Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author’s Abstract

1. A major objection to the view that the relation of persons to human animals¹ is coincidence rather than identity is that on this view the human animal² will share the coincident person's physical properties, and so should (contrary to the view) share its mental properties.
2. But while the same physical predicates are true of the person and the human animal³, the difference in the persistence conditions⁴ of these entities implies that there will be a difference in the properties ascribed by these predicates, with the result that the physical properties that determine the person's mental states will belong to the person and not to the human animal⁵.