Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Personal Identity

Constitution View - Objections

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

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

The two obvious issues are the “fetus¹ problem” and the “too many minds” objection (otherwise known as the “thinking animal” argument).

In saying that Theo is a human animal and that also that Theo is a person that is ontologically distinct from, and merely constituted by, the human animal, Olson argues that we have too many thinkers and therefore the constitution view is false. I don’t like this argument, in that the form would prove too much. I see analogies with various mereological arguments (Unger’s “there are no ordinary things”, the sorites arguments against the existence of material objects with parts, and maybe with Tib/Tibbles, Dion/Theon). 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 souls (again, too many thinkers – if the brain thinks, why do we need a soul that thinks as well). However, the degree of ontological distinctness between “the self and its brain” is greater than that between the person and the human being that (maybe temporarily) constitutes it. I will reconsider this collection of arguments in due course.