Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Personal Identity

Animalism

(Text as at 26/11/2007 23:25:26)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

There are different interpretations of Animalism, which I need to compare and contrast. My preferred option is Olson’s, namely, that animalism is the view that we are identical to human animals¹ and that, since human animals don’t have any psychological properties essentially, neither do we.

Olson is the prime candidate for an Animalist - see "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology" and "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology". Follow this link² for others. The claim is not that there are no non-animal persons, but that human persons are essentially animals. I incline to agree, but need to press hard with thought experiments³ to see why we can’t separate the two. Is the distinction empirical or conceptual? Why can’t I copy my consciousness onto a machine⁴ and that machine be me? My intuition is that phenomenal consciousness⁵ essentially involves a brain-like infrastructure and copying a consciousness onto a machine isn’t identity-preserving, even if possible, but the creation of a simulacrum⁶.

Basically, I reject functionalism⁷ 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. Also, should we consider fetuses⁸ and the senile or those in a PVS⁹ as persons? See Baker who alleges that those who have, will have or have had the capacity for a first-person perspective¹⁰ should be accounted persons. But is this simply arbitrary retrofitting of philosophy to Christian doctrine (though Wiggins seems to share this view)?

I must also discuss animals¹¹ under this head. If we are identical to (human) animals then to what, exactly, are we identical, and that are their persistence conditions? Note that there are disagreements about the referent of “animal” – is it the organism or the body¹²? The key issue is with corpses¹³. Feldman thinks they are animals, but Olson thinks they aren’t. Death¹⁴ is central to the enquiry. Just when does the person or animal commence¹⁵ or cease to be? If he is resuscitated (or resurrected¹⁶ / reincarnated¹⁷, assuming these to be possible) what happens in the interregnum?

As noted elsewhere¹⁸,¹⁹, I need to investigate the termini of human existence, and the issues they raise for the various views – the “fetus problem²⁰” for the constitution view and the “corpse problem”²¹ for animalism.