking things. Of what kind? Immaterialism has lost ground. Neo-Cartesian materialists take the thinking thing to be the brain.
  2. Baker’s view is that the thinking thing with the inner life is neither the material brain nor an immaterial mind, but the person. She claims that my brain is the organ with which I think. Yet I – a person embedded in the material world – and not it – am the thinker.
  3. So, where traditional Cartesians see a mind/body problem and neo-Cartesians see a mental-state/brain-state problem, Baker sees a person/body problem.
  4. So, the problem addressed by the book is “what is a human person42, and what is the relation between a person and her body”.
  5. A person is constituted by a human body, but constitution is not identity.
  6. The aim of the Constitution View is twofold:-
    1. To show what distinguishes persons from all other beings (the First Person Perspective – hereafter FPP), and
    2. To show how we can be fully material beings without being identical to our bodies (Constitution43).
  7. Persons have a capacity44 for a FPP. Human persons are, in addition to this, constituted by “a body45 that is an organism of a certain kind – a human animal”.
  8. Mindedness is not the dividing line between persons and non-persons. Many mammals46 have conscious mental states, beliefs and desires.
  9. Baker briefly summarises the FPP47 as “(the ability to) conceive48 of one’s body and mental states as one’s own”.
  10. We are not “just49 animals” – we are persons.

1. Three Questions

1.1 What I am51 most fundamentally?
  1. An ontological question, answers to which have implications for the conditions under which I exist and persist. Baker considers 4 possibilities – 2 major and 2 minor.
    1. Immaterialism: an immaterial mind – an independent substance contingently associated with my body. Descartes. Modern supporters include:-
    2. Animalism: a materialistic account in line with Aristotle. I am most fundamentally51 a human animal. Baker credits Snowdon with inventing the term. Supporters cited by Baker are
    3. Aquinas: follows Aristotle in taking the soul as the form of the body, but because he allows for the separation of soul from body at death (and the independent existence of the soul pending reunion with its body at resurrection) he is to be classified with the immaterialists (despite not identifying human persons with their souls). We are referred to "Stump (Eleonore) - Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism Without Reduction".
    4. Brain View: this is touched on briefly in Chapter 5 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Personal Identity Over Time"). Baker cites "Nagel (Thomas) - The View from Nowhere", Chapter 3 ("Nagel (Thomas) - Mind and Body").
  2. Baker notes the impact on persistence conditions that the various metaphysical options have. In particular, according to the CV, my continued existence depends on the persistence of my52 FPP.

1.2 What is a person?
  1. This is the question asked by Locke and Descartes. It is important to distinguish this from the first question (the one Descartes asked). Baker53 accuses the animalists54 of confusing the two. Animalism is only an answer to the first question, and does not address the issue of personal identity. She refers to "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Beings", but the import is obscure.
  2. However, Baker hopes to integrate the answers to the two questions. Descartes’s question gets a non-Cartesian answer – a person56. Locke’s question gets a quasi-Lockean (ie. mental) answer – one with a FPP.
  3. But I am a person of a certain kind – a human person – one that is necessarily56 embodied. I cannot exist without a body, but it need not be my current one.
  4. Baker thinks Descartes was on the right lines in asking a first-person57 question. Only beings that can ask “what am I59?” have a FPP. Asking third-person questions such as “what are they?” or “what is a human being?” is not enough.
  5. Human Beings60: A primary alternative answer to the first question is “I am a human being”, but what is intended by the term “human being” varies. Some philosophers like "Perry (John) - The Importance of Being Identical" take “human being” to be a purely biological concept, meaning the same as “human organism”. "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings" has a richer concept that includes psychology as well as biology. For the CV60, “human being” is glossed as “a person constituted by a human organism that has reached a certain level of development”.
  6. Development: Baker wants to avoid the terms “man” and “human being” (which are popularly confused with “person”), but has views. Not every human organism is a human being, so it is misleading to use the two terms interchangeably. Baker quotes Aquinas’s61 view that a human fetus becomes a human being at “quickening” – when it first acquires a rational soul – at about 12 weeks62.
  7. Baker sees a conceptual difference between “human being” and “human person”. Even biologists see this when speaking of the “biological substratum of personhood” (a certain Clifford Brobstein is quoted). We could restrict the term “human being” to those human animals capable of supporting a FPP, so that all human beings are (that is, for Baker, “constitute”) persons. Even so, “person”, says Baker, is a psychological / moral63 term. Being a person depends on psychological facts, while64 being a human being depends only on biological facts.
  8. Forensics: Baker is supportive of Locke’s assignment of a moral basis to personhood – though she denies that it is merely a forensic term. She refers us to Chapter 6 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Importance Of Being a Person") for justification of her claim that only persons can be held accountable65 for their actions. She also supports Locke’s distinction between men and persons. For Locke, men are (usually) purely material beings (though occasionally he uses the term for the conjunction of body and soul), with no necessary mental qualities, while persons are purely psychological.
  9. Substances67: Locke distinguished the person from the thinking substance. For Locke, personal identity consists in continuity of consciousness. So, for Locke, persons are not “basic substances”. We are referred to "Alston (William) & Bennett (Jonathan) - Locke on People and Substances", though there’s a dispute as to what Locke’s positive view actually was. See "Chappell (Vere) - Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons" (compounded substances); "Lowe (E.J.) - Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind" (psychological modes).
  10. Baker alludes to the “tortured history” of the term SUBSTANCE, but has this to say: if basic substances are those things required to make a complete inventory of the world – say atoms or animals – then persons are also basic substances. An inventory mentioning human animals but omitting persons67 would be seriously incomplete. The same goes for properties69: those that can only be instantiated by persons must be included in a complete inventory.

1.3 How are human persons related to their bodies?
  1. According to the CV, human persons are constituted by their bodies, but are not identical to them.
  2. Baker deals with constitution in detail – with no particular reference to persons, but (I would say) with too much reference to artifacts70 – in the next chapter ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution"), but here notes that it is the same relation as that between a statue and the marble constituting it. She has argued in "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Why Constitution is Not Identity" that David is not identical to the piece of marble, nor to the piece plus something else.
  3. Baker plots the development of the term Person71: it was unknown to Aristotle, was derived from the Latin persona, meaning “mask”, was highlighted by Trinitarian theology, and acquiring forensic properties via Locke. We are referred to "Poole (Ross) - On Being a Person" for more information71, though from a different viewpoint (in fact one antithetical to Baker’s own).
  4. Baker notes, however, that persons have been around for longer72 than the concept PERSON.
  5. To illustrate what some see as an ambiguity in the term PERSON, Baker now addresses the usage in +P4008P, p. 101. Feldman distinguishes “biological73 persons74” (members of the species homo sapiens) from “psychological persons” (those organisms with psychological properties such as self-consciousness). Feldman takes it that one can cease to be a psychological person without ceasing to exist, but cannot cease to be a biological person without ceasing to exist. Baker takes this to be an extreme form of animalism76, begging the question against the CV77, and abusing the term PERSON78.
  6. Theory of Persons: Baker takes it that “pre-theoretically the term PERSON applies to entities like you and me” – giving examples of famous personages. However, she has a theory – which is that
    1. The person-making property is the FPP,
    2. Human persons are constituted by human bodies78 and
    3. PERSON is an ontological kind.
    A consequence of the theory is that if the body-parts of a human person were gradually replaced by inorganic ones, the person79 would still exist, but the human (animal) would not.
  7. Phase Sortals81: Interestingly, Baker now rejects the possibility that persons are phase sortals of human animals (an idea I am tempted to espouse). She motivates this thought by saying that, if an adolescent grows up, she doesn’t cease to exist; she just loses the property of being an adolescent. However, according to the CV, an individual who is a person could not lose the property81 of being a person without ceasing to exist. She closes with the obscure claim that “if a person died82 and ceased to be a person, then the entity that had been a person would cease to exist”.
  8. Persons and People: Baker quotes from "Thomson (Judith Jarvis) - People and Their Bodies" about the theory-ladenness of the term PERSON. Baker agrees – and insists she is doing philosophy rather than investigating common usage – but dislikes the use of “people83” as against “persons”. But her reason is instructive. It is that PEOPLE is a collective84 term and she wants to answer Descartes’s question “what am I86?”, which is concerned with the individual and not the collective. Her theory applies to individuals distributively rather than collectively.
  9. Mind and Brain: Baker has ignored the question of the relation between mind and brain – between mental and neural states. She doesn’t think that there is a single relation between them (such as identity or constitution), and we are referred to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - What is This Thing Called ‘Commonsense Psychology’?" & "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Are Beliefs Brain States?". She thinks the numerous relations between the states of mind and brain are the proper topic of empirical neuroscientific investigation. Just how the brain is involved in all the aspects of life is beyond the reach of philosophy. While ignorant of the details, she’s willing to accept that the brain sustains our entire mental life. So, her interest is in how persons, rather than minds, fit into the material world – her answer being that they are constituted by bodies86.

2. Beyond Biology
  1. Baker acknowledges that human animals have an evolutionary history in common with other animals, yet we are special. We are discoverers of, and interveners87 in, the evolutionary process. We have uniquely88 invented lots of good intellectual89 endeavours.
  2. Baker distinguishes between bad (“metaphysical”) and good (“scientific”) Darwinism. She focuses on extreme positions – eg. "Dawkins (Richard) - The Selfish Gene" and (less extreme) "Dennett (Daniel) - Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life". She claims that these theories have us as “merely90” survival machines for our genes. While she’s willing to admit that this is true of human organisms, she balks at this being so for human persons. What restores the lustre to human persons is the CV, which makes an ontological difference between the organism and the person. While the organism may be a survival machine for its genes, we persons are not.
  3. She’s willing to admit – quoting "Pinker (Steven) - How the Mind Works", p. 541 – that as far as our “animal natures” are concerned, all our values derive from the need to survive and reproduce.
    Note    91.
  4. But she again quotes Pinker to the effect that we have other values, and that some genes don’t get propagated because we are smarter92 than they are. For instance, he’s decided to remain childless93. Baker thinks this shows that we can’t therefore be organisms, because all they care about is survival and reproduction and can’t override ‘nature’s goals’ unless they malfunction. She thinks Pinker contradicts himself94.
  5. Baker bangs on and on about things that non-malfunctioning human beings do that have nothing to do with survival or reproduction. She says that explaining altruism – citing "Sober (Elliott) & Wilson (David) - Unto Others - The Evolution & Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour" – is only the beginning95 of the explaining that – a certain type of – evolutionary biologist has to do.
  6. Baker thinks the FPP97 explains how we – unlike other animals – can be self-conscious about our goals and choose one rather than another, even when often what motivates us is unconscious, and this is even consistent with determinism and natural selection. This sets us apart97 from the rest of the animal kingdom.
  7. Baker alludes to the view that character and habits are largely subject to our genetic99 endowment. Even given this, we are to consider the difference between ‘persons and other animals99’. Only those with a FPP can assess their – genetically-endowed – character and try to change it. She refers to "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" and second-order volitions, though says that the FPP is more fundamental. She allows for the possibility that our attempts to change our character are determined100.
  8. Baker claims – rightly – that it is a ‘plain fact’ that some people are dissatisfied with their character and try to change it, thereby demonstrating that they have a FPP and being distinct from every non-personal animal.
  9. She now addresses the objection that this FPP just is a naturally-developed property of a human animal102.
  10. She agrees that this is indeed the case – that human animals do indeed normally develop a FPP – but says that ‘it is obvious to her’ that anything capable of such development is ‘basically different’ from something not so capable. She will argue for this in detail later – in particular in Chapters 6 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Importance Of Being a Person") and 9 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - In Favour Of the Constitution View"). Her point is that Darwinism – she claims – denies this fundamental difference.
  11. Baker tries to demonstrate just how discontinuous the FPP is from other biological traits. She claims it’s a ‘biological surd102’.
  12. She says that ‘not even the most lovable dog’, in the absence of a FPP, can:-
    1. Be dissatisfied with his personality,
    2. Wonder how he will die103,
    3. Cogitate on what kind of thing he is.
  13. So, she claims that it you take a person105 to be identical to a human animal106, you have to posit a break in the animal kingdom between those with a FPP (us) and those without (all other animals). But if we’re only constituted by107 human animals we – apparently107 – don’t have such a break – the animal kingdom remains unified – and we are still ‘in a clear sense’ part of the animal kingdom.
  14. Being a Person depends on having – or having the capacity for – a FPP. Baker will discuss and ‘narrowly delineate’ the ‘capacity’ qualification in Chapter 4 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Constitution View of Human Persons").
  15. The FPP depends of the brain, and Baker quotes "Pinker (Steven) - How the Mind Works" again to the effect that small differenced in DNA can have big effects since we share most of our DNA with chimpanzees. So – she claims – the biological difference between us and non-human animals with respect to our FTP-enabling DNA may be ‘insignificant108’ so we need to look outside biology to ‘understand ourselves’.
  16. So, with the FPP we get – if not a new biological entity – a new psychological entity. Biology doesn’t delimit the sort of entities there are. Given the possibility109 of non-human persons, biology cannot limit what is a person.
  17. Baker now moves on to ask what we could be if we are not identical to animals. But first she asks the question whether we are ‘nothing but’ animals, which she seems to take to be the same question110. She wants the answer ‘no’, but first considers the answer ‘yes’ – namely that we are indeed ‘nothing but animals – which she thinks has two possibilities, rebutted as below:-
    1. Deny that we alone are moral agents, etc. Rejected111 because it denies ‘the manifest discontinuity between us (and out culture, technology, etc.) and nonhuman animals’.
    2. Posit a biological gap between humans – who are moral agents – and the rest of the animal kingdom. Rejected112 because – while this view accepts the ‘manifest gap’ in moral and cognitive capacities rejected under option ‘a’ it places it in the domain of biology. But – Baker thinks – humans are biologically continuous with other animals, so the posited ‘gap’ is unmotivated.
  18. So, we are left with:-
    1. The animal kingdom is unified but we can distinguish persons from human animals without denying the animal nature of human persons.
  19. Option ‘c’ is claimed to be the ‘only alternative’, cashed out via the Constitution View, taken to keep the domain of biology unified. Baker is willing to admit that biology may one day explain how the FPP developed, but claims that the CV doesn’t stand or fall113 on whether the ontological difference between those with or without a FPP is explained biologically.
  20. Baker is willing to leave it to working – non-philosophical – biologists to explain how our bodies work, and she’s happy for evolution to explain how our ability to have personal lives evolved. But she still thinks our personal lives are something over and above biology.
  21. She claims that those who believe that our capacity to have personal lives – or indeed any product of natural selection – can be explained and understood wholly in biological terms are committing the Genetic Fallacy114 – believing that the origins of a thing determines what it is. She doesn’t care how we came about. She wants to know what we most fundamentally are, and that is – she claims – persons.
  22. She claims that our ‘personal lives’ are a unity and include our biological lives. But, before elaborating on this idea she mentions that some philosophers have entertained the view of life, in certain cases, that is non-biological. Unfortunately, she doesn’t say how this fits in to her story, or whether she supports such views. Anyway, she mentions two works:-
    1. The ‘influential115’ "Stump (Eleonore) & Kretzmann (Norman) - Eternity": mentioned for the aphorism that ‘anything that is eternal has life’.
    2. "Boyd (Richard) - Materialism without Reduction: What Physicalism Does Not Entail" as an example of a materialist philosopher willing to countenance conscious life in the absence of biology. Token real-world mental states might be – in other possible worlds – be non-physically realised according to the ‘functionalist116 materialist’, or even realised when the subject’s body no longer exists.
  23. In Baker’s view, the body has consequences for our personal life, so the distinction between organic and personal life is – for her – nothing like that between mind and body or psychological or physical states. But – she claims – it is possible separately to ‘precipitate out’ the distinctively organic and personal elements of this unified life. By way of explanation, Baker gives a couple of TEs118:-
    1. Organic Precipitation: A person suffers irreversible brain damage, ending in a PVS119. In that case the organism persists but the person would not119, though we might continue to have moral obligations to the persisting organism.
    2. Personal Precipitation: The person has her body-parts120 gradually replaced by inorganic parts, so there are no longer any organic bodily functions, but the higher brain functions – including the person’s sense of self – persist. In this case, the person persists but the organism would not.
  24. Such TEs show that the person is not identical to her body. However, a person is not a separate thing to her body, and the CV explains why; in particular:-
    1. How human persons are related to human organisms, and
    2. What distinguishes organisms that constitute persons from those that do not.
  25. Baker insists that we are wholly constituted by human organisms, that we don’t have immaterial parts, and that we cannot escape our animal natures. But she also insists that we are set apart by our ability121 to ask ‘What am I?123’, by having a FPP124 which makes us a Person125.

3. An Overview
  1. Baker’s account of PID rests on two ideas: Constitution126 and the FPP127. These ideas will be explained in order to answer three questions:-
    1. What am I128 most fundamentally?
    2. What is a Person129?
    3. What is the relation between a Human Persons130 and their Bodies131?
  2. The answers – according to Baker – lead on from one another and are:-
    1. I am a Person132.
    2. A Person132 is a being – human or not – with a FPP134.
    3. A Human Person is a Person wholly constituted by a Body135 that is a Human Organism136, an Animal of species Homo Sapiens137.
  3. In a footnote, Baker:-
    1. Acknowledges that here are other accounts of ‘Constitution without Identity’ – see "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings".
    2. Acknowledges the account of the First Person given in "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience", for whom a Person is137 a ‘being which can think that it itself is thus and so and can identify itself as the unique subject of certain thoughts and experiences and as the unique agent of certain actions’.
  4. Constitution – which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution") – is not unique to Persons and their Bodies, but is pervasive. When the circumstances of things change, new kinds of things with new kinds of causal powers can come into existence. Examples:
    1. Flags are not mere pieces of cloth: they can cause emotional reactions.
    2. Dollar bills are not mere pieces of paper.
    3. Strands of DNA constitute genes.
    4. Brain states – according to some philosophers, though not Baker herself – constitute beliefs. We’re referred to:-
      → "Boyd (Richard) - Materialism without Reduction: What Physicalism Does Not Entail" and
      → "Pereboom (Derek) & Kornblith (Hilary) - The Metaphysics of Irreducibility".
  5. Baker thinks cases such as these – not just of artifacts138 but to natural objects as well – show that there’s no ‘special pleading’ in using Constitution to understand Human Persons.
  6. Constitution can only take us so far, as Statues140 and the like lack the inner aspect that Persons have.
  7. This leads us on to Chapter 3 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The First-Person Perspective"). With a FPP, one can both refer to your body in a first-personal way – using the English pronouns ‘I’, … ‘mine’ and also have a concept of oneself as oneself. One has a perspective, but also a conception of oneself as having a perspective. Many non-human animals have perspectives – based on the position of their eyes (or other sense organs) – but only persons have a conception of themselves140 as having a perspective, from a first-person point of view. Baker cites "Wittgenstein (Ludwig) - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" for the ‘eye’ image but thinks Wittgenstein wouldn’t approve141.
  8. This book is an attempt to work out the details of why – as Baker believes – the possession of a FPP – however it came about in evolutionary or other terms – makes such a difference of kind between individuals with it and those without and how it makes us ‘special’ while recognising our animal natures.
  9. Baker wants to navigate between the Scylla of ‘Immaterialism143’ (Dualism144: immaterial Souls145 or Minds146) and the Charybdis146 of Reductionism148 (Animalism149: denying that Persons150 are fundamental Kinds151 and claiming that they can be fully understood in sub-personal terms).
  10. Baker claims that the CV is consistent with strict atheistic naturalism or materialism151. She starts off with three basic assumptions:-
    1. This world is wholly material153; hence, human persons are material beings.
    2. Material things endure154 through time and are not merely sums of temporal parts154.
    3. Identity is strict identity156: if x and y can differ156 in any property, then x is not identical to y.
  11. Anyone rejecting any of these assumptions should read the book as an exercise to show how far we can get with such assumptions.

4. A Philosophical Stance
  1. This is a book of metaphysics158 that follows Baker’s approach of Practical Realism, as elaborated in "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind", namely ‘philosophical reflection on what is found in the world that we all live in and that we all care about’. In particular:-
    1. Metaphysics – while not confused with epistemology – is preserved from idleness by being responsive to reflection on our cognitive and other practices, both scientific and non-scientific; and
    2. Metaphysics takes the world of common experience as the source of data for philosophical reflection.
  2. Many philosophers think that the sciences will eventually explain everything. Baker thinks this view ‘scientistic’ and doesn’t share it; but she doesn’t wish to place persons beyond the reach of the sciences and is willing to hold her breath on the issue. Her approach is conceptual and pre-scientific. But, she predicts that any science of persons will have two features:-
    1. Intentionality will be taken as essential to personhood.
    2. It will take the whole integrated person, not a compendium of parts. Persons have essential properties that are not determined by the properties and relations of their parts158.
  3. If there turns out to be ‘no intentional science that quantifies over persons’ then one of the following must be the case159:-
    1. There are no such things as persons, insofar as they are outside the domain of any science.
    2. Persons just are no more than a compendium of the parts that fall within the domains of the sciences.
    3. Persons are not fully understandable by science, though the parts that make them up are.
  4. Baker’s choice would be ‘c’, but she doesn’t argue for it here.
  5. Baker’s Practical Realist approach departs from standard Metaphysics161 in one major regard: for her, extrinsic properties162 have ontological163 significance, whereas for standard metaphysics it is taken as a ‘deliverance of reason’ that only intrinsic164 properties are essential165 properties of any thing.
  6. In everyday life – says Baker – the intrinsic properties of a thing have no special authority in determining its identity or nature which often depend on what it does in relation to other things rather than what it is made of. Examples165:-
    1. A dollar bill: Its identity166 depend on the rights conferred on the owner by the government.
    2. A carburettor: Its identity167 is conferred by its function.
  7. So, Baker thinks the Practical Realist approach is salutary in two respects:-
    1. It focuses on things that actually matter to us, and
    2. It counters the metaphysical neglect of relational properties.
  8. Baker now states that her primary concepts for this study – Constitution and the FPP – are theoretical constructs whose value will be proved in their use.
    1. She briefly rehearses the main motivator behind the idea of constitution169 without identity: that a thing and what constitutes it go out of existence at different times. Examples:-
      1. A statue170 and its piece of marble
      2. A wall and its stones170
      3. Persons and their bodies
    2. Similarly, with the FPP172: it arises from our first-person experience of ourselves. It would be paradoxical for an individual asking the question What am I?173 to receive an answer that she is a being who can’t ask that question.
  9. Baker is an ontological pluralist, but repeats and explains her commitment to materialism. Everything in the natural world is material173: if you take away the atoms, there is nothing left. Nothing in the natural world is constituted by non-physical stuff. However, the atoms have less ontological significance for Baker than the things they constitute174, which have causal powers over and above those of their constituting atoms. According to Baker, a thing has ontological significance in proportion to175 its causal powers.
  10. Baker lays out her two-fold motivation for ‘this undertaking’ – presumably writing this book:
    1. Taking seriously the diversity of things around us:
      • Persons and Bodies are different kinds of thing. So are Statues and Clay177.
      • Baker wants to do justice to the ‘almost infinite variety of things’ rather than ‘flatten things out’ reductively178 so that all properties are ultimately those of fundamental particles.
      • She claims that every individual thing in the world is wholly constituted by one or more aggregates of material particles without being identical to these aggregates that constitute it.
      • Baker has a curious footnote to explain the or more in the above bullet. It seems that the reason is that she’s a mereological179 essentialist180, so an aggregate cannot gain or lose particles without ceasing to exist. But bodies do this all the time, so material things are constituted by different aggregates180 at different time.
      • The familiar objects of everyday life are bearers of properties not countenanced by181 fundamental particles.
      • The CV183 is consonant with this broader picture.
    2. The relationship between persons and bodies:
  11. Plan of the Book: Basically list the Chapters. Warns that Chapters 2 & 3 – on Constitution and the FPP – are ‘rather technical’ and can be skipped ‘without loss’ by those satisfied with ‘an intuitive view’, but encourages readers to read them as they have applications outside the CV.


In-Page Footnotes

Footnote 1:
  • This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (28/09/2022 10:24:58).
  • Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 2: Footnote 25: Footnote 42: Persons:
  • What sort of thing for Baker is a person? It is constituted by the whole human body, of which the brain is just an organ. This is in some ways similar to the Animalists she opposes.
  • However, to my mind, taking the person as prior to the organism, rather than supervening on it, seems to have things round the wrong way; so would denying that the brain thinks (though she probably claims that it thinks derivatively; but really it’s the person that thinks derivatively).
  • Is her constitution relation causal? She doesn’t deny, I don’t suppose, that the brain causes the person to think.
Footnote 43: Constitution View:
  • Is it Olson who objects to Baker’s use of this term Constitution View (hereafter CV) – in that constitution is less central to Baker’s case than she supposes?
  • Really, the focus is on the FPP.
Footnote 44:
  • Baker refers to a capacity – is this a present capacity – ie. one that I presently possess even if I’m not currently using it – or does it allow one that I will (under normal developmental expectations) possess, or one that I have possessed but no longer do or will do.
  • Note that even asking the question – using the reference “I” – seems to beg it.
Footnote 45:
  • As usual, Baker, unlike Olson, makes no clear distinction between body and organism.
  • In what sense “is” a body an organism? Is an organism constituted by its body, and in what sense of “constitution”?
Footnote 46:
  • It appears to be a matter of dispute whether beliefs and desires are strictly possible in the absence of language.
  • If so, this strikes me as an argument in favour of a LoT, since the higher mammals behave as though they have intentional states.
Footnote 47:
  • So, the FPP is much more – according to Baker – than the animal’s ‘Window on the World’.
  • It seems to be akin to Locke’s definition of a person as “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places”.
Footnote 48:
  • The key point here, presumably, is the capacity for conceptual thought, and the self-referential application of this capacity.
  • Most animals presumably differentiate their own bodies from those of others (especially those that groom themselves or others), but it’s less clear whether they have concepts of their bodies, and even less clear whether they have thoughts let alone concepts of their thoughts as distinct from those of others.
  • Yet (it seems to me) cats and dogs – and presumably many other higher mammals – have a ToM even of human minds. They can gesture to be let in or out, and they know how to wheedle.
Footnote 49:
  • This “just” seems to have a certain dismissive overtone that is unjustified by anything that Baker has said.
  • According to the animalist, being a person is being a (fully functional) example of a (very) special animal – but “just” an animal for all that.
  • Is there anything wrong with this view?
Footnote 51:
  • My memory has it that Olson dislikes the “most fundamentally” rider, and just asks to what I am identical.
  • But for this question to make sense, we need to know the primary kind or sort to which I belong, which is effectively asking what I am “most fundamentally”.
Footnote 52:
  • But what individuates my FPP, if not my body?
  • Yet, according to the CV, my body is not what individuates me – or at least not for all time – but only currently constitutes me.
Footnote 53:
  • I’m not convinced that the CV really addresses personal identity either, beyond gesturing at “sameness of FPP” – but how is this cashed out?
Footnote 54:
  • I think Olson admits that he doesn’t address personal identity – only our identity.
  • He retains the designation “personal identity” for the purposes of continuing the historical debate, which he thinks has been subverted.
  • He does insist on using the plural “people” when he ought to use “persons”, which adds to the confusion.
Footnote 56:
  • Why am I necessarily embodied, if what makes me a person is an FPP and I am fundamentally a person? Am I fundamentally a human person?
  • Baker doesn’t specify whether this alternative body that might constitute me in the future needs to be a human body.
Footnote 57: Footnote 60:
  • So, I imagine, for Baker, not only am I not must fundamentally a human animal, I’m not most fundamentally a human being either.
  • Because of a developmental criterion, Baker will avoid Olson’s “fetus problem”, and deny that she was ever a fetus. In so doing, she insists on a presently exercisable capacity that has actually been reached in development (even if not exercised). I’m not clear where this leaves the moral status of fetuses (or infants) for Baker, given the rift she places between persons and non-persons.
Footnote 61:
  • Baker doesn’t believe that persons are immaterial souls – and presumably doesn’t think there are any such things. Why does she mention Aquinas at all?
  • But what did Aquinas mean by a “rational soul”. Is he using the term in the Aristotelian sense, the dualistic sense or some hybrid concept?
Footnote 62:
  • A 12-week-old fetus has no FPP, so is not a person. Indeed “quickening”, while it seems to indicate a degree of somatic integration – the first movements – is not a psychological stage at all.
  • So, the “certain level of development” of the human organism required for being (identical to?) a human being is not that required for being (constituting) a person.
Footnote 63:
  • Reference to morality seems to pop in prematurely here – though Baker will move on to this.
Footnote 64:
  • There is something wrong with Baker’s contrast. The psychological facts depend on – supervene on – the biological facts. Without the appropriate biology, the psychological fact can’t exist (in the absence of dualism, which Baker agrees is false).
  • But maybe she is right that conceptually there is no connection.
  • But we’re talking metaphysics which is orthogonal to human concepts.
Footnote 65:
  • So, for Baker, those without a FPP are not morally accountable. This seems to tie in somewhat with "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", who distinguishes persons from wantons who lack second-order desires.
  • However, presumably wantons do have a FPP, so Baker would take them to be persons. Yet we need to reserve judgement on these issues until we have seen how Baker spells out the FPP.
Footnote 67:
  • Surely ontological independence is central to substancehood, and persons can’t exist without supervening on something more fundamental, so aren’t properly basic, even for Baker. That said, animals themselves supervene on the matter of which they are constituted, so aren’t basic substances either.
  • This is where I part company with Baker. If human animals – or at least fully functioning ones – are mentioned, then so are persons because all the properties of a person are instantiated by that fully-functional human animal; and that human animal is a person.
  • There, the “is” is not the “is” of constitution, but indicates a property or status. Like “is the Queen of England”. A world containing Elizabeth Windsor in a republican Britain is not ontologically impoverished.
  • Yet is this right? The concept QUEEN OF ENGLAND still exists, there would just be nothing exemplifying it. So maybe there would be an ontological impoverishment if that’s what persons are.
  • Alternatively, what if PERSON is a phase sortal – like CHILD. Is a world crowded with human animals, but no children, ontologically impoverished. Maybe it is – it would certainly be an imperilling situation for the human race. Even so, a world containing human animals under the age of 18, and human children, must not double-count the number of basic substances in its inventory.
  • Baker could appeal to derivatives here, but only if a human child is constituted by a human animal. So, there might be no thinking child problem (by analogy with Olson’s TA problem) – the animal thinks derivatively in virtue of constituting a child. But say the child is so mentally retarded as not to constitute a person. Then we have only two things co-located – a human animal and a human child, but no human person, whereas normally we would have (for Baker) all three.
Footnote 71: Footnote 72:
  • Does this make PERSON a natural kind term?
  • Were there students prior to the concept STUDENT? If so, is STUDENT a natural kind term? Can we not just apply concepts retrospectively?
Footnote 73:
  • I agree with Baker here. The term BIOLOGICAL PERSON seems something of an oxymoron if contrasted with PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSON – since PERSON seems to essentially involve psychology.
  • But again, maybe it doesn’t – maybe PERSON could be taken as implying nothing more than that an individual has certain rights, with others having responsibilities towards her. The whole area is theory-laden, as Baker points out.
Footnote 74:
  • I have a similar gripe about Olson using “people” as the plural of “person”. “People” is often used just to mean “human beings”, so using it to mean “persons” can either cause confusion, or be an attempt to suggest without argument that there’s no difference between the two terms.
  • Care needs to be taken in this whole area to distinguish and clarify terms, but maybe any clarification is tendentious in one way or another.
Footnote 78:
  • Baker will need to explain how persons exist equally fundamentally alongside their bodies (neither is more fundamental than the other, but both have a degree of independent existence, at least modally).
  • A similar explanation is required for statues and clay. This is the challenge to the CV.
Footnote 79:
  • So, Baker is happy that cyborgs are persons.
  • It’s an open question whether a human animal with its organic parts replaced by inorganic ones would (or could) maintain a FPP. It’s an empirical question, most likely – though could we ever know whether a purely mechanical individual experienced phenomenal consciousness?
  • Moreover, even if we grant the possibility of inorganic consciousness, a really important question is whether during the siliconisation process we would have a single FPP, or the gradual fading away of one and the gradual rise of another. Presumably this question could be resolved empirically by asking the person(s) concerned, though not any time soon.
Footnote 81:
  • The real question is whether Baker is right in her claim that being a person is an essential property of anything. The analogy would be being an animal is an essential property of an animal (which is why she claims that if an animal’s parts are wholly replaced by inorganic parts, we no longer have an animal) – and this seems right.
  • But being a child isn’t an essential property of a child, except qua child. It all depends on what substance concept the individual falls under. CHILD isn’t a substance concept, but a phase of a substance concept (HUMAN ANIMAL).
  • So the question is whether PERSON is a substance concept. Baker asserts that it is; but what arguments does she have, and what arguments can be brought against this assertion?
Footnote 82:
  • What are we to make of this final claim? In what sense can persons die?
  • Death is a biological event that doesn’t seem to be something that can happen to persons as such. They can cease to be, but this doesn’t even require the death of the animal. All that needs to happen is that the animal irrevocably loses the property of being a person (or constituting one, in Baker’s terms).
Footnote 83:
  • Interestingly, Thomson takes PERSON to be the singular of PEOPLE. This seems odd, as though CATS had priority over CAT.
Footnote 84:
  • Baker’s objection to collectivism runs counter to many theories of the person, which has reciprocity, agency, patiency, language and such-like as central qualifications for personhood.
  • Baker reverts to the Cartesian individual looking out (and introspectively in) via the FPP.
Footnote 86:
  • For Baker, as for everyone in this context, the brain is well and truly part of the body and is not contrasted with it.
  • So, while – as a matter of fact – the particular brain that I possess sustains my mental life – including my FPP – presumably some other brain might have done so – and some yet other brain might do so in the future if I’m resurrected and brains are parts of resurrection bodies.
  • Also, given the siliconization possibility, my FPP might be sustained by some non-brain (by something that is functionally isomorphic to, but not identical to, a brain).
Footnote 87:
  • Yet we might not have done so, and until recently in evolutionary terms, hadn’t done so, so what’s the relevance of all this?
Footnote 88:
  • Just how biologically significant are these functions?
  • Surely the ontologically (and morally) significant divide is between those organisms that are phenomenally conscious and those that aren’t – those that feel and those that don’t. Are the anticipatory and retrospective mental terrors felt by those with a FPP really worse than the physical pains felt by any sentient being?
  • The anticipation of the dentist may be worse than the experience – but only because the experience isn’t that bad. But I dare say the experience of dentistry in the absence of anaesthetic is worse than the anticipation of it.
Footnote 89:
  • Most human beings seem to care little for the refined intellectual activities Baker finds definitive of human personhood. Does this mean they are not persons?
Footnote 90:
  • “Merely” is a weasel word.
  • Historically / causally human organisms may have acquired the properties they have in order to act as more efficient survival machines for their genes, but there are no evaluative consequences of this fact, if it is a fact.
  • As Baker herself notes, “we” have to some extent transcended evolution – by developing the capacity to manipulate our own and future generations’ genes.
  • The questionable claim on Baker’s part is the attribution of these facts to some ontological novelty – a person – rather than to the organisms themselves.
Footnote 91:
  • This is as far as I got in 2014-5 when I last looked at this Chapter.
  • I doubt I’ll be able to go into as much detail as I continue with the Chapter and Book as a whole.
Footnote 92:
  • Well, genes aren’t ‘smart’ – in the sense of ‘intelligent’ – in any meaningful sense, so any mammal, bird, fish, … is smarter than its genes.
Footnote 93:
  • It strikes me that some animals decide to do likewise if their situation is inappropriate: eg. pandas in zoos.
Footnote 94:
  • I’m unimpressed with this argument.
  • Evolution may have produced organisms for the survival and reproduction of their genes, but some organisms – namely us – are now trying to take control of their own destiny, independent of what their genes ‘want’.
  • This doesn’t mean the arrival of a new ontological kind over and above this new type of organism, but the development and transcendence of origins of an existing one. The ontological novelty is in the arrival of homo sapiens, one of whose typical properties is that of being a person that can act so as to override what its genes have programmed it to do.
Footnote 95:
  • This is symptomatic of a ‘slide’: as soon as something is explained as something that non-human animals con do (or, like consciousness, experience) it no longer counts as what makes us ‘uniquely human’ and therefore doesn’t count as an ontological novelty.
  • Obviously, there’s bound to be some fuzzy boundary between homo sapiens and other animals, otherwise we wouldn’t be a distinct kind, but nothing non-biological can be drawn from this.
Footnote 97:
  • Well, indeed it does: but, this is a property of homo sapiens, typical members of which have a FPP. There’s nothing over and above this – no reason to reify the FPP.
Footnote 99:
  • This is an odd way of putting it. Is she allowing for some non-human animals to be persons? It seems not, as she immediately gives ‘non-human animal’ as an example of a being lacking a FPP.
  • Does Baker anywhere consider whether the other Great Apes have a sense of Self, via passing the Mirror Test?
  • Maybe this doesn’t matter for her, as she presumes (probably rightly) that the non-human Great Apes do not have moral self-improvement amongst their goals. But then how many human beings seriously have such goals? We tend to (think we ought to) keep the morals slapped into us as children, and rebel when we think God isn’t looking. All this is part of being social beings and this moral conformity and rebellion may apply to other ‘higher’ animals. But few human beings think much about improving their moral character other than at times of existential crisis or where their moral slackness catches them out.
Footnote 100:
  • This dallying with determinism of Baker’s part is interesting. Is this just ‘for the sake of the argument’? It may be worth looking at "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - What is Human Freedom?" to gather her considered views.
  • What she seems to be saying is that we are still special even if determined. But this ‘specialness’ applies to us as members of the species homo sapiens, which have certain ‘personal’ properties.
Footnote 102:
  • She means – presumably – that it’s irreducible to something simpler, like √3 in the calculation of square roots. So, √48 is 4√3, with √3 being the surd.
Footnote 103:
  • This is rather a high bar for a dog to jump over. Also, how would we ever know? But I’m willing to believe it.
  • There is an attempt about to suggest that animals do have the concept of death – see "Monso (Susana) - What animals think of death" and other works by Susana Monsó. But this isn’t quite the same thing as Baker demands.
Footnote 107:
  • But, the person inherits all its properties from the animal that constitutes it. Consequently, if there is a break, it’s at the ‘animal’ level.
  • At least it looks that way, though some properties are had ‘derivatively’ and others not.
Footnote 108:
  • Surely this argument is very weak. What’s intended by ‘insignificant’? It’s well-known that very small errors in the DNA sequencing can have catastrophic effects and cause horrible syndromes in humans, surely ‘significant’ but as far as ‘counting base pairs’ is concerned it would be ‘insignificant’. But, we don’t need to look outside of biology to explain any of this.
  • Also, just where else do we look?
Footnote 109:
  • What other persons can be assumed here without argument?
  • What about David Wiggins’s argument that all persons – insofar as we can conceptualise them – are animals?
  • I would agree, though, that there can be non-human persons (traditionally ‘Martians’), but wouldn’t they be biological, albeit with a different biology?
  • However, I’m also willing to posit computers one day being persons; and maybe angels, though we’ve no idea what sort of being these might be. And God.
  • But what has all this got to do with human persons? All it shows is that persons don’t form a natural kind.
Footnote 110:
  • I suppose it is the same question, apart from the pejorative tone of ‘nothing but’.
  • Animalists don’t deny that we are ‘very special’ animals, but we are identical to animals nonetheless.
Footnote 111:
  • I broadly accept this rejection! There may be some continuity between human beings and the higher animals in moral and cognitive capacities. Indeed, there is some overlap between some animals and some (young, or mentally impaired) human beings; but there is a gulf between typical members of the species homo sapiens and typical members of any other species.
Footnote 112:
  • Well, as argued before, relatively small differences in DNA can have enormous cognitive and physical consequences without needing to invoke any non-biological agency.
  • After all, the great apes share a lot of their DNA with cabbages, but there’s no mysterious non-biological fact needed to explain the ‘gap’ in their cognitive and somatic abilities.
Footnote 113:
  • I have to admit to being mystified by this argument, whatever it is. If biology explains the FPP, what more is there to the discussion? Then we’re just special animals.
  • How could we animals have a FPP presently grounded in an organism that’s incapable of providing it? So, biology is certain to explain its origin, even if biologists don’t know what the explanation is.
Footnote 114:
  • See Wikipedia: Genetic Fallacy.
  • I couldn’t see how this (what, precisely?) was a relevant application of the expression, or that it’s a fallacy at all.
  • The Genetic Fallacy might have been in operation in supposing that because our bodies arose as survival machines for their genes, that that is what they are. But she seemed happy with our bodies being survival machines, just provided that we are not our bodies.
Footnote 115:
  • She doesn’t mention who – or what category of philosopher – has been ‘influenced’ by this article.
  • I would need to read this influential work in order to be influenced by it.
  • My intuition is that life is properly a biological phenomenon, though the term can be used metaphorically for other continuing states or events.
Footnote 116:
  • This thought doesn’t encourage me to reconsider my objections to functionalism.
  • I’d need to read the paper to find out exactly what Boyd means
Footnote 119:
  • This is the key point. Baker’s presumption all along is that ‘person’ is a substance-term, rather than an honorific referring to a substance – the human animal.
  • If this is denied, then all the rest of Baker’s argument is most likely empty blather.
Footnote 120:
  • This is not the same as siliconization – the brain stays intact in this TE. Also, Baker only refers to the body’s ‘organs’ being replaced – she doesn’t mention the skeleton, muscles and so on.
  • So, this TE is effectively one of Cyborgisation.
  • Presumably, the idea is that – with its nutritive functions taken over by hardware, the body is no longer an organism. But this is doubtful to me – the organism still retains a lot of cells which would metabolise. We would have – it seems to me – a mutilated organism, though not the maximally-mutilated BIV.
  • But I dare say the TE could be modified to remove these objections.
Footnote 121:
  • Indeed – it’s just an ability.
  • Presumably most people never ask or consider this question.
  • Also, as we organisms develop, all sorts of abilities come to fruition (even if the ability is never utilised, in response to my objection above).
  • Why does any of this represent an ontological change? Beyond the appearance of a Phase Sortal, that is?
Footnote 132:
  • This account of a Person seems rather circular. Can the FPP be explained without reference to Person?
Footnote 137: Footnote 138:
  • This is important, as it might be argued that the causal powers of artifacts are not in them but in us, who created them and react to them as we do.
  • Having said that, it may be that a lot of the causal powers of persons are artifactual in that they depend on us for their effectiveness. Crocodiles are happy to eat people without considering any moral scruple.
  • Since Baker rejects the brain-state example, the only non-artifactual example given here is that of genes and their DNA. But, what causal powers do genes have that their constituting DNA doesn’t?
  • Also, is ‘constitution’ univocal in all the examples? Is it occasionally mereological – the traditional idea of constitution – as in the case of genes and their DNA?
Footnote 140:
  • Do all persons with such a capacity actually exercise it? Are some totally unreflective? Is this learned in society? In only certain societies? Why is it so important?
Footnote 141:
  • She doesn’t say why, nor where in the Tractatus this image occurs, nor its relevance.
  • There’s a diagram of the eye and the visual field at 5.6331. Wittgenstein doesn’t think the visual field is like the diagram. Why did Baker mention Wittgenstein at all?
  • But it is, I suppose, important to notice the difference between most sentient creatures ‘window on the world’ and what Baker has in mind for a FPP.
Footnote 146:
  • Are animalists reductionists, eg. if they claim – as I do – that a human person is a Phase Sortal of a Human Animal? What are students reduced to by recognising them as phase sortals?
  • Also, are animalists committed to viewing everything in sub-personal terms?
Footnote 151:
  • She doesn’t mention her own Christian Materialist views at this point. I suspect her of trying to head off criticisms that she holds the philosophical views she does for pre-philosophical religious reasons.
Footnote 154: Footnote 156:
  • This modal stipulation is important, and will feature a lot in Baker’s arguments.
Footnote 158:
  • I’m not sure what to say about these commitments and prognostications at the moment. We’ll see how important they are for her arguments in due course.
  • I suspect them of being rather dubious and at odds with what’s known about – or at least argued over in – psychology: for instance, modularity of mind, the Freudian unconscious, MPD, Commissurotomy and the like.
  • I noted that Baker’s commitment to ‘medium-sized dry goods’ is at variance with Peter Van Inwagen’s approach.
Footnote 159:
  • I’ve not really bothered considering whether this list is exhaustive.
  • I do wonder, though, whether persons per se are the sort of thing that have persistence conditions and form a single Kind for science to investigate.
  • Baker would claim that a person persists only insofar as the same FPP persists. But just what are the persistence conditions of a FPP, and how is science to investigate it?
  • Baker’s Practical Realist approach can be seen as a temporising measure until science catches up.
  • But, if Person is a Forensic concept, has science really got anything to do with it? Of course, it has much to do with us, who are persons, but that’s a different matter and the cause of much dispute and confusion.
Footnote 165:
  • These are both artifacts. Is this significant?
  • One could argue that things exist intrinsically, but some of their properties are extrinsic.
  • So, the flag exists intrinsically as a piece of cloth, but it gains the property of being a flag in certain circumstances.
  • At the moment it’s not clear to me whether being a Person is an intrinsic or extrinsic property. Most of the properties of an individual that is a person are intrinsic, but some – ‘being loved’ for instance – are extrinsic; but there are no ontological implications here.
  • Consider ‘mere Cambridge changes’.
Footnotes 166, 167: Footnote 170:
  • Constitution is used in two distinct senses here. The stones constitute a heap in the mereological sense, but that heap only constitutes a wall if there a people who build walls and find them useful for fulfilling various functions.
Footnote 173:
  • This sounds a bit circular, and doesn’t exclude the possibility of ontology outside the natural world – ie. the supernatural world – which baker believes in but doesn’t advertise here.
  • But the intent is to exclude immaterial things such as immaterial souls or minds existing in the absence of bodies.
  • Even so, Baker isn’t a materialist as commonly understood: she believes in supernatural immaterial beings (the very things that traditional materialists deny).
  • The dividing line is usually between naturalists and supernaturalists. Some naturalists will allow the existence of immaterial things like minds.
Footnote 174:
  • Is Baker equivocating over Constitution here, and slipping into its mereological usage?
  • Just what do atoms constitute other than – in themselves – the elements and – in combination – various molecules?
  • Or, is this case parallel to that of her ‘wall constituted by stones’ case?
  • But atoms constitute a dog only in the mereological sense – dogs live on in the absence of dog-lovers (see "Pierce (Jessica) - The posthuman dog"!).
Footnote 175:
  • My words – Baker doesn’t claim any mathematical relationship, only that things with more causal powers are more significant.
  • This claim – while maybe reasonable – is an intuition rather than a fact.
  • Also, ‘significance’ isn’t part of the natural order, and depends on the evaluator. Human persons aren’t significant to crocodiles other than as a source of food, and so are less significant – for crocodiles – than wildebeest.
Footnote 180:
  • So, what are – in Baker’s view – the persistence conditions of bodies? Is it her job to know? How does it affect her programme?
  • The persistence of lumps of clay may be arbitrary, but the persistence of Organisms has a principled explanation (probably as partaking in a Process – a Life). This is why taking Organisms rather than Bodies as what Human Persons are (or are constituted by) is the better move.
Footnote 181:
  • Well, yes. Isn’t this Emergentism?
  • See my Note on Reductionism (explanatory and ontological).
  • By appearing to go against explanatory reduction, isn’t Baker going against the whole aim of science?
Footnote 183:

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