Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

1. A relatively new view to appear in the philosophical literature is one according to which human persons are wholly physical, non-simple entities that are neither identical with nor reducible to physical organisms.
2. The view's most eloquent defender, Lynne Baker, argues in "Materialism with a Human Face" that what makes an entity a human person is its possessing a "first-person perspective³." What makes an entity a human person is its being "constituted by⁴" a human organism⁵,⁶.
3. Baker argues that₇ a thing x "constitutes" a thing y just in case x and y are co-located and stand in a genuine relation of unity.
4. Persons⁸ and bodies⁹, Baker argues, stand in the constitution relation.
5. What is perhaps most interesting is that according to Baker's constitution view¹⁰ a person could start out as a human person and survive through changes which would render him or her nonhuman. Although this last claim appears to make way for the possibility of a human person surviving the death¹¹ of his or her body it also entails that human persons are not essentially₁₂ human.
6. Many will regard that as a high price to pay₁₃ for the view. Moreover, the view seems to leave such a cleavage₁₄ between human persons¹⁵ and the human bodies that "constitute" them that it warrants the charge₁₆ of being a version of dualism¹⁷ after all.

1. This is a succinct statement and defense of the constitution view¹⁹ of persons.
2. Persons are constituted by bodies with which they are not identical.
3. The metaphysical difference between persons and their bodies is that persons have first-person perspectives²⁰ essentially.
4. I reply to some objections and give reasons to accept the constitution view²¹.

0. Introduction²²
1. The First-Person Perspective²³
2. Constitution²⁴
3. Persons and Bodies²⁵
4. Replies to Some Objections²⁶
5. Why Accept the Constitution View?²⁷

In-Page Footnotes:

• Taken from "Corcoran (Kevin) - Soul, Body and Survival: Introduction - Soul or Body?", p. 8.
• I’ve added the bullets and links to my own Notes.

• This is a very brief and somewhat partial description of Baker’s view.
• What the Editor says would make the Constitution relationship symmetrical, which it isn’t.

• This is because – for Baker – a person is individuated by her FPP. We are to imagine that this stays constant as parts of the human being are replaced by inorganic parts.
• Baker is a bit quick on how FPPs persist, and it’s an open question whether it would persist as bits of the brain are ‘siliconized’, say.
• I do view this as an advantage over Olson’s form of animalism, whereby I – as I’m ‘Cyborgized’ – get smaller and smaller (because the inorganic parts don’t count as parts of the organism.

• Really? Why should they?
• Most people want to live forever, and don’t imagine they’d spend eternity as ‘humans’ (at least not in the terrestrial sense).
• I dare say there’s much confusion in this context about what it means to be ‘human’ (presuming this to mean ‘identical to a Human Being’.
• Isn’t the issue – for Christians –to do with being made ‘in the image and likeness of God’? Is God ‘human’? Could we be differently embodied yet still reflect this image (whatever that is supposed to mean)?
• It’ll be interesting to read what "Peckham (Jeremy) - Masters or Slaves?: AI And The Future Of Humanity" (Chapter 4) has to say on the matter.

• Where does he get this from? Baker claims that her ‘unity relation’ is as close to identity as you can get – short of identity itself.

• I imagine that Baker would have been amazed at this claim!
• She actually has a section rebutting it!

• This seems to be by Baker herself.
• I’ve added the bullets and links to my own Notes.

• What follows is a fairly full but abbreviated summary of Baker’s text.
• My own comments appear – at least in the first instance – as footnotes.
• My intention has been to summarise the text first and only make the comments that I’m likely to forget!
• Now that I’ve completed the summarisation, I now need to complete the annotations. Except in cases of obscurity, my comments are based on my summary rather than on the original text. I will re-read both in parallel after completing the commentary so that I can make any necessary adjustments.
• I note in passing that the topics that are covered in this Paper come up over and over again in my research, so I’m doubtless both repeating and maybe contradicting myself at my understanding and opinions evolve.

• This is an important distinction, but one that Baker tends to elide somewhat.
• Exemplars of Natural Kind terms have persistence conditions that we can to some degree discover, while those for Artifacts are to some degree arbitrary.
• There may, therefore, be little direct analogy between the two classes of object.

• So, Persons such as us are material.

• I’ve checked the text, and Baker does say ‘constituted by’. Constitution has a technical sense for Baker which is not what is often intended in common-sense usage. She doesn’t usually use it in the mereological sense of ‘composed of’, which looks like all she needs in this context to assure us that she’s a (Christian) materialist.
• She goes on to explain the distinction between composition and constitution and – on reflection – I think she does intend ‘constitution’ here (rather than ‘composition’).

• What material things are not ‘ordinary’? Not that this matters much in this context.
• All she is saying in this sentence might be not much more than the uncontroversial claim that a thing is more than the sum of its parts.
• But she’s probably saying much more than this.
  1. She would deny mereological essentialism. A material object isn’t identical to the specific set of particles that constitute it at a time, or it would not persist from one moment to the next, or would become an increasingly scattered object.
  2. If I understand her correctly, a statue is not merely not the sum of its parts (in that it requires form as well as matter) but is not even essentially made of the kind of matter it is in fact made of. A marble statue might – by gradual repairs – be converted into a bronze statue that is – for Baker – the very same statue – that was once constituted by a piece of marble and is now constituted by a piece of bronze.

• See my Notes on:-
  → Kinds,
  → Natural Kinds, and
  → Sortals.

• See my Notes on:-
  → Persistence, and
  → Persistence Criteria.

• This is a rather alarming claim. A human person is (constituted by) an Organism whereas a statue is constituted by a ‘lump’. Organisms and ‘lumps’ have very different persistence conditions.
• What Baker means is that both human persons and statues are material objects – in the sense of being constituted by them – but are not (she claims) identical to these material objects.

• Later on I discuss the minimalist situation where we have an unreconstructed cowrie shell used as a piece of currency.
• See Wikipedia: Shell money.
• There’s a parallel discussion in "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Constitution" (see the Section When does constitution occur?).
• Note that – in this world with no artists – what Baker is claiming is that the lump of marble indistinguishable from a statue would not be a statue.
• Watch out for the non-parallel situation for persons!

• See my Note on Homo Sapiens.

• When Baker says that the species homo sapiens could exist without any psychological properties, what modality does she have in mind? She must be talking about the species as obviously individual members may have no relevant psychology. But if the species had no psychology, would it be the same species? ‘Sapiens’ and all that …?
• Also, I might add, what is the parallel with the ‘statue’ situation, which relies on extrinsic relations? There’s nothing parallel cited for persons. Baker seems to think of personhood as a purely intrinsic matter, though we might argue that extrinsic factors are essential: language, forensic matters, and so on.
• This is lack of parallelism is brought out by the thought that it is not possible for an organism that has the structure it does not to be a person, if it in fact qualifies as such. The same applies if all typical members of the species so qualify. There has to be a material difference for it to be the case that typical members would not have had a FPP.

• This seems a fair analogy, unlike some others Baker makes, but it doesn’t really demonstrate anything about whether statue-hood or personhood is a substance term or a property of a substance.

• I think ‘pieces of’ is critical here. The piece of marble is ‘composed of’ marble but the statue is not ‘composed of’ anything – it is ‘constituted by’ the piece.
• Having said that, we noted above that Baker thinks that all material things are constituted by fundamental particles.

• These examples are rather inept: plastic isn’t a conductor and Martian matter is no different to terrestrial matter. But we get the point.
• Quite matter – and how organised – can constitute a person is an empirical matter.

• As noted, this is a weak analogy. Indeed, making analogies with artifacts strikes me as a mistake that weakens the case for the CV.
• Can Baker do without such (dis-)analogies? I think they are more motivational than logically necessary and supportive.

• This is an important and interesting claim.
• For Olson, the human animal (organism) diminishes in size as its parts are replaced by inorganic replacements.
• What would Baker’s view be? She would have the person constituted by this Cyborg (and – ultimately – by an Android).

• See my Note on Human Persons.

• Baker doesn’t cover persistence of the FPP at this point, other than that it either exists or it doesn’t.
• As far as I can see, there’s no account of this anywhere in this paper or – as far as I remember – anywhere else in her work.
• But I think this is critical for her theory. My view is that the FPP is had – and individuated by – the individual that has it. Much like smiles.
• Hence, the CV may suffer from fatal ‘cart before the horse’ objections – like those raised against Bundle Theories and the PV generally.

• The conditions for having a FPP are rather strict – according to Baker – and she’s open to the accusation that people might pop into and out of existence throughout the lives of their human animals.

• While this is true of the supposedly parallel case of the Statue and the Clay, in that case there’s an extrinsic difference (recognition of the clay as being a statue by an ‘art-world’). But there’s no such extrinsic difference for persons and their bodies.
• True, there are extrinsic factors in some of the conditions of personhood – possession of language, forensic matters – for Baker it’s the FPP that’s definitive, and this is intrinsic.
• I’m not sure how the FPP is supposed to subsist, but it would seem to be ‘generated’ – for human persons – by the human animal that constitutes it.

• We’re referred to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View" for a detailed defence of this claim.

• If Bodies and Organisms have different persistence conditions, then this equation doesn’t – or shouldn’t – make sense, at least for Baker.
• If Corpses are ‘bodies’ – as Olson points out – they have different persistence conditions to those of organisms.
• But I’ll leave further comment until Section III (Persons and Bodies).

• We’re referred to
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", Chapter 3 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The First-Person Perspective"), and to
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The First-Person Perspective: A Test For Naturalism"
• See my Note on the FPP, which will need updating in the light of this discussion.

• This idea is very Lockean, but Locke receives no credits in this Paper.

• We’re referred to "Castaneda (Hector-Neri) - Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" and another couple of references I’m never going to follow up.

• Is Self-consciousness (in this context) just Consciousness of Self?
• Does self-consciousness imply the existence of Selves?
• If so, do the higher animals have Selves?

• This conscious ‘point of view’ is so important, and by having such a restrictive take on the FPP, Baker downgrades this important fact.
• Some of the TEs of PID depend on this ‘point of view’, this ‘window on the world’.
• Take the Future Great Pain Test, used to smoke out whether we think a future individual will be us. While a dog may not have the cognitive capacity to think in this way – ‘of itself as itself’ – it knows that it is it that will receive future goods or ills.
• This isn’t just (or isn’t best explained as) ‘behaviouristic conditioning’. An ill-treated dog cowers before a beating because it anticipates what is about to befall it, just as much as an ill-treated child (or partner) would.

• How does Baker know this – that dogs have no ‘conception of themselves as themselves’?
• They are social animals that need to fit into a hierarchy, cooperate in packs and yet – as companion animals – associate with animals of other species. They get jealous and seek attention. What more is required for an ‘ontological difference’?

• This is interesting. Baker gives "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", Chapter 3 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The First-Person Perspective") as the reference where she argues for the ineliminability of the first ‘I’ in ‘I wonder if I am hungry’.
• This seems similar to the discussion in "Anscombe (G.E.M.) - The First Person", which Olson argues against in What Are We? Chapter 1.4: Rephasing the Question, by analogy with ‘it is raining’.
• G.E.M. Anscombe was married to Peter Geach and held similar Wittgensteinian views.
• As for Bertrand Russell, there’s a well-known quotations from "Russell (Bertrand) - Human Knowledge - Its Scope and Limits" to the effect that “A dog cannot relate its autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor. ” I’ve now tracked down the exact passage to Part II (Language), Chapter 1 (The Uses of Langage), p. 74. I Googled the quotation, but none gave the reference except an article in Philosophy Now. I’ve downloaded this and a couple of related ones, but not yet logged them in my database:-
  → Philosophy Now – Issue 18 (1997, Philosophy Now: Patrick Phillips - Talking to the Animals)
  → Philosophy Now – Issue 25 (1999, Philosophy Now: Jane Forsey - Humans and Dumb Animals)
  → Philosophy Now - Issue 89 (2012, Philosophy Now: J'aime Wells - Language-Using Apes)
• The first of the above essays includes a quotation from "Wittgenstein (Ludwig) - Philosophical Investigations" “A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe that his master will come the day after tomorrow? … How am I supposed to answer this? ”
• The same book also says “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him” (II.xi, p. 223).

• This sounds absurd – as though the only persons are those who can speak English.
• But the important question is whether language is essential before an individual becomes a person.
• "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood" seems to think so, but what about a Language of Thought for pre-linguistic persons?

• I would agree, but wouldn’t make the conditions as strict as Baker’s.

• I agree that neither phenomenal consciousness nor intentionality are sufficient and agree that both are necessary.
• However, I don’t take personhood to be a natural kind concept, but an honorific, and quite who qualifies is something we decide rather than discover.
• Going back to Bentham, the higher non-human animals (at least) can suffer and know that they are suffering (when they are) and can anticipate future suffering (and the same goes for pleasures).
• This is ontologically more important than wondering whether you’re hungry or ruminating on your own impending death (assuming the higher non-human animals can’t do this).

• I think biologists would recognise the biological significance of the realisation in an animal that it is a distinct individual with a perspective on the world and with the ability to make short or long term plans, to form social relationships, to be phenomenally conscious in a non-dozy way … all things that the higher animals can do.
• The neural underpinnings of all this in the brain are on a continuum between related species.
• The biological facts that give homo sapiens (and maybe some extinct hominids) such an advantage over the other great apes (and the higher animals generally) are bipedalism, opposable thumbs, and flexible vocalisation to allow detailed communication.
• The ‘special’ features that Baker wants to stipulate as definitive of the FPP are ‘just’ the consequences down the line of these ontological changes that enable them.

• This is intended as a witty allusion to the largely discredited Recapitulation Theory (see Wikipedia: Recapitulation theory) that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ (embryogenesis mirrors evolutionary history).
• I doubt it has much relevance to the argument.

• We’re referred to:-
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Unity without Identity: A New Look at Material Constitution" and
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Why Constitution is Not Identity".
• I need to analyse these papers before I can fully comment on this section of this Paper.

• Dollar bills – like statues – are artifacts, so whether they are a fair analogy for the relation between a person and their body is moot.
• Any value had by a dollar bill is an extrinsic relation between the bill and a community. The bill may be fake (but still accepted), defaced (so only redeemable at a bank, say), out of date (say there’s been a redenomination), and so on …
• I suppose it may still be a dollar bill, for all that, even if subject to one of these qualifications. But it would need to have been made with a certain intention.
• Any comparison between this relation – dollar bill versus piece of paper – and the relation between a person and her body is very slight.

• This is a much better analogy, in that genes fall under natural kind concepts. That the constituting strings of DNA are any use depends on the environment in which the genes are expressed. So, their use or value is an extrinsic relation. But is this the same as their very existence?
• I’m not yet convinced whether even this relation is analogous to the relation between a person and her body. We’ll see …

• We’re referred to:-
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", Chapter 2 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution"), and (again) to
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Unity without Identity: A New Look at Material Constitution".
• Again, I need to analyse these papers before I can fully comment on this section of this Paper.

• Yes – but the question is whether these new Kinds are:-
  1. Natural Kinds or Conventional,
  → and whether they are
  2. Substantial or Phase Sortals.
• I think they are Conventional Phase Sortals.

• See my Note on Causality.
• I’m suspicious of this. Just what ‘powers’ are intended. I suspect they can either be attributed to the constituting entity or are down to relations between that entity and the environment.
• I suppose an example would be ‘causing joy’ when I find my lost £50 note.

• It is a very long way from ‘chemicals’ to an organism!
• At the very least, we have organisms as an assembly of organs, constituted by cells. And cells are themselves very complex structures, with various parts and including other structures – organelles and the nucleus – which are themselves highly complex and contain yet more structures …
• The examples that Baker gives elsewhere … of one whole thong being constituted by another whole thing is very different, and this example is no analogy.
• I suspect that Baker has fallen into the trap she accuses others of falling into – of confusing Constitution with Mereological Composition.
• Note: check that she actually does make this accusation – it may just be something I imagine I’ve noticed.
• Added to this, later on Baker denies that an organism is constituted by any disjunction of cells.

• Well, yes it would, but once an organism has been assembled, there’s no more to say. It has the properties it has and is responsible for all that’s of value in its existence.
• There are lots of questions about Reductionism, but this has nothing to do with Constitution.

• The primary Kind an object belongs to is often a matter of judgement, and there is a hierarchy: statue, artwork, artifact.
• Sometimes we won’t know what an artifact was intended for if we’re too remote from the culture.

• See my Note on Modality.
• So, Baker rules out Metamorphosis? If an individual changes its primary kind, then it would cease to exist? How does this work out with biological metamorphosis?
  

• Just what is an ‘art world’? I think there’s a distinction between the intentions of the sculptor and the response of subsequent viewers.
• Maybe it’s easier to consider with paintings. These can (initially, at least) be rejected. ‘Take away that nasty green thing’ (for Constable’s ‘Water-meadows near Salisbury’ landscape when first exhibited: see V&A: Constable - Water-meadows near Salisbury).
• But … it was a painting for all that, irrespective of the opinion of the then art-world.
• Similarly, a book may be written – such as a private diary – with no intention of a ‘literary establishment’ – or, indeed, anyone other than the author – ever catching sight of it.

• As noted before, the relationship between genes and the DNA that constitutes them is complex and unlike the other examples. As far as I can see, a gene is just a gene, and in the absence of the right environment, it is simply a wasted gene.
• I suppose the point is that – had the DNA come together by random processes – it would not be a gene, but just the collection of DNA. Maybe.
• I’m reminded of a paper by – "Putnam (Hilary) - Brains in a Vat" – that I read as an undergraduate but made no notes on. It asks whether a random sketch drawn by an ant in the sand that looked like Winston Churchill would be a picture of the great man. Of course it would not, as it had been produced unintelligently and unintelligently.

• I find these precise formulations difficult to follow. Baker will apply this schema to persons and their bodies in the next section, but for the moment I’ll illustrate the situation by the simplest example – the Statue and the Clay.
• So:-
  1. The Clay (x) and the Statue (y) are spatially coincident at t.
  2. The Clay (x) is in G-favourable (Statue-favourable) circumstances at t.
  3. Necessarily, if anything that has F (Clay) as its primary-kind property is in G-favourable (Statue-favourable) circumstances at t, then there exists some spatially-coincident thing at t that has G (Statue) as its primary-kind property.
     • Presumably, x (Clay) is statue-shaped, and
     • There’s an appreciative art-world.
  4. Possibly, Clay (x) exists at t and there is no spatially-coincident thing at t that has G (Statue) as its primary-kind property.
     • So, either Clay (x) is not Statue-shaped, or
     • There is no appreciative art-world.
  5. If Statue (y) is immaterial, then Clay (x) x is also immaterial.

• I don’t understand this. How can two immaterial things be spatially coincident (as in (a))? Shouldn’t clause (e) say ‘material’ (twice)? Even so, it’s superfluous.
• It is possible – I think – for both Constitution and Mereological Composition to occur for immaterial objects.
• A book – let us say a literary masterpiece (like a Dostoevsky novel) – is an abstract object that can be instantiated in paper or on computer disks. It has words as parts. It might also – by Baker’s lights – require a literary establishment to be recognised as a literary masterpiece.

• This is very important for Baker. She invokes the alleged ‘coherence’ of the CV whenever she thinks the questions are begged against it.
• However, as we will see, various epicycles have to be added to defend the concept against objections, which make me think that it is not as coherent as she would like.

• For Leibnizian identity, see my Notes on Leibniz and Logic of Identity.
• Presumably this ‘unity relation’ is Baker’s own invention.

• Baker has spelled out this ‘borrowing’ or holding of properties derivatively in:-
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", Chapter 2 ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution").
• I need to complete my analysis of this Chapter.

• I wonder if the piece of plastic is just evidence that you have a driver’s license (or that you are legally entitled to drive vehicles of certain categories)? Much as paper money is (or used to be) a promissory note.
• Do such quibbles matter? Linguistic conventions are important in these cases – eg. to avoid charges of multiple occupancy, double-counting and the like.

• I’ll need to check with the above reference ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution") even to see what they mean, via examples, and to see whether there is gerrymandering going on.
• My suspicion is that – with all these epicycles being added – constitution – as developed by Baker – is a construct rather than a discovery.
• However, I’ll have a go at appraising them in a few footnotes below.

• Alethic properties: It’s reasonable that such can’t be had derivatively.
  1. Sam is tall because his body is tall. But he’s not necessarily tall since he – the person – might have been constituted by a short body. Mind you, even Sam’s body isn’t essentially tall – it might have been short.
  2. The primary kind obviously cannot be inherited as the two coincident individuals are supposed to be of different primary kinds.

• Identity / constitution / existence: I’m not sure about these; let’s see:-
  1. Identity: Well, if x and y are in a constitution relationship, then they are of different kinds, so whatever x is identical to cannot be what y is identical to.
  2. Constitution: If x is constituted by y, then y cannot be constituted by y (itself) as y is identical to itself, and constitution is a unity relation, not an identity relation.
  3. Existence: I’m not sure about this one. Surely if x constitutes y, then x and y must have the same existence conditions?

• Time-rooted properties: apparently, this is Roderick Chisholm’s idea.
• I think an example is required. It’s a presently had property that’s only had because its possessor existed at some earlier time.

• Hybrid properties: I’ve no idea what these might be.

• No they don’t – flags are rectangular – if they are (pennants aren’t) – because this is their design.
• The cloth is cut according to this design.
• So, the flag has the property of being rectangular in virtue of constituting the flag.
• I’m not sure this objection undermines Baker’s account of the having of properties derivatively, but it shows it’s complicated.

• See the above objection.
• The cloth has all (or almost all) its properties in virtue of constituting a flag of a particular design.
• However, a Union Jack can be made of cloth or plastic, so the material is had non-derivatively … but that’s all there is to the ‘piece of cloth’ other than what it has in virtue of constituting the flag.
• The flag could – I suppose – have the design it has and not be a flag. If it was created by chance, or is not recognised as such, or …?
• A bit of cloth with no design would not – in normal circumstances be a flag. The exception may be a ‘white flag’, but even this flag has a minimalist design. A white flag cannot be black.

• This is a typical US sentiment. ‘The Stars and Stripes’ doesn’t have the property of being universally respected – it is vilified and burnt by enemies of ‘The Great Satan’.
• A particular cloth flag may be respected and vilified at the same time by different individuals (imagine an Israeli flag waved during a confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians).
• So, ‘respect’ is a relation rather than a property.
• Even so, we might say that the piece of cloth is simultaneously respected and vilified in virtue of constituting a flag.
• Yet, it is the flag and not the piece of cloth that is respected or vilified. The piece of cloth doesn’t inherit this property. Or so it seems to me.

• I’ve not ‘footnoted’ these footnotes in my abstract! They appear in the main text.
• Personally, I can’t see the problem with this.
• The analogy for flags would be: the piece of cloth has the property of being able to survive the loss of being a flag non-derivatively (because a flag cannot survive the loss of the property of being a flag, as it is a flag essentially).
• Presumably the piece of cloth would no longer constitute a flag if it was defaced, or civilisation ended, or …

• This is the new definition of ‘having a property derivatively’.
• It is subject to the various caveats on the sort of property that can be had derivatively.

• I’ve not ‘footnoted’ these footnotes in my abstract! They appear in the main text.

• Thomas Senor is a philosopher of religion I’d not heard of, and had no papers by.
• See:-
  → University of Arkansa (Fulbright College): Thomas Senor
  → PhilPeople: Thomas Senor
  → PhilArchive: Thomas Senor
  → Academia: Thomas Senor

• While we might be willing to accept this claim, what are Baker’s grounds for making it?
• The list of relationships we have to our bodies are all fine – they would be just as true if we were identical to them.

• This is rather interesting from the perspective of the CV.
• What does ‘a replica of me’ mean? I suppose that – by Baker’s lights – a replica of me would be a replica of my body. It would have a FPP, but it would not be my FPP but would just be exactly similar to it, at least momentarily.
• It would have this FPP in virtue of its functioning brain (and body) – I think this shows that the FPP – and therefore the person – is not an independent entity but is an experience generated by its physical realisation.

• We’re referred to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View" (Chapter 4: "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Constitution View of Human Persons") for a full account.
• I need to complete my write-up of this Chapter (and the rest of the Book.

• Baker is fiddling the books here. She doesn’t want to deny that human infants are persons, despite the fact that they don’t have a FPP according to her own strict rules.
• Her provision here would be sufficient for the development of a FPP in normal circumstances (ie. subject to the environmental provisions below).
• However, it would exclude certain categories of ‘mental defectives’ from constituting persons.

• Baker gives a couple of references from the 1980s which I have no intention of acquiring, though I probably need to get a handle on Developmental Psychology.
• "Gray (Peter) - Psychology", Part 6 would be a start:-
  → "Gray (Peter) - The Development of Thought and Language", and
  → "Gray (Peter) - Social Development"
• As noted above, Baker’s choice of birth might seem rather arbitrary and counterfactual if she claimed that the FPP was there at birth, but I think all she needs is that the new-born has a normal brain and a suitable environment for it to develop an FPP and hence become a person in the normal course of psychological development.

• This is a rather feeble – because uncontroversial – example.
• Situations in which the human animal is alive, but not conducive to having a FPP, would be more testing of her intuitions.
• Also, this points out the difference between Bodies and Organisms, a Corpse (at least when ‘well dead’; death is a process) – is not an organism.

• See my earlier comments.
• As before, I can’t really see why this clause is necessary, but – it seems to me – Baker’s supposedly ‘general’ definition of constitution seems to be gerrymandered to tie in with her particular understanding of what we are.

• When admitting that a dog with a FPP would be a ‘canine person’, she added the rider ‘per impossibile’.

• For all this we are referred back to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The First-Person Perspective".
• I need to complete my analysis of this Chapter.

• Baker doesn’t use these terms – ‘Second-order beliefs and desires but –given her examples – this is what she means.
• As such, Baker claims that dogs are Wantons, as described in "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", or in fact, worse than wantons. Not only do they in practise not care what their beliefs and desires are, nor reflect on them – as might be the case with human wantons – but they are not capable of doing so.
• I’m not sure how Baker thinks she knows all this about dog-psychology, but she’s probably right. It’s certainly popular wisdom to think so.
• However, most humans are very unreflective. True, they are capable of reflecting but in practise they spend most of their lives not doing so, as Bertrand Russell (and many others, according to Quote Investigator: Most People Would Die Sooner Than Think — In Fact, They Do So) said.
• Also, human beings don’t spend much time thinking about their mortality. Indeed it has been claimed that – at the practical day to day level – we don’t really believe we’ll die: see Ivan Ilych.
• So, what Baker takes to be definitive of Persons is not something that most people are comfortable with. Are they not then Persons? Frankfurt thought that Wantons – in his terms – weren’t.
• I think that Baker is unduly influenced by her Christian beliefs that the Self, and its perfection, is the essence of personhood, though I might add that New Testament Christianity isn’t univocal on this (I need to provide some evidence for this claim!). But Buddhists and Parfit think that the Self and our focus on it is pretty much the root of all evil.
• All this may suggest that Baker’s prescriptions for what counts as a person are somewhat culture-relative.

• I need to consider this very carefully. Baker makes lots of analogies – or what seem like analogies.
• She says that the statue – arguably – has its shape essentially. The marble – or whatever – is fashioned into the shape it is because the artist had in his mind a certain form, we may suppose. This is analogous to the objection I made above about Flags.
• She claims that a human person can be constituted by different bodies, but can a statue really be constituted by different lumps?
• OK, a broken statue might be repaired and thereby be constituted by a different lump (strictly-speaking, it’s constituted by a different lump from one second to the next as the lump loses atoms).
• But could a statue – having its shape essentially – really be constituted by different material? Could the Venus de Milo – that very statue – be made of bronze?
• Saul Kripke asked such questions: ‘could this lectern have been made of ice?’, though this refers to origins (in particular ‘origins essentialism’) rather than future possibilities. See "Kripke (Saul) - Naming and Necessity" (Lecture III) and my Note on Origins.

• This is where Olson gets exasperated, I think, and I have to agree with him.
• Irrespective of whether there are ‘too many thinkers’ – surely the worrying is done by the human animal? True, it can only worry because it has the mental capacity that makes it a person, but it has this capacity ‘because it does’ (it is intrinsic to it) and is a person ‘because it has this capacity’ (and others).
• For example, Baker is qualified to give her lecture because she’s a professor. But her professorship is based on her mental capacities combined with the existence of academia. She’s not a professor ‘constituted by’ the human animal. She couldn’t be a professor in the absence of academia, but this doesn’t mean that she (the human animal) and the professor are different individuals in some sort of close unity relation.

• I can just about buy this, but I don’t see any reason to accept Baker’s theory in the first place.
• There’s a clever human animal that thinks its thoughts – some shared with lower animals, others unique to human animals (or some human animals). We give it the epithet ‘person’ in recognition of its abilities, like we give it the epithet ‘professor’.
• The first-person perspective is important, but it’s something the human animal just has. That’s all there is to it.

• This is true of Trinitarians, who are the ‘orthodox’ since the time of Athanasius.
• Baker may mention this to gain sympathy from the other contributors to the volume, almost all of whom are Christian, as is Baker herself, of course. Eric Olson is the exception.
• See my Notes on Christian Materialists and Religion.
• Baker’s Trinitarian claim needs unpacking (unnecessary in her essay, given the audience).
• I suppose "Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane) - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview: Christian Doctrines (I): The Trinity" might be worth checking out.
• And – while we’re about it – looking at a contemporary Christian philosophical view on personal PID such as "Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane) - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview: Personal Identity and Life after Death" might be worth it.

• We’re referred, again, to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View":-
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Coherence Of the Idea of Material Constitution", and
  → "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Coherence Of the Constitution View of Human Persons"
• As I keep saying, I need to complete my detailed analyses of these Chapters!

• We’re referred to "Burke (Michael) - Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account".
• As this paper is short, it’s worth reading now to see if it can be dismissed as easily as Baker imagines.
• Also, see my Notes on:-
  → Statue and the Clay,
  → Sortals and
  → Kinds.

• Certainly, what counts as an artwork can depend on the art-world. Take the famous Wikipedia: Fountain (Duchamp). This is only an artwork – rather than a signed urinal – because the art-world says it is. But it’s just a urinal for all that. A new thing didn’t come into existence just because of the intention of Duchamp and the acquiescence of elements of an art-world.
• This is a general question for artifacts. Also, cowrie shells have been used as currency.
• Generally, this is a difficult question. I remember a discussion – I think at a London ‘Philosophy Now’ gathering – about what aliens would make of our artifacts. It was before I studied philosophy formally, and I fell into the trap of saying that aliens would recognise a chair as a chair.
• There’s also William Paley’s ‘watch on the beach’ argument: artifice requires an artificer.
• Presumably aliens would recognise an artifact as an artifact, even if they didn’t know what it was used for.
• I suppose there’s also a distinction between what an artifact is ‘intended as’ and what it is ‘used for’. There’s a discussion in "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Constitution" about the use of an anvil as a doorstop.

• Baker cites "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Why Constitution is Not Identity".
• I seem to have read this 18 years ago, but made exhaustive annotations which need writing up.

• Why ‘Hence …’?
• I currently fail to see the analogy between statues and clay – on the one hand – and persons and their bodies – on the other.

• This is claim to nonsensicality is itself nonsense. Gold has all sorts of properties essentially. The definitive property is its atomic number. But this was discovered.
• Maybe many natural kinds have properties we are yet to discover or are yet to confirm. So, it’s not nonsense to ask whether they have them.
• Does this matter for Baker’s argument?

• We’re referred to "Olson (Eric) - Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker".
• I need to write up my annotations on this Paper.

• This is all very muddled. I’d thought that dogs and human animals are sentient non-derivatively (because they would be sentient even if they didn’t constitute a person) but that human persons are sentient derivatively – in virtue of being constituted by a human animal.
• But is this so?

• Here’s the footnote that I referred to above in the definition of Constitution.

• Surely Baker is trying to have her cake and eat it.
• Can you really claim something is ‘univocal’ when it has different meanings according to context?

• In "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Ourselves".
• This is a complex paper that I need to finish writing up to see whether Baker has understood Snowdon’s arguments correctly.

• I’m willing to accept Baker’s defence against this objection. It is described as ‘linguistic revisionism’ in "Olson (Eric) - What Are We? Constitution", but I don’t think it’s that far-fetched or counterintuitive.
• I think the best attack against the CV is firstly to ask just what the FPP is – in particular to deny that it can be reified – and secondly to say that the CV isn’t the best explanation of the phenomena.

• I need to cross-refer these claims to Olson’s paper, "Olson (Eric) - Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker", as he and Baker routinely talk past one another.
• However, on these issues, I suspect it’s simply that Olson doesn’t take Baker’s views seriously – in particular her idea of having properties derivatively, and her different senses of ‘is’ – the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of constitution.
• As for the previous objection, I don’t think this one hits the mark and that Baker has an adequate defence.
• Consequently, I have nothing much further to say on it at the moment.

• I need to check against Olson’s paper just what he means by ‘strictly speaking’, and whether there are alternatives to those Baker gives.
• But I think Olson prefers ‘is’ to be univocal and to mean ‘is identical to’.

• It’s not always clear when Olson and others are arguing against Baker’s views or ‘begging the question’.

• Baker cites:-
  1. "Snowdon (Paul) - Persons, Animals, and Ourselves", and
  2. "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology".
• This is basically Olson’s Thinking Animal Argument.
• Given how important the argument seems to be in Olson’s disagreements with Baker, it is a shame she doesn’t take it more seriously.
• Basically, Olson – and many others – take it to be a simple refutation of the CV, but Baker thinks it completely misfires. They never really engage.

• The caveats on the ‘borrowing’ of properties are again listed, with a repeat reference to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - The Very Idea of Constitution" (Chapter 2 of "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View"), pp. 48-49.

• Baker claims that certain other philosophers – not wedded to the CV – also deny that counting is by identity. She cites:-
  1. "Lewis (David) - Survival and Identity", and
  2. "Noonan (Harold) - Constitution Is Identity".
• I need to follow these up sometime as this ‘counting’ is important. For now:-
  1. David Lewis is arguing for Perdurantism as the answer to problems of fission, so – pre-fission – unbeknownst to us – there are stages belonging to two perduring individuals, though we count them as one.
  2. Harold Noonan is replying to "Johnston (Mark) - Constitution is Not Identity".

• Baker says that Alvin Plantinga offered something like this argument in 1994, but …
• We are referred to "Van Inwagen (Peter) - Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity".

• As I’m always saying, I’m never quite sure when there really is ‘question begging’ going on and when it’s an argument against the CV.
• So, is Baker is right to object to this premise?
• Surely Baker denies that she is identical to her body – because she could be constituted by another one.
• She agrees that she ‘is’ and animal, using her disjunctive revisionary linguistic usage, where ‘is’ either means ‘is identical to’ or ‘is constituted by, but premise iii is restricted to the former meaning.

• Baker is strictly correct, of course, as the identity relation is an equivalence relation.
• So, any two things to which I’m identical would be identical to one another.
• But it still makes sense to ask what anything is identical to – saying it’s identical to itself is no help.
• Basically, asking ‘to what is x identical’ is asking ‘what kind of thing is x’.

• This may be so on the CV; the animalist would agree.
• However, I think any analogies with artifacts are mistaken. Because a urinal can be an artwork and a cowrie shell a piece of currency – despite being identical throughout their existence (there can be no modal differences due to squishing; though I suppose a very battered cowrie shell would be little use as currency). Best to treat them like ‘students’ – they have a temporary property that they can lose without the substance-term ceasing to exist.

• I’d hoped this analogy would be enlightening, but I don’t think it is.
• There’s nothing wrong with the form of the argument, it’s just that there’s a premise that’s (claimed to be) false.
• I’d hoped this would be an analogy to the Thinking Animal argument, whose form I think can lead to many absurdities.

• The actual premise iii is:-
  → If x is not identical to x’s body (or any part of it), then there is no material object to which x is identical.
• But the ‘question-begging’ premise is:-
  → If I am a material object, then I must be identical to my body or some part of it.
• While the second does seem to beg the question, does the first?

• I find these analogies hard to follow.
  1. The two artifacts listed require something external to give them their meaning and use.
  2. Genes require something external both for them to achieve their ‘aim’ and to enable them to survive and replicate.
  3. Human Persons require their constituting animals to be in a situation where they can flourish and develop into persons. But so does the ‘property’ view of persons given by animalism.
• Are these analogies really parallel?
• The CV is really a bundle of views – in particular, Baker’s ‘distinctive’ views of what a person is, what a FPP is and recognising an ‘ontological change’ once certain psychological capacities – those she herself happens to find particularly important – have developed.

• We’re referred to "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - In Favour Of the Constitution View" ("Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View", Chapter 9), for further detail.
• I need to complete my write-up of this Chapter!

• This is rather disingenuous. The extra causal powers that a person constituted by a body has are entirely down to that body (they are had derivatively). The person – unlike the soul – has no causal powers in its own right.

• Baker describes Animalism as the view that persons are identical to human animals, whose persistence conditions they have.
• She has a footnote on David Wiggins, claiming that – while he is well known for developing a theory of constitution-without-identity – he doesn’t apply it to persons and animals.
• Baker says Wiggins takes persons to be identical to animals, but that animals are not identical to their bodies.
• The CV takes the opposite stance on both these claims.
• I imagine there’s a lot of misunderstanding of Wiggins’s views, which are never very clear, but I think Olson would agree with Wiggins (as expounded here by Baker).

• Well, maybe so. But your metaphysics shouldn’t be guided by what you wish to be the case, unless it really is the case.
• See my Note on Religion (in this context).

• Again, maybe so – as far as metaphysics is concerned.
• But Baker’s objection gets its purchase from our equating all these properties as equally important. No animalist claims that being a person is morally – forensically – the same as being a ‘fancier of fast cars’.

• I deal with this in a moment. For now, I just note that this rant – preaching to the choir – is just that – a rant.
• No animalist denies that human animals have very special properties when compared to non-human animals. But we are (very special) animals for all that.
• I suppose many animalists would be less contemptuous of ‘the beasts’ than is Baker and her fellow travellers. Many of them have special properties that we don’t have. But taking this too far plays into Baker’s hands.
• I’ve got a lot of literature on Animals and their capacities, covered in my Notes on Animals and Animal Rights. However, I had a quick look for ‘easy reading’ on human exceptionalism and language with respect to animals, and found a few free articles on Philosophy Now:-
  → "Forsey (Jane) - Humans and Dumb Animals"
  → "Phillips (Patrick) - Talking to the Animals"
  → "Wells (J'aime) - Language-Using Apes".

• How can this be right? A human animal has these special properties which the person inherits.
• Baker tries to say that the animal has them in virtue of constituting a person, but how is this supposed to work? All these wonders are down to our animal brains.
• There’s nothing ‘biologically unmotivated’ in the differences between ourselves and other animals. All these special properties and abilities – individual and social – are a consequence of our amazing biology.

• Well, so she does. But she jerrymanders the FPP so that other animals don’t have it. A window on the world, a perspective, a sense of self (as distinct from others), anticipation of future events, … none of this is good enough.

• The fact of our being persons isn’t in question.
• The issue is whether we are essentially persons. We human animals can still engage in the thoughts Baker thinks so important – even if rather rarely – during the times we qualify as persons without our being persons essentially.
• I suppose those extra special qualities of persons aren’t really the properties of individuals but of communities that develop and pass on ideas and culture through language.
• So, there are biological differences between ourselves and other apes: our bipedalism, opposable thumbs, greatly expanded cerebral cortex and a larynx capable of the vocal modulations that ultimately enable speech.
• That’s where the ontological difference lies – firmly in our animal nature. It’s just that we are rather special animals.

Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

Summary of Notes Citing This Note

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author	Title	Medium	Extra Links	Read?
Burke (Michael)	Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Baker	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 07 (The Constitution View and Arguments for It)	Paper	2, 3, 4	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Christian Materialism	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Constitution View	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Physicalism	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - References	Paper	2	Yes

---

References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Anscombe (G.E.M.)	The First Person	Paper - Cited	Rosenthal - The Nature of Mind	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	In Favour Of the Constitution View	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 9, pp. 213-229	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Materialism with a Human Face	Paper - Cited	Corcoran - Soul, Body and Survival, Chapter 10	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Materialism with a Human Face	Paper - Referencing	Corcoran - Soul, Body and Survival, Chapter 10	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View	Book - Cited	Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The Coherence Of the Constitution View of Human Persons	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 8, pp. 191-212	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The Coherence Of the Idea of Material Constitution	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 7, pp. 167-190	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The Constitution View of Human Persons	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 4, 91-117	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The First-Person Perspective	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 3, pp. 59-88	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The First-Person Perspective: A Test For Naturalism	Paper - Cited	American Philosophical Quarterly, 35.4, Oct. 1998	No
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The Very Idea of Constitution	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 2, pp. 27-58	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Unity without Identity: A New Look at Material Constitution	Paper - Cited	Midwest Studies In Philosophy, 1999, Vol. XXIII Issue 1, p144, 22p	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Why Constitution is Not Identity	Paper - Cited	Journal of Philosophy 94, No. 12 (Dec., 1997), 599-621	Yes
Burke (Michael)	Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account	Paper - Cited	Analysis 52, 1992, pp. 12-17	Yes
Castaneda (Hector-Neri)	Indicators and Quasi-Indicators	Paper - Cited	American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 85-100	No
Corcoran (Kevin)	Soul, Body and Survival: Introduction - Soul or Body?	Paper - Cited	Corcoran - Soul, Body and Survival, Introduction	Yes
Corcoran (Kevin), Ed.	Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons	Book - Cited	Corcoran (Kevin), Ed. - Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons	99%
Dennett (Daniel)	Brainstorms - Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	43%
Dennett (Daniel)	Conditions of Personhood	Paper - Cited	Dennett - Brainstorms - Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Chapter 14, 1976	Yes
Forsey (Jane)	Humans and Dumb Animals	Paper - Cited	Philosophy Now – Issue 25, 1999	Yes
Frankfurt (Harry)	Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person	Paper - Cited	Rosenthal - The Nature of Mind	Yes
French (Peter) & Wettstein (Howard), Eds.	Midwest Studies in Philosophy (Vol XXIII) - New Directions in Philosophy	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	9%
Gill (Christopher)	The Person and the Human Mind: issues in ancient and modern philosophy	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	3%
Gray (Peter)	Psychology	Book - Cited	Gray (Peter) - Psychology	2%
Gray (Peter)	Social Development	Paper - Cited	Gray (Peter) - Psychology, Chapter 12	No
Gray (Peter)	The Development of Thought and Language	Paper - Cited	Gray (Peter) - Psychology, Chapter 11	No
Johnston (Mark)	Constitution is Not Identity	Paper - Cited	Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader	Yes
Kripke (Saul)	Naming and Necessity	Book - Cited	Kripke (Saul) - Naming and Necessity	Yes
Lewis (David)	Philosophical Papers Volume I	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Lewis (David)	Survival and Identity	Paper - Cited	Lewis - Philosophical Papers Volume I, Part 1: Ontology, Chapter 5	Yes
Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane)	Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	4%
Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane)	Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview: Christian Doctrines (I): The Trinity	Paper - Cited	Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane) - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Part VI, Chapter 29	42%
Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane)	Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview: Personal Identity and Life after Death	Paper - Cited	Moreland (J.P.) & Craig (William Lane) - Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Part III, Chapter 14	17%
Noonan (Harold)	Constitution Is Identity	Paper - Cited	Mind, 102.405 (Jan. 1993), 133-146	Yes
Olson (Eric)	Reply to Lynne Rudder Baker	Paper - Cited	Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Mar99, Vol. 59 Issue 1, p161, 6p;	Yes
Olson (Eric)	The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology	Book - Cited	Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology	Yes
Olson (Eric)	What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Olson (Eric)	What Are We? Constitution	Paper - Cited	What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology, Chapter 3 (November 2007: Oxford University Press.)	Yes
Peckham (Jeremy)	Masters or Slaves?: AI And The Future Of Humanity	Book - Cited	Peckham (Jeremy) - Masters or Slaves?: AI And The Future Of Humanity	10%
Phillips (Patrick)	Talking to the Animals	Paper - Cited	Philosophy Now – Issue 18, 1997	Yes
Putnam (Hilary)	Brains in a Vat	Paper - Cited	Putnam - Reason, Truth and History	17%
Putnam (Hilary)	Reason, Truth and History	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	1%
Rea (Michael), Ed.	Material Constitution - A Reader	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	41%
Rosenthal (David), Ed.	The Nature of Mind	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	10%
Russell (Bertrand)	Human Knowledge - Its Scope and Limits	Book - Cited	Russell (Bertrand) - Human Knowledge - Its Scope and Limits	No
Snowdon (Paul)	Persons, Animals, and Ourselves	Paper - Cited	Christopher Gill, Ed, The Person and the Human Mind, 1990	Yes
Van Inwagen (Peter)	Materialism and the Psychological-continuity Account of Personal Identity	Paper - Cited	Van Inwagen - Ontology, Identity and Modality, Part II: Identity, Chapter 9, 1997	Yes
Van Inwagen (Peter)	Ontology, Identity and Modality: Essays in metaphysics	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	17%
Wells (J'aime)	Language-Using Apes	Paper - Cited	Philosophy Now – Issue 89, 2012	Yes
Wittgenstein (Ludwig)	Philosophical Investigations	Book - Cited	Wittgenstein (Ludwig) - Philosophical Investigations	No

Text Colour Conventions

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)