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Write-up2 (as at 14/04/2026 04:22:05): What are We?
Plug Note3
- Thesis Text:
- 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 Person4. 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.
- 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”.
- “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 paradoxes5?
- 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.
- Some of the potential answers to the question will be the same whether we phrase the question in the singular or the plural.
- 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):-
- Animals6,
- Organisms7,
- Bodies8,
- Beings9 and
- Brains10.
- On the psychological side, I might be a Self11 or, more popularly, a Person12. I might even be a non-essentially-embodied entity like a Soul13.
- I will consider all these options in due course; with the exception of a detailed discussion of the concept PERSON14 (which is reserved for the Chapter 315), I will do so later in this chapter.
- Olson, in "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology", also considers whether we might be Humean Bundles16 of mental states and events, and even the Nihilist17 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.
- 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 ANIMAL18, HUMAN ORGANISM19 and HUMAN BEING20. 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 SELF21, and also a PERSON22, as no doubt would my reader. So, cannot all these answers be correct?
- 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?
- There are two kinds of questions I want to ask.
- Firstly, what sort of being am I identical to?
- 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)?
- 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 law23; “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 identity24 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).
- 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 persons25, 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.
- 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.
- 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).
Further Remarks:
- This Note doesn’t attempt to answer this question, which is left until later.
- Maybe contrast terms like “Wikipedia: Mensch” with “person”.
- For my Thesis Chapter on this topic, follow this link26.
- The reading lists below are somewhat bloated; but, in general, only a small portion of the works cited needs to be addressed in the context of this question.
References
- Relevant Works cited above:
- "Brandom (Robert) - Toward a Normative Pragmatics", 1994, Write-Up Note27, Read = 50%
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We?", 2007, Write-Up Note28, Annotations, Internal PDF Link, Read
- "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology", 2007, Book, Read
- For a page of Links29 to this Note, Click here.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read30, include the following:-
- Aeon:
- "Callcut (Daniel) - What are we?", 2018, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- General:
- "Baillie (James) - What Am I?", 1993, Write-Up Note31, Footnote32
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Big-Tent Metaphysics", 2008, Write-Up Note33, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons in the Material World", 2000, Write-Up Note34, Internal PDF Link
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'", 2001, Write-Up Note35, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Response to Eric Olson", 2008, Write-Up Note36, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Review of 'What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology' by Eric T. Olson", 2008, Write-Up Note37, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - What Am I?", 1999, Write-Up Note38, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Footnote39
- "Belshaw (Christopher) - Review of Paul Snowdon's 'Persons, Animals, Ourselves'", 2015, External Link
- "Bilgrami (Akeel) - What Kind of Creatures Are We? Foreword", 2018
- "Blackburn (Simon) - Review of Stephen Pinker - The Blank Slate ('Meet the Flintstones')", 2003, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Blatti (Stephan) - Animalism (SEP)", 2014, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Blatti (Stephan) - We Are Animals", 2018, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Chisholm (Roderick) - Which Physical Thing Am I? An Excerpt from 'Is There a Mind-Body Problem?'", 2000, Write-Up Note40, Footnote41
- "Claxton (Guy) - Intelligence in the Flesh - Limbering Up: An Introduction", 2015
- "DeGrazia (David) - Are we essentially persons? Olson, Baker, and a reply", 2002, Write-Up Note42, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Johnston (Mark) - Human Beings", 1987, Write-Up Note43, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Le Fanu (James) - Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves", 2009, Book, Footnote44
- "Liao (S. Matthew) - The Organism View Defended", 2006, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Lockwood (Michael) - When Does a Life Begin?", 1987, Annotations
- "Nozick (Robert) - The Identity of the Self: Introduction", 1981
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We?", 2007, Write-Up Note45, Annotations, Internal PDF Link, Footnote46
- "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology", 2007, Book, Footnote47
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? The Question", 2007, Write-Up Note48, Internal PDF Link
- "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? What Now?", 2007, Write-Up Note49, Internal PDF Link
- "Parfit (Derek) - Nagel's Brain", 1986
- "Parfit (Derek) - What We Believe Ourselves To Be", 1986, Write-Up Note50
- "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern", 2009
- "Smith (Barry C.), Broks (Paul), Kennedy (A.L.) & Evans (Jules) - Audio: What Does It Mean to Be Me?", 2015, External Link
- "Snowdon (Paul) - The Self and Personal Identity", 2009, Write-Up Note51
- "Taylor (Charles) - Responsibility For Self", 1976
- A further reading list might start with:-
- General:
- "Bailey (Andrew M.) - The Elimination Argument", 2014, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 67%
- "Bailey (Andrew M.) - You Needn’t be Simple", 2014, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 7%
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Animalism vs. Constitutionalism", 2016, Read = 42%
- "Barash (David P.) - Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are", 2018, Book, Read = 2%
- "Blackburn (Simon) - Has Kant Refuted Parfit?", 1997, Write-Up Note52, Read = 156%
- "Bloom (Paul) - Descartes' Baby: How Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human", 2004, Book, Footnote53
- "Brandom (Robert) - Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing & Discursive Commitment", 1998, Book, Read = 3%
- "Brandom (Robert) - Toward a Normative Pragmatics", 1994, Write-Up Note54, Read = 50%, Footnote55
- "Broks (Paul) - Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology", 2003, Book, Read = 2%
- "Brown (Warren) - Numinous or Carnal Persons - The Practical Costs of Inner Souls and Selves", 2005, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 4%
- "Bynum (Terrell Ward) - Audio: Two Philosophers of the Information Age", 2009, Read = 67%
- "Chitty (Andrew) - First Person Plural Ontology and Praxis", 1997, Internal PDF Link, Read = 13%
- "Chomsky (Noam) - What Kind of Creatures Are We?", 2018, Book, Read = 4%
- "Conway Morris (Simon) - Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe", 2003, Book, Read = 4%
- "Corcoran (Kevin) - Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul", 2006, Book, Read = 13%
- "Dennett (Daniel) - Natural Freedom", 2003, Read = 67%
- "Doepke (Frederick) - Introduction: What Are We?", 1996, Write-Up Note56, Annotations, Read = 9%
- "Doepke (Frederick) - What We Are", 1996, Write-Up Note57
- "Ford (Norman) - When Did I Begin: Conception of the Human Individual in History, Philosophy and Science", 1988, Book, Read = 3%
- "Hershenov (David) - Animals, Persons and Bioethics", 2008, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 4%
- "Jeeves (Malcolm A.) - Neuroscience, Evolutionary Psychology and the Image of God", 2005, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 7%
- "Locke (Don) - Who I Am", 1979, Internal PDF Link
- "McMahan (Jeff) - Identity", 2002
- "Mitchell (Kevin J.) - Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are", 2018, Book, Read = 1%
- "Murphy (Nancey) - Scientific Perspectives on Christian Anthropology", Undated, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
- "Noe (Alva) - Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness", 2009, Book, Read = 8%
- "Olson (Eric) - The Nature of People", 2014, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 25%
- "Parfit (Derek) - We Are Not Human Beings", 2016, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 38%
- "Pollock (John L.) - What Am I? Virtual Machines and the Mind/Body Problem", 2008, Internal PDF Link
- "Richards (Janet Radcliffe) - Internicene Strife", 2000, Read = 3%
- "Smith (Joel) - The First-Person Plural and Immunity to Error", 2018, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 4%
- "Snowdon (Paul) - [P & not-A] Cases: An Introduction", 2014, Read = 44%
- "Stevenson (Leslie) & Haberman (David) - Ten Theories of Human Nature", 2004, Book, Read = 17%
- "Swinburne (Richard) - Personal Identity: The Dualist Theory", 1984, Write-Up Note58, Read = 19%
- "Trigg (Roger) - Ideas of Human Nature: An Historical Introduction", 1999, Book, Read = 4%
- "Trupp (Andreas) - Why We Are Not What We Think We Are: A New Approach to the Nature of Personal Identity and of Time", 1987, Book, Read = 4%
- "Ward (Keith) - More Than Matter: Is Matter All We Really Are?", 2010, Book, Read = 2%
- "Williams (Bernard) - Making Sense of Humanity", 1987, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
- "Wilson (Robert) - Persons, Social Agency, and Constitution", 2005, Internal PDF Link
- For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
- Read: No items to list.
- Further Reading: No items to list.
- This is mostly a place-holder59.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2:
- This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (14/04/2026 04:22:05).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 32: Footnote 39: Footnote 41: Footnote 44:
- An annoying book, but one I ought to study.
Footnote 46: Footnote 47:
- Probably the most important source for this Chapter of my Thesis.
- There are hosts of papers by Olson that touch on this topic, but this book, and the paper of the same name, are enough in this context.
Footnote 53:
- This looks interesting, but is somewhat off-topic for a priority reading-list.
Footnote 55:
- See sections I:1-3.
- See Draft Note, Review Comments.
- This excerpt from Brandom raises some questions about the community we call “we”.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026