Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

1. Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. According to the Constitution View² of human persons, as I call it, a human person is a person³ in virtue of having a First-Person Perspective⁴, and is a human person⁵ in virtue of being constituted by a human body (or human anima)⁶).
2. Thus, the Constitution View⁷ aims to give our animal natures their due, while recognizing what makes human persons ontologically distinctive. The Constitution View⁸ contrasts with two other leading accounts of human persons: Animalism⁹ and Immaterialism. Like Animalism¹⁰ but unlike Immaterialism, the Constitution View¹¹ holds that human persons are material beings; like Immaterialism but unlike Animalism¹², the Constitution View¹³ holds that we are not identical to the animals that constitute us. Of course, this involves self-reference, but it is self-reference of a distinctive kind.
3. On the one hand, human persons are constituted by human animals¹⁴, and hence cannot escape their animal natures; on the other hand, there is more to human persons than their animal natures. What sets human persons apart from other animals has nothing to do with anything immaterial; rather what sets us apart is the ability that underlies our asking, “What am I¹⁵?” That ability is a First-Person Perspective¹⁶. First-Person Perspectives may well be the result of natural selection; but what is relevant here is not where they came from, but what they are and the difference that they make in what there is.
4. So, there are two theoretical ideas needed for the Constitution View¹⁷ of human persons: the idea of a First-Person Perspective¹⁸, the property in virtue of which a being (human or not) is a person, and the idea of constitution, the relation between a human person and her body.
5. Parts:-
   1. “The Metaphysical Background” (Chapters 1-3), explores and defends the two theoretical ideas.
   2. “The Constitution View¹⁹ Explained” (Chapters 4-6), uses these two ideas to give an account of human persons.
   3. “The Constitution View²⁰ Defended” (Chapters 7-9), argues for the coherence of the general idea of constitution-without-identity and the coherence of the application of that idea to the notion of human persons; finally, it argues directly for the Constitution View²¹ by contrasting it with its competitors, Animalism²² and Immaterialism.
6. Chapter 1 sets out the task. Persons and Bodies will answer three questions:
   1. What am I²³ most fundamentally?
   2. What is a person?
   3. How are human persons related to their bodies?

1. Three Questions
2. Beyond Biology
3. An Overview
4. A Philosophical Stance

In-Page Footnotes:

• This is an Introduction to the book as a whole.
• Taken from Oxford Scholarship On-Line.
• Originally in "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'".

• Taken verbatim from my comments on "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'", written up here.
• My comments appear as bullets following a repetition of the text segment, using my standard colour conventions.
• I intend to rationalise all this in due course.

• What sort of thing for Baker is a person? It is constituted by the whole human body, of which the brain is just an organ. This is in some ways similar to the Animalists she opposes.
• However, to my mind, taking the person as prior to the organism, rather than supervening on it, seems to have things round the wrong way; so would denying that the brain thinks (though she probably claims that it thinks derivatively; but really it’s the person that thinks derivatively).
• Is her constitution relation causal? She doesn’t deny, I don’t suppose, that the brain causes the person to think.

• Is it Olson who objects to Baker’s use of this term Constitution View (hereafter CV) – in that constitution is less central to Baker’s case than she supposes?
• Really, the focus is on the FPP.

• Baker refers to a capacity – is this a present capacity – ie. one that I presently possess even if I’m not currently using it – or does it allow one that I will (under normal developmental expectations) possess, or one that I have possessed but no longer do or will do.
• Note that even asking the question – using the reference “I” – seems to beg it.

• As usual, Baker, unlike Olson, makes no clear distinction between body and organism.
• In what sense “is” a body an organism? Is an organism constituted by its body, and in what sense of “constitution”?

• It appears to be a matter of dispute whether beliefs and desires are strictly possible in the absence of language.
• If so, this strikes me as an argument in favour of a LoT, since the higher mammals behave as though they have intentional states.

• So, the FPP is much more – according to Baker – than the animal’s ‘Window on the World’.
• It seems to be akin to Locke’s definition of a person as “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places”.

• The key point here, presumably, is the capacity for conceptual thought, and the self-referential application of this capacity.
• Most animals presumably differentiate their own bodies from those of others (especially those that groom themselves or others), but it’s less clear whether they have concepts of their bodies, and even less clear whether they have thoughts let alone concepts of their thoughts as distinct from those of others.
• Yet (it seems to me) cats and dogs – and presumably many other higher mammals – have a ToM even of human minds. They can gesture to be let in or out, and they know how to wheedle.

• This “just” seems to have a certain dismissive overtone that is unjustified by anything that Baker has said.
• According to the animalist, being a person is being a (fully functional) example of a (very) special animal – but “just” an animal for all that.
• Is there anything wrong with this view?

• My memory has it that Olson dislikes the “most fundamentally” rider, and just asks to what I am identical.
• But for this question to make sense, we need to know the primary kind or sort to which I belong, which is effectively asking what I am “most fundamentally”.

• But what individuates my FPP, if not my body?
• Yet, according to the CV, my body is not what individuates me – or at least not for all time – but only currently constitutes me.

• I’m not convinced that the CV really addresses personal identity either, beyond gesturing at “sameness of FPP” – but how is this cashed out?

• I think Olson admits that he doesn’t address personal identity – only our identity.
• He retains the designation “personal identity” for the purposes of continuing the historical debate, which he thinks has been subverted.
• He does insist on using the plural “people” when he ought to use “persons”, which adds to the confusion.

• Why am I necessarily embodied, if what makes me a person is an FPP and I am fundamentally a person? Am I fundamentally a human person?
• Baker doesn’t specify whether this alternative body that might constitute me in the future needs to be a human body.

• Baker does not ask the question in the first person plural - “what are we”, with its overtones of community, language and reciprocity that are often thought to be central to personhood.
• See "Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology".

• So, I imagine, for Baker, not only am I not must fundamentally a human animal, I’m not most fundamentally a human being either.
• Because of a developmental criterion, Baker will avoid Olson’s “fetus problem”, and deny that she was ever a fetus. In so doing, she insists on a presently exercisable capacity that has actually been reached in development (even if not exercised). I’m not clear where this leaves the moral status of fetuses (or infants) for Baker, given the rift she places between persons and non-persons.

• Baker doesn’t believe that persons are immaterial souls – and presumably doesn’t think there are any such things. Why does she mention Aquinas at all?
• But what did Aquinas mean by a “rational soul”. Is he using the term in the Aristotelian sense, the dualistic sense or some hybrid concept?

• A 12-week-old fetus has no FPP, so is not a person. Indeed “quickening”, while it seems to indicate a degree of somatic integration – the first movements – is not a psychological stage at all.
• So, the “certain level of development” of the human organism required for being (identical to?) a human being is not that required for being (constituting) a person.

• Reference to morality seems to pop in prematurely here – though Baker will move on to this.

• There is something wrong with Baker’s contrast. The psychological facts depend on – supervene on – the biological facts. Without the appropriate biology, the psychological fact can’t exist (in the absence of dualism, which Baker agrees is false).
• But maybe she is right that conceptually there is no connection.
• But we’re talking metaphysics which is orthogonal to human concepts.

• So, for Baker, those without a FPP are not morally accountable. This seems to tie in somewhat with "Frankfurt (Harry) - Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person", who distinguishes persons from wantons who lack second-order desires.
• However, presumably wantons do have a FPP, so Baker would take them to be persons. Yet we need to reserve judgement on these issues until we have seen how Baker spells out the FPP.

• Surely ontological independence is central to substancehood, and persons can’t exist without supervening on something more fundamental, so aren’t properly basic, even for Baker. That said, animals themselves supervene on the matter of which they are constituted, so aren’t basic substances either.
• This is where I part company with Baker. If human animals – or at least fully functioning ones – are mentioned, then so are persons because all the properties of a person are instantiated by that fully-functional human animal; and that human animal is a person.
• There, the “is” is not the “is” of constitution, but indicates a property or status. Like “is the Queen of England”. A world containing Elizabeth Windsor in a republican Britain is not ontologically impoverished.
• Yet is this right? The concept QUEEN OF ENGLAND still exists, there would just be nothing exemplifying it. So maybe there would be an ontological impoverishment if that’s what persons are.
• Alternatively, what if PERSON is a phase sortal – like CHILD. Is a world crowded with human animals, but no children, ontologically impoverished. Maybe it is – it would certainly be an imperilling situation for the human race. Even so, a world containing human animals under the age of 18, and human children, must not double-count the number of basic substances in its inventory.
• Baker could appeal to derivatives here, but only if a human child is constituted by a human animal. So, there might be no thinking child problem (by analogy with Olson’s TA problem) – the animal thinks derivatively in virtue of constituting a child. But say the child is so mentally retarded as not to constitute a person. Then we have only two things co-located – a human animal and a human child, but no human person, whereas normally we would have (for Baker) all three.

• See "Trendelenberg (Adolf) - A Contribution to the History of the Word Person" for more on ancient and early modern history.

• Does this make PERSON a natural kind term?
• Were there students prior to the concept STUDENT? If so, is STUDENT a natural kind term? Can we not just apply concepts retrospectively?

• I agree with Baker here. The term BIOLOGICAL PERSON seems something of an oxymoron if contrasted with PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSON – since PERSON seems to essentially involve psychology.
• But again, maybe it doesn’t – maybe PERSON could be taken as implying nothing more than that an individual has certain rights, with others having responsibilities towards her. The whole area is theory-laden, as Baker points out.

• I have a similar gripe about Olson using “people” as the plural of “person”. “People” is often used just to mean “human beings”, so using it to mean “persons” can either cause confusion, or be an attempt to suggest without argument that there’s no difference between the two terms.
• Care needs to be taken in this whole area to distinguish and clarify terms, but maybe any clarification is tendentious in one way or another.

• Baker will need to explain how persons exist equally fundamentally alongside their bodies (neither is more fundamental than the other, but both have a degree of independent existence, at least modally).
• A similar explanation is required for statues and clay. This is the challenge to the CV.

• So, Baker is happy that cyborgs are persons.
• It’s an open question whether a human animal with its organic parts replaced by inorganic ones would (or could) maintain a FPP. It’s an empirical question, most likely – though could we ever know whether a purely mechanical individual experienced phenomenal consciousness?
• Moreover, even if we grant the possibility of inorganic consciousness, a really important question is whether during the siliconisation process we would have a single FPP, or the gradual fading away of one and the gradual rise of another. Presumably this question could be resolved empirically by asking the person(s) concerned, though not any time soon.

• The real question is whether Baker is right in her claim that being a person is an essential property of anything. The analogy would be being an animal is an essential property of an animal (which is why she claims that if an animal’s parts are wholly replaced by inorganic parts, we no longer have an animal) – and this seems right.
• But being a child isn’t an essential property of a child, except qua child. It all depends on what substance concept the individual falls under. CHILD isn’t a substance concept, but a phase of a substance concept (HUMAN ANIMAL).
• So the question is whether PERSON is a substance concept. Baker asserts that it is; but what arguments does she have, and what arguments can be brought against this assertion?

• What are we to make of this final claim? In what sense can persons die?
• Death is a biological event that doesn’t seem to be something that can happen to persons as such. They can cease to be, but this doesn’t even require the death of the animal. All that needs to happen is that the animal irrevocably loses the property of being a person (or constituting one, in Baker’s terms).

• Interestingly, Thomson takes PERSON to be the singular of PEOPLE. This seems odd, as though CATS had priority over CAT.

• Baker’s objection to collectivism runs counter to many theories of the person, which has reciprocity, agency, patiency, language and such-like as central qualifications for personhood.
• Baker reverts to the Cartesian individual looking out (and introspectively in) via the FPP.

• For Baker, as for everyone in this context, the brain is well and truly part of the body and is not contrasted with it.
• So, while – as a matter of fact – the particular brain that I possess sustains my mental life – including my FPP – presumably some other brain might have done so – and some yet other brain might do so in the future if I’m resurrected and brains are parts of resurrection bodies.
• Also, given the siliconization possibility, my FPP might be sustained by some non-brain (by something that is functionally isomorphic to, but not identical to, a brain).

• Yet we might not have done so, and until recently in evolutionary terms, hadn’t done so, so what’s the relevance of all this?

• Just how biologically significant are these functions?
• Surely the ontologically (and morally) significant divide is between those organisms that are phenomenally conscious and those that aren’t – those that feel and those that don’t. Are the anticipatory and retrospective mental terrors felt by those with a FPP really worse than the physical pains felt by any sentient being?
• The anticipation of the dentist may be worse than the experience – but only because the experience isn’t that bad. But I dare say the experience of dentistry in the absence of anaesthetic is worse than the anticipation of it.

• Most human beings seem to care little for the refined intellectual activities Baker finds definitive of human personhood. Does this mean they are not persons?

• “Merely” is a weasel word.
• Historically / causally human organisms may have acquired the properties they have in order to act as more efficient survival machines for their genes, but there are no evaluative consequences of this fact, if it is a fact.
• As Baker herself notes, “we” have to some extent transcended evolution – by developing the capacity to manipulate our own and future generations’ genes.
• The questionable claim on Baker’s part is the attribution of these facts to some ontological novelty – a person – rather than to the organisms themselves.

• This is as far as I got in 2014-5 when I last looked at this Chapter.
• I doubt I’ll be able to go into as much detail as I continue with the Chapter and Book as a whole.

• Well, genes aren’t ‘smart’ – in the sense of ‘intelligent’ – in any meaningful sense, so any mammal, bird, fish, … is smarter than its genes.

• It strikes me that some animals decide to do likewise if their situation is inappropriate: eg. pandas in zoos.

• I’m unimpressed with this argument.
• Evolution may have produced organisms for the survival and reproduction of their genes, but some organisms – namely us – are now trying to take control of their own destiny, independent of what their genes ‘want’.
• This doesn’t mean the arrival of a new ontological kind over and above this new type of organism, but the development and transcendence of origins of an existing one. The ontological novelty is in the arrival of homo sapiens, one of whose typical properties is that of being a person that can act so as to override what its genes have programmed it to do.

• This is symptomatic of a ‘slide’: as soon as something is explained as something that non-human animals con do (or, like consciousness, experience) it no longer counts as what makes us ‘uniquely human’ and therefore doesn’t count as an ontological novelty.
• Obviously, there’s bound to be some fuzzy boundary between homo sapiens and other animals, otherwise we wouldn’t be a distinct kind, but nothing non-biological can be drawn from this.

• Well, indeed it does: but, this is a property of homo sapiens, typical members of which have a FPP. There’s nothing over and above this – no reason to reify the FPP.

• This is an odd way of putting it. Is she allowing for some non-human animals to be persons? It seems not, as she immediately gives ‘non-human animal’ as an example of a being lacking a FPP.
• Does Baker anywhere consider whether the other Great Apes have a sense of Self, via passing the Mirror Test?
• Maybe this doesn’t matter for her, as she presumes (probably rightly) that the non-human Great Apes do not have moral self-improvement amongst their goals. But then how many human beings seriously have such goals? We tend to (think we ought to) keep the morals slapped into us as children, and rebel when we think God isn’t looking. All this is part of being social beings and this moral conformity and rebellion may apply to other ‘higher’ animals. But few human beings think much about improving their moral character other than at times of existential crisis or where their moral slackness catches them out.

• This dallying with determinism of Baker’s part is interesting. Is this just ‘for the sake of the argument’? It may be worth looking at "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - What is Human Freedom?" to gather her considered views.
• What she seems to be saying is that we are still special even if determined. But this ‘specialness’ applies to us as members of the species homo sapiens, which have certain ‘personal’ properties.

• She means – presumably – that it’s irreducible to something simpler, like √3 in the calculation of square roots. So, √48 is 4√3, with √3 being the surd.

• This is rather a high bar for a dog to jump over. Also, how would we ever know? But I’m willing to believe it.
• There is an attempt about to suggest that animals do have the concept of death – see "Monso (Susana) - What animals think of death" and other works by Susana Monsó. But this isn’t quite the same thing as Baker demands.

• But, the person inherits all its properties from the animal that constitutes it. Consequently, if there is a break, it’s at the ‘animal’ level.
• At least it looks that way, though some properties are had ‘derivatively’ and others not.

• Surely this argument is very weak. What’s intended by ‘insignificant’? It’s well-known that very small errors in the DNA sequencing can have catastrophic effects and cause horrible syndromes in humans, surely ‘significant’ but as far as ‘counting base pairs’ is concerned it would be ‘insignificant’. But, we don’t need to look outside of biology to explain any of this.
• Also, just where else do we look?

• What other persons can be assumed here without argument?
• What about David Wiggins’s argument that all persons – insofar as we can conceptualise them – are animals?
• I would agree, though, that there can be non-human persons (traditionally ‘Martians’), but wouldn’t they be biological, albeit with a different biology?
• However, I’m also willing to posit computers one day being persons; and maybe angels, though we’ve no idea what sort of being these might be. And God.
• But what has all this got to do with human persons? All it shows is that persons don’t form a natural kind.

• I suppose it is the same question, apart from the pejorative tone of ‘nothing but’.
• Animalists don’t deny that we are ‘very special’ animals, but we are identical to animals nonetheless.

• I broadly accept this rejection! There may be some continuity between human beings and the higher animals in moral and cognitive capacities. Indeed, there is some overlap between some animals and some (young, or mentally impaired) human beings; but there is a gulf between typical members of the species homo sapiens and typical members of any other species.

• Well, as argued before, relatively small differences in DNA can have enormous cognitive and physical consequences without needing to invoke any non-biological agency.
• After all, the great apes share a lot of their DNA with cabbages, but there’s no mysterious non-biological fact needed to explain the ‘gap’ in their cognitive and somatic abilities.

• I have to admit to being mystified by this argument, whatever it is. If biology explains the FPP, what more is there to the discussion? Then we’re just special animals.
• How could we animals have a FPP presently grounded in an organism that’s incapable of providing it? So, biology is certain to explain its origin, even if biologists don’t know what the explanation is.

• See Wikipedia: Genetic Fallacy.
• I couldn’t see how this (what, precisely?) was a relevant application of the expression, or that it’s a fallacy at all.
• The Genetic Fallacy might have been in operation in supposing that because our bodies arose as survival machines for their genes, that that is what they are. But she seemed happy with our bodies being survival machines, just provided that we are not our bodies.

• She doesn’t mention who – or what category of philosopher – has been ‘influenced’ by this article.
• I would need to read this influential work in order to be influenced by it.
• My intuition is that life is properly a biological phenomenon, though the term can be used metaphorically for other continuing states or events.

• This thought doesn’t encourage me to reconsider my objections to functionalism.
• I’d need to read the paper to find out exactly what Boyd means

• This is the key point. Baker’s presumption all along is that ‘person’ is a substance-term, rather than an honorific referring to a substance – the human animal.
• If this is denied, then all the rest of Baker’s argument is most likely empty blather.

• This is not the same as siliconization – the brain stays intact in this TE. Also, Baker only refers to the body’s ‘organs’ being replaced – she doesn’t mention the skeleton, muscles and so on.
• So, this TE is effectively one of Cyborgisation.
• Presumably, the idea is that – with its nutritive functions taken over by hardware, the body is no longer an organism. But this is doubtful to me – the organism still retains a lot of cells which would metabolise. We would have – it seems to me – a mutilated organism, though not the maximally-mutilated BIV.
• But I dare say the TE could be modified to remove these objections.

• Indeed – it’s just an ability.
• Presumably most people never ask or consider this question.
• Also, as we organisms develop, all sorts of abilities come to fruition (even if the ability is never utilised, in response to my objection above).
• Why does any of this represent an ontological change? Beyond the appearance of a Phase Sortal, that is?

• This account of a Person seems rather circular. Can the FPP be explained without reference to Person?

• This quotation is from "Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience: Introduction", p. 5.
• Note that this is Lowe’s definition of a Self, but he uses this term interchangeably with Person.

• This is important, as it might be argued that the causal powers of artifacts are not in them but in us, who created them and react to them as we do.
• Having said that, it may be that a lot of the causal powers of persons are artifactual in that they depend on us for their effectiveness. Crocodiles are happy to eat people without considering any moral scruple.
• Since Baker rejects the brain-state example, the only non-artifactual example given here is that of genes and their DNA. But, what causal powers do genes have that their constituting DNA doesn’t?
• Also, is ‘constitution’ univocal in all the examples? Is it occasionally mereological – the traditional idea of constitution – as in the case of genes and their DNA?

• Do all persons with such a capacity actually exercise it? Are some totally unreflective? Is this learned in society? In only certain societies? Why is it so important?

• She doesn’t say why, nor where in the Tractatus this image occurs, nor its relevance.
• There’s a diagram of the eye and the visual field at 5.6331. Wittgenstein doesn’t think the visual field is like the diagram. Why did Baker mention Wittgenstein at all?
• But it is, I suppose, important to notice the difference between most sentient creatures ‘window on the world’ and what Baker has in mind for a FPP.

• Are animalists reductionists, eg. if they claim – as I do – that a human person is a Phase Sortal of a Human Animal? What are students reduced to by recognising them as phase sortals?
• Also, are animalists committed to viewing everything in sub-personal terms?

• She doesn’t mention her own Christian Materialist views at this point. I suspect her of trying to head off criticisms that she holds the philosophical views she does for pre-philosophical religious reasons.

• So, she rejects Perdurantism and Exdurantism.
• This is the same stance as Eric Olson in "Olson (Eric) - The Human Animal - Personal Identity Without Psychology", but for the same reasons? Indeed, for what reasons?

• This modal stipulation is important, and will feature a lot in Baker’s arguments.

• I’m not sure what to say about these commitments and prognostications at the moment. We’ll see how important they are for her arguments in due course.
• I suspect them of being rather dubious and at odds with what’s known about – or at least argued over in – psychology: for instance, modularity of mind, the Freudian unconscious, MPD, Commissurotomy and the like.
• I noted that Baker’s commitment to ‘medium-sized dry goods’ is at variance with Peter Van Inwagen’s approach.

• I’ve not really bothered considering whether this list is exhaustive.
• I do wonder, though, whether persons per se are the sort of thing that have persistence conditions and form a single Kind for science to investigate.
• Baker would claim that a person persists only insofar as the same FPP persists. But just what are the persistence conditions of a FPP, and how is science to investigate it?
• Baker’s Practical Realist approach can be seen as a temporising measure until science catches up.
• But, if Person is a Forensic concept, has science really got anything to do with it? Of course, it has much to do with us, who are persons, but that’s a different matter and the cause of much dispute and confusion.

• These are both artifacts. Is this significant?
• One could argue that things exist intrinsically, but some of their properties are extrinsic.
• So, the flag exists intrinsically as a piece of cloth, but it gains the property of being a flag in certain circumstances.
• At the moment it’s not clear to me whether being a Person is an intrinsic or extrinsic property. Most of the properties of an individual that is a person are intrinsic, but some – ‘being loved’ for instance – are extrinsic; but there are no ontological implications here.
• Consider ‘mere Cambridge changes’.

• What’s the meaning of ‘identity’ here? Narrative identity?

• Constitution is used in two distinct senses here. The stones constitute a heap in the mereological sense, but that heap only constitutes a wall if there a people who build walls and find them useful for fulfilling various functions.

• This sounds a bit circular, and doesn’t exclude the possibility of ontology outside the natural world – ie. the supernatural world – which baker believes in but doesn’t advertise here.
• But the intent is to exclude immaterial things such as immaterial souls or minds existing in the absence of bodies.
• Even so, Baker isn’t a materialist as commonly understood: she believes in supernatural immaterial beings (the very things that traditional materialists deny).
• The dividing line is usually between naturalists and supernaturalists. Some naturalists will allow the existence of immaterial things like minds.

• Is Baker equivocating over Constitution here, and slipping into its mereological usage?
• Just what do atoms constitute other than – in themselves – the elements and – in combination – various molecules?
• Or, is this case parallel to that of her ‘wall constituted by stones’ case?
• But atoms constitute a dog only in the mereological sense – dogs live on in the absence of dog-lovers (see "Pierce (Jessica) - The posthuman dog"!).

• My words – Baker doesn’t claim any mathematical relationship, only that things with more causal powers are more significant.
• This claim – while maybe reasonable – is an intuition rather than a fact.
• Also, ‘significance’ isn’t part of the natural order, and depends on the evaluator. Human persons aren’t significant to crocodiles other than as a source of food, and so are less significant – for crocodiles – than wildebeest.

• So, what are – in Baker’s view – the persistence conditions of bodies? Is it her job to know? How does it affect her programme?
• The persistence of lumps of clay may be arbitrary, but the persistence of Organisms has a principled explanation (probably as partaking in a Process – a Life). This is why taking Organisms rather than Bodies as what Human Persons are (or are constituted by) is the better move.

• Well, yes. Isn’t this Emergentism?
• See my Note on Reductionism (explanatory and ontological).
• By appearing to go against explanatory reduction, isn’t Baker going against the whole aim of science?

• This is really the outdated Body Criterion. Identity with a Body isn’t really Animalism. But if Organism is intended, animalists would have no complaint.

Table of the Previous 4 Versions of this Note:

Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

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Summary of Notes Citing This Note

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Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author	Title	Medium	Extra Links	Read?
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 02 (What Are We?)	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 03 (What is a Person?)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 05 (Persistence and Time)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 07 (The Constitution View and Arguments for It)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Constitution View	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Person	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Properties	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - References	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Supervenience	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - What Are We?	Paper		Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Alston (William) & Bennett (Jonathan)	Locke on People and Substances	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Review, Vol. 97, No. 1, Jan., 1988, pp. 25-46	No
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Are Beliefs Brain States?	Paper - Cited	Explaining Beliefs: Lynne Rudder Baker and her Critics, Anthonie Meijers, ed. (Stanford: CSLI Publications, 2001): 17-38	8%
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind	Book - Cited	Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind	3%
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)	Personal Identity Over Time	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 5, pp. 118-146	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)	Persons in the Material World	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 1, pp. 3-88	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Precis of 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'	Paper - Cited	Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind, 2001, e-Symposium on "Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View"	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 Importance Of Being a Person	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 6, pp. 147-163	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	The Very Idea of Constitution	Paper - Cited	Baker (Lynne) - Persons and Bodies, Chapter 2, pp. 27-58	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	What is Human Freedom?	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Workshop on Free Will, San Raffaele University, Milan (Italy), June 1, 2005.	No
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	What is This Thing Called ‘Commonsense Psychology’?	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Explorations, 2 (1999): 3-19	10%
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Why Constitution is Not Identity	Paper - Cited	Journal of Philosophy 94, No. 12 (Dec., 1997), 599-621	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder), Etc.	E-Symposium on 'Persons & Bodies: A Constitution View'	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Block (Ned), Ed.	Readings in Philosophy of Psychology - Vol 1	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	7%
Boyd (Richard)	Materialism without Reduction: What Physicalism Does Not Entail	Paper - Cited	Block - Readings in Philosophy of Psychology - Vol 1	No
Chandler (Hugh S.)	Constitutivity and Identity	Paper - Cited	Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader	No
Chappell (Vere)	Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies 60 (1990), pp. 19-32	No
Cockburn (David), Ed.	Human Beings	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	7%
Dancy (Jonathan), Ed.	Reading Parfit	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	17%
Dawkins (Richard)	The Selfish Gene	Book - Cited	Dawkins (Richard) - The Selfish Gene	Yes
Dennett (Daniel)	Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life	Book - Cited	Dennett (Daniel) - Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life	1%
Fine (Kit)	The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter	Paper - Cited	Mind - 112/446 (April 2003)	Yes
Foster (John)	The Immaterial Self: Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind	Book - Cited	Foster (John) - The Immaterial Self: Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind	0%
Francescotti (Robert)	Statues and Their Constituents: Whether Consitution is Identity	Paper - Cited	Metaphysica 4.2 (2003), pp. 59-78	No
Frankfurt (Harry)	Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person	Paper - Cited	Rosenthal - The Nature of Mind	Yes
Gibbard (Allan)	Contingent Identity	Paper - Cited	Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader	Yes
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%
Johnston (Mark)	Constitution is Not Identity	Paper - Cited	Rea - Material Constitution - A Reader	Yes
Johnston (Mark)	Human Beings	Paper - Cited	Journal of Philosophy, Volume 84, Issue 2 (Feb 1987), 59-83	Yes
Lowe (E.J.)	Identity and Constitution	Paper - Cited	Lowe - Kinds of Being, 1989, Chapter 5	No
Lowe (E.J.)	Kinds of Being: Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	No
Lowe (E.J.)	Real Selves: Persons as a Substantial Kind	Paper - Cited	Cockburn - Human Beings	No
Lowe (E.J.)	Subjects of Experience	Book - Cited	Lowe (E.J.) - Subjects of Experience	3%
Lowe (E.J.)	Subjects of Experience: Introduction	Paper - Cited	Lowe - Subjects of Experience, 1996, Chapter 1	50%
Martin (Michael G.F.), Ed.	Mind - 112/446 (April 2003)	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	50%
Monso (Susana)	What animals think of death	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 14 September 2021	Yes
Nagel (Thomas)	Mind and Body	Paper - Cited	Nagel (Thomas) - A View from Nowhere, Chapter 3	Yes
Nagel (Thomas)	The View from Nowhere	Book - Cited	Nagel (Thomas) - The View from Nowhere	Yes
Noonan (Harold)	Constitution Is Identity	Paper - Cited	Mind, 102.405 (Jan. 1993), 133-146	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	Olson (Eric) - What are We? A Study of Personal Ontology	Yes
Pereboom (Derek) & Kornblith (Hilary)	The Metaphysics of Irreducibility	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Aug., 1991), pp. 125-145	6%
Perry (John)	The Importance of Being Identical	Paper - Cited	Perry - Identity, Personal Identity and the Self, 2002, Chapter 8	Yes
Pierce (Jessica)	The posthuman dog	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 01 November 2021	Yes
Pinker (Steven)	How the Mind Works	Book - Cited	Pinker (Steven) - How the Mind Works	1%
Poole (Ross)	On Being a Person	Paper - Cited	Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74, Number 1, March 1996, pp. 38-56(19)	No
Rea (Michael), Ed.	Material Constitution - A Reader	Book - Cited	Rea (Michael), Ed. - Material Constitution - A Reader	41%
Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg), Ed.	The Identities of Persons	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	23%
Rosenthal (David), Ed.	The Nature of Mind	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	10%
Snowdon (Paul)	Persons, Animals, and Ourselves	Paper - Cited	Christopher Gill, Ed, The Person and the Human Mind, 1990	Yes
Sober (Elliott) & Wilson (David)	Unto Others - The Evolution & Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour	Book - Cited	Sober (Elliott) & Wilson (David) - Unto Others - The Evolution & Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour	No
Stump (Eleonore)	Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism Without Reduction	Paper - Cited	Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 12 (1995), Iss. 4	4%
Stump (Eleonore) & Kretzmann (Norman)	Eternity	Paper - Cited	The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 8 (Aug., 1981), pp. 429-458	No
Swinburne (Richard)	The Evolution of the Soul	Book - Cited	Swinburne (Richard) - The Evolution of the Soul	No
Thomson (Judith Jarvis)	People and Their Bodies	Paper - Cited	Dancy - Reading Parfit, 1997, Chapter 10	12%
Trendelenberg (Adolf)	A Contribution to the History of the Word Person	Paper - Cited	Monist, 20 (1910), 336-363	Yes
Van Inwagen (Peter)	Material Beings	Book - Cited	Van Inwagen (Peter) - Material Beings	27%
Wittgenstein (Ludwig)	Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus	Book - Cited	Wittgenstein (Ludwig) - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus	Yes

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