## 1. Formulating Animalism



Despite its Aristotelian heritage, animalism is a relative newcomer to
the personal identity debate. While early intimations of the view can
be found in work by Wiggins (1980) and Wollheim (1984), those
primarily responsible for injecting the view into the contemporary
debate over personal identity include Ayers (1991), Carter (1989,
1999), Olson (1997), Snowdon (1990, 1991, 1995), and van Inwagen
(1990). Though its supporters appear to remain in the minority,
animalism has since attracted other advocates, including Bailey (2016,
2017), Blatti (2012), DeGrazia (2005), Hacker (2007), Hershenov
(2005a), D. Mackie (1999a,b), Merricks (2001), and Wiggins (2001).
Notable critics include Baker (2000, 2016), Johnston (2007, 2016),
McMahan (2002), Noonan (1998, 1989 [2019]), Parfit (2012), and S.
Shoemaker (1999, 2011, 2016), among others.



The name 'animalism' was conferred by Snowdon (1991: 109)
and has been widely adopted. The view is also sometimes referred to as
"the organism view" (e.g., Liao 2006), the
"biological criterion" (e.g., D. Shoemaker 2009), or
"the biological approach" (e.g., Olson 1997).


### 1.1 Our Fundamental Nature



Animalism's hallmark claim concerns our basic metaphysical
nature: whether we are material or immaterial; simple or composite;
substance, property, process, or event; organic or inorganic; etc. In
this context, the animalist asserts simply:



(1')
We are animals.


Despite its plainness, (1') is easily misinterpreted (for
discussion, see D. Mackie 1999b: 230-33; Olson 2003:
318-21; and Snowdon 2014: ch. 1). According to the intended
reading, the 'we' picks out human persons such as you and
me. Nevertheless, (1') should not be taken to assert that
*all* persons are animals. It leaves open the possibilities of
both non-animal people (e.g., robots, angels, aliens, deities) and
human animals that are not people (e.g., patients in persistent
vegetative states, human fetuses). The 'are' reflects the
'is' of numerical identity. Consequently, animalism is not
the view that each of us is "constituted by" a particular
organism, in the way that a statue is sometimes said to be
non-identically constituted by the hunk of matter with which it
coincides (see
 section 2.3).
 Nor still should (1') be understood to claim that each of us
*has* a body that is an animal--as if you were one thing
and your animal body another. Finally, 'animals' refers to
biological organisms--members of the primate species *Homo
sapiens*. While participants on both sides of the debate over
animalism tend to treat these terms interchangeably, some prominent
critics distinguish 'animals' from 'organisms'
and deny that these terms co-refer (e.g., Johnston 2007: 55-56,
S. Shoemaker 2011: 353).



Expressed in logical notation and individualized, (1') is
sometimes presented in the following form:



(1'')
\(\Box (\forall x) (x \text{ is a human person} \rightarrow 
 x \text{ is an animal})\).


This says: necessarily, for any object *x*, if *x* is a
human person, then *x* is an animal, i.e., necessarily, human
persons are animals. While neither (1') nor (1'') is
unproblematic (see, e.g., Johansson 2007 and Toner 2011), it is clear
enough what they do *not* suggest. According to the animalism
account of our most fundamental nature, we are not


* immaterial souls or egos (Descartes; Foster 1991);
* material bodies (Thomson 1997; Williams 1957);
* body-soul complexes (Swinburne 1984);
* bundles of mental states (Hume; Rovane 1998; S. Campbell
2006);
* material simples (Chisholm 1978 [1989]; Lowe 1996, 2001);
* parts of brains (Puccetti 1973; McMahan 2002);
* persons materially constituted by, but nonidentical with, animals
(S. Shoemaker 1999; Baker 2000; Johnston 2007); or
* nothing at all (Unger 1979a,b; cf. Unger 1990).



Having said that, this entry will focus primarily on animalism's
positive assertions, rather than on animalist criticisms of each of
its rival views. The interested reader is directed to Olson 2007 and
Snowdon 2014, which not only include qualified defenses of (1), but
also raise a host of criticisms of the foregoing
alternatives--criticisms that, if not motivated by an acceptance
of (1), are at least consistent with its truth.



It bears mention that animalism is sometimes formulated slightly
differently as:



(1''')
We are essentially animals.


On this construal, animalism is the view that we could not exist
except as animals. Indeed, some have alleged that a commitment to
(1') is insufficient to qualify anyone as an animalist and that
this label should be reserved only for those committed to
*both* (1') and (1''') (Belshaw 2011: 401; cf. Olson
2007: 26-27, Snowdon 1990). Insistence on this point is probably
innocuous, however, since most philosophers accept that all animals
(human and otherwise) are essentially animals, in which case,
(1''') follows immediately from (1').



(1)
Unless otherwise noted, in what follows, '(1)' will 
 be treated as referring equivocally to (1'), (1''), and 
 (on the assumption that all animals are essentially animals) 
 (1''').

### 1.2 Our Persistence



While it is a claim about our fundamental nature that is most readily
associated with the name, animalism also incorporates a view about our
persistence. Stated in its most general form, this view asserts the
following:



(2)
The conditions
whose satisfaction is necessary and sufficient for a past or future
being to be identical with a human person that exists now just are
those whose satisfaction is necessary and sufficient for a past or
future being to be identical with an animal that exists
now.


All animalists subscribe to (2), so far as it goes. But it does not go
very far. What exactly *are* the conditions of (human) animal
continuity? Although animalists are mostly in agreement, there is a
subtle and seldom acknowledged rift between two camps of animalist
thinking about the answer to this question.



According to the first camp, remaining alive is both a necessary and a
sufficient condition for the persistence of human animals.
Human-animal persistence thus consists in the continuation of those
processes constitutive of biological life. As Olson puts it,
"one survives just in case one's purely animal
functions--metabolism, the capacity to breathe and circulate
one's blood, and the like--continue" (1997: 16). On
this view, an animal's life is understood as



> 
> 
> a self-organizing biological event that maintains the organism's
> complex internal structure. The materials that organisms are made up
> of are intrinsically unstable and must therefore be constantly
> repaired and renewed, or else the organism dies and its remains decay.
> An organism must constantly take in new particles, reconfigure and
> assimilate them into its living fabric, and expel those that are no
> longer useful to it. An organism's life enables it to persist
> and retain its characteristic structure despite constant material
> turnover. (Olson 2007: 28)
> 
> 
> 



This first animalist answer to the persistence question, then, can be
glossed as follows:



(2a)
 Given a human
animal, *x*, existing at one time, \(t\_1\), and something,
*y*, existing at a later time, \(t\_2\), *y* is identical
with *x* if and only if *y* continues the life processes
previously undergone by *x*.


Once (2a) is conjoined with the animalist answer to the fundamental
nature question, (1), we have a view that might be labeled
"organic animalism". Notable advocates of this view
include Olson and van Inwagen (1990). Of course, it follows from the
organicist view that death will constitute the end of our existence.
Whatever else may remain following our deaths, each of us will cease
to exist when we die. Indeed, strictly speaking on this view, there is
no such thing as a dead animal (or perhaps--if 'dead'
is a non-attributive adjective like 'fake'--that a
"dead animal" is not an animal).



Those in the second animalist camp deny that being alive is a
necessary condition for the persistence of human animals. On their
view, a human animal (like all organisms) is a functionally organized
physical object whose membership in a particular species is attributed
to its origin and structure. Only if it is so gruesome as to destroy
this structure will an organism's death bring about its
nonexistence. We persist, David Mackie puts it, "as long as this
organisation of [our] constituent parts remains sufficiently nearly
intact" (1999b: 237).



But this focus on the functional organization of animal bodies should
be taken neither as discounting altogether the significance of the
life processes emphasized by organicists nor as affirming a
traditional bodily criterion of persistence. On the contrary, on this
view, a human animal's 



> 
> 
> life is both a consequence or inseparable function of its origin and
> the continuing explanation of its structure and parts at any moment of
> its existence. Life is essential to the thing in so far as it is
> inconceivable that it (this thing) should have come into existence as
> a non-living thing. (Ayers 1991: vol. 2: 224)
> 
> 
> 



"But", Ayers continues, "that is not to say that
when it dies the thing itself will cease to exist: merely that an
explanation of the existence and structure of the thing will then
refer to a life that is over" (ibid.).



In contrast with their organicist counterparts, these animalists
answer the persistence question along the following lines:



> 
> 
> the persistence of biological organisms depends on their retaining
> (enough of) the organisation of parts that is the product of their
> natural biological development, and that makes them apt for life,
> while stopping short of saying that life itself is necessary. (D.
> Mackie 1999b: 236) 
> 
> 
> 



In short:



(2b)
Given a human
animal, *x*, existing at one time, \(t\_1\), and something,
*y*, existing at a later time, \(t\_2\), *y* is identical
with *x* if and only if *y* retains a sufficient degree of
the life-apt structure of constituent parts previously exhibited by
*x*.


Hereafter, 'somatic animalism' will refer to the
conjunction of (1) and (2b). In addition to Ayers and Mackie, notable
somaticists include Carter (1989, 1999) and Feldman (1992).



It is worth emphasizing that the debate between somatic and organic
animalists is not merely verbal and that the sort of linguistic
evidence sometimes marshaled (e.g., by D. Mackie 1999b) is--while
germane--unlikely to settle the question at issue. The debate
between somaticist and organicist conceptions of the conditions of
animal continuity reflects a substantive (if, as yet, inadequately
explored) disagreement about the nature of (human) animals. (Are they
essentially living? How ought life itself be understood?) Moreover,
while the issue of whether something can be both an animal and dead
*illustrates* the somaticist-organicist debate, it is hardly
the only context in which that debate manifests itself. The same
debate could be illustrated when considering unborn human fetuses,
human animals in suspended animation, etc.


## 2. The Lockean Legacy



Toward the end of his magisterial two-volume commentary on John Locke,
Ayers writes that 



> 
> 
> for all the transformation of our motives, indeed, of our general
> philosophical theory ... the debate on personal identity has
> hardly moved on since the innovations of the seventeenth and
> eighteenth centuries. (1991: vol. 2: 281)
> 
> 
> 



In a similar spirit, S. Shoemaker recently adapted Whitehead's
famous remark, observing that "the history of the topic of
personal identity has been a series of footnotes to Locke"
(2008: 313). It is certainly undeniable that no single discussion of
personal identity has done more to shape the current debate than the
chapter titled "Of Identity and Diversity" that Locke
added to the second edition of his *Essay Concerning Human
Understanding* (II.xxvii). (Hereafter, all textual references to 
Locke are to this work, Locke 1689 [1975].) Also undeniable is the 
effect these
pages have had on the emergence of the animalist alternative to the
Lockean approach to personal identity. For whatever intuitive appeal
animalism may seem to have in our secular, post-Darwinian climate, in
the wake of Locke's work, the falsity of animalism was long
taken for granted.


### 2.1 Locke's Human/Person Distinction



From an animalist perspective, the most significant aspect of
Locke's famous discussion is the sharp distinction he draws
between the human animal ("man") and the person. Unlike a
mass of matter--which consists merely in "the Cohesion of
Particles ... any how united" (II.xxvii.4)--a living
organism (e.g., oak tree, horse, human animal) is a structurally
complex material object whose functional organization is conducive to
continued life. A person, by contrast, is a 
"thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and 
can
consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different
times and places; which it does by that consciousness, which is
inseparable from thinking" (II.xxvii.9).



By classifying "man" with other organisms and then drawing
a distinction between organisms and persons, Locke recognizes that he
is prying apart the traditional notion of "man" as
rational, on the one hand, and animal, on the other. Against this
traditional understanding, he introduces a thought experiment
involving a rational parrot (II.xxvii.8). Our unwillingness to call
this parrot a "man" simply because it is an animal
possessed of language and reason illustrates that not all rational
animals are men. Nor are all men rational animals: "whoever
should see a Creature of his own Shape and Make, though it had no more
reason all its Life, than a *Cat* or a *Parrot*, would
call him still a *Man*" (ibid.). The human/person
distinction gains traction once it is coupled with one of
the *Essay*'s key insights, viz. that sortal concepts
(e.g., *human animal*, *person*) are often (though not
always) associated with different identity criteria.
"Identity"--as he puts it in the title of the section
in which this insight is first registered--is "suited to
the *Idea*": "such as is the *Idea*
belonging to [a] Name, such must be the *Identity*"
(II.xxvii.7). Locke is keenly aware of the significance of this
principle; "if it had been a little more carefully attended
to", he admonishes, it "would possibly have prevented a
great deal of that Confusion, which often occurs about this Matter
... especially concerning
*Personal Identity*" (ibid.). And indeed, it is this
insight about the association of sortal concepts and identity criteria
that encourages the thought in Locke that human animals and persons
are governed by different criteria of identity. Whereas a human animal
persists just in case "the same continued Life [is] communicated
to different Particles of Matter, as they happen successively to be
united to that organiz'd living Body" (II.xxvii.8), when
one "consider[s] what *Person* stands for", Locke
contends, one finds that its persistence consists in "the
sameness of a rational Being". He explains: "as far as
this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or
Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that
*Person*" (II.xxvii.9).



The impetus behind Locke's human/person distinction was the
ongoing debate amongst seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theologians
and philosophers concerning the metaphysics of resurrection. Their
challenge was to account for the Biblical prediction that the dead
would be resurrected on judgment day. But what is it exactly that gets
resurrected? The physical particles associated with a living organism
are in a state of constant flux. The set of particles associated with
an organism changes from one moment to the next and may turnover
completely (perhaps several times) during the course of an
organism's life. Moreover, whether due to decomposition and/or
because they are consumed by other organisms, the particles associated
with an organism at its death will be widely dispersed. These facts
alone make it unlikely, if not impossible, that the resurrection of
each individual will involve the reconstitution of that
individual's former "body". The human/person
distinction supplies Locke with the resources to resolve this problem
because, on his view, something is a person *not* because of
the material or immaterial substance in which it is grounded--a
question on which Locke remains steadfastly agnostic, though he is
inclined to think the underlying substance is immaterial
(II.xxvii.25)--but in virtue of the psychological capacities it
exercises, viz. self-consciousness and rationality. And a person
persists "as far as" the exercise of those capacities
"reaches" (II.xxvii.9): "For the same consciousness
being preserv'd, whether in the same or different Substances,
the personal Identity is preserv'd" (II.xxvii.13). Thus
the way is clear for Locke to assert that one and the same person may
be resurrected even if that person comes to inhabit an altogether
different body than any with which she was previously associated
(II.xxvii.15).



It is in the context of his solution to this problem that Locke
introduces the famous thought experiment involving the prince and the
cobbler--not as a puzzle in need of explanation, but as a case
whose apparent plausibility vindicates the human/person distinction
(and thereby, his solution to the problem of the resurrection). If

"the soul of the prince, carrying with it the consciousness of
the Prince's past Life, [were to] enter and inform the Body of a
Cobler as soon as deserted by his own Soul", Locke enjoins his
reader, "*every one sees*, he would be the same Person
with the Prince, accountable only for the Prince's Actions: But
who would say it was the same Man?" (II.xxvii.15, emphasis
added). This thought experiment is often taken to support a
psychological criterion of personal identity. The precise form of such
a criterion has been the subject of much dispute, both in
Locke's time and subsequently. Locke himself is sometimes said
(probably incorrectly) to have advocated a memory criterion, according
to which a person,
*x*, existing at one time, \(t\_1\), and a person, *y*,
existing at a later time, \(t\_2\), *y* is identical with *x*
if and only if *y* remembers experiences had by *x*. Whether
or not this was Locke's view, generally speaking, psychological
criteria of personal identity assert that a psychological relation of
some sort (i.e. a relation involving memory, characteristics and
dispositions, beliefs, desires, rationality, etc.) is necessary and/or
sufficient for each of us to persist through time.



Another important dimension of the human/person distinction is also
signaled in this example, viz. the person as locus of moral
accountability. On Locke's view, it is in virtue of their
capacities for self-consciousness and rationality that persons not
only persist through time, but also are prudentially concerned and
morally and legally responsible for actions committed at other times.
According to Locke, a person should be punished only for those actions
that she can remember having committed (II.xxvii.20). This is true not
only in the case of divine law carried out on judgment day--when
"*the secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open*"
and rewards and punishments meted out for the good and bad deeds
undertaken throughout the course of our lives (II.xxvii.26)--but
also, more generally, in the course of everyday legal and moral
affairs. So it is that 'person' functions as "a
Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit" (ibid.)
and in "*personal Identity* is founded all the Right and
Justice of Reward and Punishment" (II.xxvii.18).



In discussing these normative aspects of personhood, Locke raises and
answers an obvious objection in a way that anticipates some strains of
the contemporary debate. "Suppose", he says,



> 
> 
> I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my Life, beyond a
> possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be
> conscious of them again; yet am I not the same Person, that did those
> Actions, had those Thoughts, that I was once conscious of, though I
> have now forgot them? (II.xxvii.20)
> 
> 
> 



Locke replies that, although they typically refer to both the same
human animal and the same person, self-referring personal pronouns can
be equivocal. So the question "Did I do such and so?" can
be ambiguous as between "Did the person to which 'I'
presently refers do such and so?" and "Did the human
animal to which 'I' presently refers do such and
so?" In Locke's amnesiac case, the answer to the first
question is no, while the answer to the second question is yes:
"the Word *I* is applied to ... the Man only"
(ibid.).



Two aspects of Locke's discussion of this case are salient to
the contemporary discussion. The first, of course, is the view that,
if I am incapable of recalling having done this or that, then the
person responsible for the action in question is not the person I am,
even if the person who is responsible for that action occupied the
same human animal presently occupied by the person I am (see Johansson
2016, D. Shoemaker 2009, 2016, and Sauchelli 2017a). The second is the
idea that the first-person pronoun can refer equivocally in a way that
 tracks the human/person distinction (see
 section 3.2).



A host of interpretive questions can be raised concerning the
historical distinction between human animals and persons, and some of
these may be of interest to participants in the contemporary debate
between animalism and its rivals. For example, whether Locke's
distinction reflects a conceptual or an ontological difference remains
a point of controversy amongst historians of the period (e.g., Bolton
1994; Chappell 1989; Thiel 1997 and 1998). But setting aside these
scholarly matters, the features of Locke's distinction that are
uncontroversially endorsed by Locke as well as especially relevant for
the current debate include the following:


1. our capacities for self-consciousness and rationality are tied not
to our being human animals, but to our being persons;
2. the locus of moral responsibility is not the human animal, but
the person;
3. persons, but not human animals, persist just in case their
psychological states are linked in appropriate ways; and
4. during the course of its life, a human animal may coincide with
zero, one, or more than one person, and something need not be a human
animal in order to be occupied by a person (e.g., Locke's
rational parrot).


### 2.2 Animalism and the Human/Person Distinction



It should be emphasized at this point that animalists do not deny that
there is a distinction to be drawn between human animals and persons.
This, in part, is why the formulation of (1) that is sometimes
ascribed to animalists--"persons are human
animals"--is misleading. In fact, there are several aspects
of Locke's discussion that animalists uphold.



For example, animalists often ally their answer to the persistence
question with Locke's identity criteria for human animals (e.g.,
Olson 2007: 28). Of course, since organic animalists affirm and
somatic animalists deny that being alive is a necessary condition of
our persistence, Locke cannot be an ally to both camps. For his part,
D. Mackie (1999b: 235-39) classifies Locke as an organicist.
However, enough passages from the *Essay* suggest otherwise
(some of which Mackie himself acknowledges--e.g., in
II.xxvii.4-5) that the more circumspect conclusion may be that
Locke was either inconsistent or just ambivalent on the matter.
Animalists are also sympathetic to Locke's account of
personhood--albeit with a different understanding of the type of
concept *person* is--and this alternative understanding
allows animalists to endorse element (d) above.



What animalists reject is Locke's claim that
'person' names a sortal concept (e.g., Snowdon 2014: ch.
3). Rather, following Olson (1997: ch. 2), most animalists insist that
'person' names only a *phase* sortal concept (or
*status* concept, see Hacker 2007). (The idea of a
"phased sortal", as he called them, is due to Wiggins
[1967, 2001].) Unlike a sortal concept, which determines the
persistence conditions of its instances, a phase sortal concept is a
concept to which its instances belong temporarily, for only a phase of
their existence (e.g., *teenager*). Simply by reaching a
particular age, for example, something that was not a teenager can
become a teenager without ceasing to exist. Likewise, something that
was a teenager can cease to be a teenager without ceasing to exist. So
too, animalists say, with *person*. Personhood, they claim, is
a phase that something begins upon acquiring the psychological
capacities that Locke identifies (self-consciousness and rationality)
and concludes upon losing those capacities. In this way, being a
person is a matter of what something can *do*, rather than what
something *is*. In Olson terminology, *person* is a
"functional kind", akin to *locomotor* (1997:
31-37). A locomotor is anything that is able to move about under
its own power, be it a garden slug or a ballistic missile. Likewise,
Olson argues (following Locke), a person is anything that is able to
think in certain ways--anything that "is rational, ...
ordinarily conscious and aware of itself as tracing a path through
time and space, ... [and] morally accountable for its
actions" (1997: 32). Many things besides human animals can be
persons on this view: an angel, a god, a machine, an animal, an
immaterial soul, an alien, etc.. In the case of human animals, we
ordinarily become persons not at conception or at birth, but around
the age of two. And while it is possible for a human animal to go out
of existence at the same moment that she ceases to be a person (e.g.,
if she steps on an active landmine), it is also possible for a human
animal to continue existing long after he has ceased to be a person
(e.g., if he lapses into a persistent vegetative state).


### 2.3 Animalism(s) vs. Neo-Lockeanism(s)



Animalism's principal rival is not infrequently identified as
"neo-Lockeanism". This way of staging the debate dates
back at least as far as a prominent exchange between Noonan (1998,
2001) and D. Mackie (1999a). Also, the first monograph dedicated to
animalism mounts a sustained attack on the "psychological
approach" to personal identity--an approach whose
"best-known advocate ... is, of course, Locke" (Olson
1997: 20). And the "animalism vs. neo-Lockeanism"
opposition remains common in contemporary discussions (e.g., S.
Campbell 2001; Hershenov 2012; Johnston 2010; Robinson 2016; S.
Shoemaker 2008).



In one respect, setting things up in this way is fairly harmless.
Views classified as "neo-Lockean" share a common
commitment to a psychological criterion of personal identity (whether
that criterion requires direct psychological connectedness or merely
overlapping chains of psychological continuity) that animalists
universally oppose. But ultimately, the simple "animalism vs.
neo-Lockeanism" dichotomy is too coarse-grained and exclusionary
to provide a particularly informative taxonomy of the contemporary
debate. For example, whilst all animalists resist a psychological
criterion of persistence, the distinction between organic and somatic
animalisms
 (section 1.2)
 shows us that the source of this resistance varies significantly.
And, as the list given above indicates
 (section 1.1),
 animalism's answer to the fundamental nature question is
opposed by a wide range of views, not all of which are properly
classified as neo-Lockean. Moreover, as we shall see in what follows,
the "neo-Lockeanism" label both obscures importantly
different varieties of neo-Lockeanism and ignores different rationales
given for those views.



Whilst a comprehensive taxonomy of alternatives to animalism is
neither feasible nor necessary in the present context, one step in the
right direction would be to differentiate those neo-Lockean views that
rely on the notion of material constitution from those that do not.
Those that do--call this type of view "constitutionalist
neo-Lockeanism"--are today regarded as the leading
opposition to animalism. Advocates of this form of neo-Lockeanism
(including Baker, Johnston, and S. Shoemaker) contend that each of us
"is" an animal only in the sense that (according to some)
a statue "is" the piece of marble, viz. by being
materially colocated and yet distinguished by one or more modal,
temporal, and/or relational properties. On this view, we are persons
non-identically constituted by human animals.



Despite this common reliance on the notion of material constitution,
there are significant differences between the views advocated by
animalism's constitutionalist neo-Lockean opponents. According
to S. Shoemaker (1984), for instance, it is the capacity for thought
that distinguishes the mental subject you are from the human animal
that constitutes you. Partly because it is embedded within his
broader, functionalist response to the mind/body problem,
Shoemaker's arguments against animalism and animal thought are
complex (see
 section 3.2
 for further discussion). But roughly, on his view, animals are
incapable of thinking because they do not persist under the
appropriate conditions. Psychological continuity is sufficient for the
persistence of any being endowed with the capacity to think, and since
psychological continuity is not sufficient for a (human) animal to
persist, animals are not thinking beings. And because each of us is a
thinking being, we are not animals. (For a thorough presentation of
Shoemaker's most recent thinking on this topic, see his 1999,
2004, 2008, 2011, 2016.)



Perhaps the most extensive elaboration of the constitutionalist
approach has been given by Baker (2000, 2002, 2007). On her view, the
property that distinguishes the persons we are from the human animals
that constitute us is a form of self-consciousness that she calls the
"first-person perspective" (2000: ch. 3). It is from this
perspective that "one thinks of oneself as an individual facing
a world, as a subject distinct from everything else"; it is what
enables us "to conceive of one's body and mental states as
one's own" (2000: 60, 4). On her view, persons have their
first-person perspectives essentially, and they "persist as long
as [their] first-person perspectives are exemplified" (2016: 51;
see also 2000: 132-41).



At the heart of this view is what Baker has recently labeled her
"Key Distinction" (2007: 43; 2016: 53). Constitutionalists
maintain that constituting objects (e.g., pieces of marble) and
constituted objects (e.g., statues) can share some of their
properties. For instance, a statue shares its physical and aesthetic
properties with the piece of marble that constitutes it; likewise,
Baker will claim, a person shares its physical and psychological
properties with the human animal that constitutes it. But these
objects cannot share all of their properties in the same way, or else
there would be no difference between the constituting and the
constituted. So Baker draws an exhaustive and mutually exclusive
distinction between two ways that objects can instantiate properties:
derivatively or nonderivatively. Roughly, an object has a property
derivatively if it instantiates it only in virtue of being colocated
with another object, whereas an object instantiates a property
nonderivatively if it instantiates that property independently of
being colocated with another object. We might express this distinction
more perspicuously as follows. If one object (*x*) constitutes
another object (*y*) and both objects instantiate some property
(*F*), then


1. *x* (the constituting object) instantiates *F*
nonderivatively in the event it would instantiate *F* even if it
did not constitute *y* (the constituted object);
2. *y* instantiates *F* nonderivatively in the event that
*x* would fail to instantiate *F* if *x* did not
constitute *y*; and
3. *y* instantiates *F* derivatively in the event that
*x* would instantiate *F* even if it did not constitute
*y*.



Consider, for example, a marble statue of a giant ogre. In this case,
(i) the piece of marble instantiates the property of being three
meters tall nonderivatively (because it would be three meters tall
even if it did not constitute the statue); (ii) the statue
instantiates the property of being ugly nonderivatively (because the
piece of marble with which it is colocated would not be ugly if it did
not constitute a statue); and (iii) the statue instantiates the
property of being three meters tall derivatively (because the piece of
marble would be three meters tall even if it did not constitute the
statue). (Still more precise elaborations of Baker's Key
Distinction are given in her 2000: 46-58 and 2007: 166-69.
A number of critics have argued that the distinction generates more
heat than light; see, e.g., Hershenov 2009; Olson 2007: ch. 3;
Zimmerman 2002; and contributions to the 
*Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind* 
online symposium on Baker 2000.)



Baker argues by analogy that, as it goes for marble statues, so it
goes for human persons. On her view, each of us is an animal, but
(*contra* the animalist) only derivatively. Baker's
answer to the fundamental nature question is that we are persons; each
of us possesses the first-person perspective essentially and
nonderivatively. In the course of ordinary development, a human animal
develops increasingly sophisticated psychological capacities (just
like the piece of marble develops aesthetic characteristics as the
sculptor chisels away at it). Once these capacities include a
first-person perspective, a person comes into existence, and this
person is constituted by the human animal (2000: 115-16; cf.
2007: 72-82). Since the animal would not have a first-person
perspective if it did not come to constitute the person, it shares
this perspective with the person in the same way that the piece of
marble shares the property of being ugly with the statue of the ogre,
viz. derivatively.



On Baker's view, the first-person perspective is unique to
persons. Without this perspective, she argues, a being cannot refer to
itself using first-person pronouns, for this ability requires that one
be able to conceive of oneself both as the subject of mental events
and as the object that embodies the subject of those events. Because
the human animal that constitutes you possesses a first-person
perspective only derivatively, then, it is unable to self-refer. That
said, Baker does not claim that person-constituting human animals lack
cognitive and experiential capacities altogether. Nor does she claim
that they possess these capacities only derivatively. Like many of the
"higher" nonhuman animals, human animals are subjects of
an array of mental phenomena, including pains and pleasures, beliefs
and desires. Such phenomena require not the "strong" or
"robust" first-person perspective characteristic of
persons, but only what Baker calls a "weak" or
"rudimentary" first-person perspective--roughly, the
capacity to experience the world from an egocentric point of view
(2000: 60-64). And just as the statue inherits the property of
being three meters tall from the piece of marble, so too the person
possesses these lesser psychological capacities only derivatively
because the human animal would possess these capacities even if it did
not constitute the person.



Neo-Lockean resistance to animalism that is *not* linked to
constitutionalism is an even more diverse lot. One of the prevailing
views in the non-constitutionalist neo-Lockeanism category rejects
animalism by identifying the person with a proper part of the human
animal--typically, the brain or one of its (spatial or temporal)
parts. On this view, the human animal thinks only derivatively, in
virtue of having a thinking brain as a part. Among those who advocate
views along this line are Puccetti (1973), Persson (1999), McMahan
(2002), Hudson (2001), and more recently Parfit (2012). Animalist
responses to these views are given by Hershenov (2005b, 2016) and
Olson (2007: ch. 4). Also relevant are the various thought experiments
raised by non-constitutionalist neo-Lockeans (e.g., Lewis 1976; Parfit
1984) that seem to count against animalism; for instance, thought
experiments involving teletransportation and transplantation. See
 section 3.4
 for some discussion of these cases.


## 3. Arguments for and Objections to Animalism



Particularly when introduced in isolation, animalism--especially
(1)--might strike one as obviously true. In his book-length
treatment of the view, Snowdon demonstrates at length how animalism
"represents the default conception of ourselves" (2014:
106). And in an earlier article, he notes:



> 
> 
> The central claim of animalism is in some ways a curious proposition
> to assert. It is natural to respond to its assertion in the words of
> Wittgenstein: "Only whom are we informing of this? And on what
> occasion?". (1995: 72; Wittgenstein 1953: 101e)
> 
> 
> 



Olson echoes this sentiment, writing that we certainly



> 
> 
> *seem* to be animals. When you eat or sleep or talk, a human
> animal eats, sleeps, or talks. When you look in the mirror, and animal
> looks back at you. Most ordinary people suppose that we are animals.
> ... Compared with [competing] proposals, the idea that we are
> animals looks like plain common sense. (2007: 23)
> 
> 
> 



But common sense will not settle the issue because some of
animalism's rivals are supported by other, equally intuitive
considerations. In addition to common sense, then, what arguments can
be marshaled in support of animalism?


### 3.1 Thinking Animal Argument



The standard argument for (1) is variously referred to as the
"thinking animal argument" (Olson 1997, 2003), the
"too many minds objection" (S. Shoemaker 1999), the
"two lives objection" (S. Campbell 2006), and the
"too many thinkers problem" (Parfit 2012: 7). It was
developed by Snowdon (1990: 91), Carter (1988), McDowell (1997: 237),
and Ayers (1991, vol. 2: 283). It has since been sharpened and
popularized by Olson (1997: 106-09, 2003: 325-30, 2007:
29-39). Here it is:



(P1)Presently sitting
in your chair is a human animal.
(P2)The human animal
sitting in your chair is thinking.
(P3)You are the
thinking being sitting in your chair.
(C)Therefore, the
human animal sitting in your chair is you.


Whilst none of (P1), (P2), and (P3) is incontestable, nor is any one
of them easily contested. Save perhaps for far-reaching metaphysical
reasons (e.g., an antecedent commitment to idealism), few would deny
the very existence of animals, nor the fact that a perfectly good
specimen of the species *Homo sapiens* is presently seated in
your chair. So (P1) is not easily rejected.



Moreover, concerning (P2), since it would be odd (to say the least) to
deny that human animals think while accepting that porpoises and
porcupines do, and since we can assume that the human animal in your
chair is not atypical of its kind, whatever reasons one has for
accepting that various nonhuman animals think apply equally to the
human animal in your chair. While there are those who deny (in a
sense) that any animal can think (e.g., Descartes, Johnston, S.
Shoemaker), their positions strain empirical credibility and/or depend
on fairly sophisticated metaphysical machinery. At first glance,
anyway, (P2) is much easier to accept.



(P3) is also difficult to resist, since its denial would seem to
require positing the existence of a thinking being in your chair other
than yourself. For if (P1) and (P2) are true, and if it is true that
you exist and are thinking, then denying (P3) results in the
implication that you are but one of (at least) two thinkers seated in
your chair. Such a view faces a host of difficult questions: practical
questions (e.g., which of these beings owns the car parked out
front?), epistemic questions (how do you determine which of these
beings you are?), linguistic questions (to which of these beings do
instances of the first-person pronoun refer?), ontological questions
(what is the relationship between you and the qualitatively identical
being with which you are associated?), and so on. These challenges
have not passed unnoticed, and serious attempts have been made to
address them. But, the animalist says, the trouble can be avoided from
the start simply by conceding the truth of (P3).



So, while not necessarily unanswerable or insurmountable, the
questions and problems that await one who rejects any of (P1) through
(P3) are not insignificant. Animalism, then, has at least this much
going for it.


### 3.2 Replies to the Thinking Animal Argument



Not all replies to the thinking animal argument have focused
exclusively on, or even addressed themselves directly, to one or the
other of the three premises that make up that argument. Nevertheless,
many replies to animalism do concern questions raised by the thinking
animal argument and may fruitfully be seen as addressing one or
another of its premises.



For instance, according to Baker's (2000, 2007) constitution
view, (P3) should be rejected, since "thinking being sitting in
your chair" is ambiguous as between the constituted person who
thinks nonderivatively and the constituting human animal who thinks
derivatively
 (section 2.3).
 And Noonan (1998, 2001) also detects an ambiguity in (P2) and (P3).
According to his revisionist view of personal pronoun use,
first-person thoughts and utterances refer only to persons, not to
animals. On his view, we must distinguish between the referent of
first-person thoughts and utterances, on the one hand, and the thinker
of those thoughts and utterances, on the other hand. Noonan does not
deny that the human animal sitting in your chair is capable of
first-personal thinking. Nor does he deny that such thoughts (and the
utterances that express them) successfully refer. But he does insist
that, when the animal has a first-person thought or utters
'I', that thought or utterance refers not to the animal
who thinks the thought but to the person with whom the animal shares
its thoughts. (For further discussion, see Noonan 2012 and Olson
2002a, 2007: 37-39.)



And, although not initially developed as a response to the thinking
animal argument, S. Shoemaker's (1984, 1999, 2004) view
represents a direct and formidable challenge to (P2). On his account,
the human animal sitting in your chair is not thinking because no
animal is capable of thinking. This in turn is because the capacity
for thought requires persistence conditions that all animals, human or
otherwise, lack: "mental properties", Shoemaker writes,
"can belong only to things having psychological persistence
conditions" (2004: 528). A thinker's psychological states
play characteristic causal roles, and these states (in combination
with others) tend to cause the thinking being whose states they are to
behave in certain ways. Thus, for example, the state of being in pain
may be caused by bodily damage of some kind and may dispose the one
who is in pain to cry out or recoil.



The linchpin of Shoemaker's view is his claim that the causal
role of any psychological state as well as any other states involved
in that causal role must all be states of one and the same thinking
being (1999: 300). In other words, the effects typically brought about
by a being's psychological states cannot fail to occur in that
very being. Olson summarizes the consequence of this commitment as
follows:



> 
> 
> if your cerebrum gets put into my head tomorrow, your current mental
> states will have their characteristic effects in the being who ends up
> with that organ, and not in the empty-headed thing left behind. By
> Shoemaker's reasoning, the subject of those
> states--you--must therefore be the being who ends up with
> your transplanted cerebrum. Any being whose later states or actions
> are caused in the appropriate way by your current mental states must
> be you. In other words, psychological continuity of a sort must
> suffice for you or any other mental being to persist through time.
> Since no sort of psychological continuity suffices for any organism to
> persist ... it follows that no organism could have mental
> properties. The nature of mental properties makes it metaphysically
> impossible for animals to think. (Olson 2007: 33-34.)
> 
> 
> 



Shoemaker's functionalist theory of mind has received
considerable attention in the philosophy of mind. His view that
animals cannot think and the implications of that claim for the
thinking animal argument are discussed in Arnadottir
2010, Hershenov 2006, Olson 2002b, and S. Shoemaker 2004, 2008, 2011,
2016.



Beyond these discussions of (P2) and (P3), much of the recent
discussion concerning animalism has focused on such questions as
whether one or more than one thinker is sitting in your chair; if more
than one, which one is doing the thinking; and in what sense.
Zimmerman (2008), for instance, objects to (P1) by noting that the
rationale for the claim that a human animal is located where you
are--in effect, that it is just obvious that there is an instance
of the species *Homo sapiens* currently located where you
are--extends equally to such things as "mere hunk of
matter", "mere body", "psychological
person", and the like. Since the animalist does not accept that
we are identical to any of these non-animals, the evident truth of
(P1) will not be sufficient to establish the thinking animal
argument's conclusion. What is required, in other words, is not
simply a reason for believing that (P1) is true--animalists, let
us assume, are correct in insisting that few would deny it--but
also a reason for denying the presence of other things besides a human
animal. This is the "rival candidates problem".



Closely related to this problem is another. The "thinking parts
problem" charges that, even if you are a thinking being, no
reason has been given to suppose that you are a thinking
*animal* rather than any of the other thinking beings currently
located where you are. To begin, consider all the parts of a human
animal that are plausibly regarded as thinking: the head, the brain,
the right-leg complement (i.e., the entire animal body minus the right
leg), the entire animal from the waist up (torso, neck, and head), the
left-arm complement minus a single electron in the animal's
liver, the left-arm complement minus a different electron in the
animal's liver, etc. For each of these thinking parts, an
argument structurally analogous to the thinking animal argument could
be constructed. For instance:



(P1')There is a
human head currently located where you are.
(P2')The human
head currently located where you are is thinking.
(P3')You are the
thinking being located in your chair.
(C')Therefore,
the human head located where you are is you.


Likewise:



(P1'')There is a
torso-neck-and-head currently located where you are.
(P2'')The
torso-neck-and-head currently located where you are is
thinking.
(P3')You are the
thinking being located in your chair.
(C'')Therefore,
the torso-neck-and-head located where you are is you.


And so on. If the thinking animal argument were sound, then it would
follow (*per impossibile*) that you are identical with each of
an infinite number of nonidentical thinking parts. Since you could be
identical with no more than one of those things, and since the
animalist has provided no principled explanation for why you are the
whole animal and not one or another of the animal's thinking
parts, the thinking animal argument should be rejected.



Much of the discussion about animalism has been concerned with the
rival candidates and thinking parts problems. (See, for instance,
Blatti 2016; Lowe 2001; Madden 2016a; Olson 2007: 215-19 and
2015; Parfit 2012; Yang 2015.) One line of response draws on van
Inwagen's (1990) view of composite material beings. According to
van Inwagen's answer to what he calls the "special
composition question", the only composite objects that exist are
living organisms. Only a living organism unifies the particles that
compose it at any given moment, on this view. Such things as
"mere hunk of matter" and "right-leg
complement" are gerrymandered objects. And since they are not
genuine composite objects, they are neither genuine rivals nor genuine
thinkers. Olson (2008: 38-42) is, however, quick to acknowledge
that this riposte will be welcomed only by those antecedently
persuaded of van Inwagen's view. And proponents of the rival
candidates and thinking parts problems are particularly unlikely to
count among van Inwagen's supporters.


### 3.3 Animal Ancestors Argument



Even if these objections to the thinking animal argument can be
answered, there is some irony in the fact that the fate of the
hallmark argument for animalism should hang in the balance of disputes
over the nature of mental properties and the individuation of
thinkers. Thought is an essential ingredient not in animalism's
theory of our fundamental nature, but in the theories advanced by
animalism's neo-Lockean rivals. It is precisely our capacity for
thought that animalists deny is essential to us; on the contrary,
animalists say, each of us was once a non-thinking fetus and each of
us may yet become a non-thinking persistent-vegetative-state
patient.



Thus, a second argument attempts to ground animalism's defense
in a broader naturalistic context. The "animal ancestors
argument" takes the form of a reductio. If (1) is false and we
are not animals, then nor are our parents animals, in which case nor
are our parents' parents, nor our parents' grandparents,
and so on, as far back as our ancestries extend. But in that case, the
falsity of animalism entails the rejection of evolutionary theory (or
at least that theory's applicability to us), since it denies
that our distant ancestries includes beings who were animals. But,
since the rejection of evolutionary theory is too high a price to pay,
it is instead the assumption of animalism's falsity that ought
to be rejected. Whilst Blatti (2012) argues that this argument
withstands a number of extant objections, it also faces challenges
(Daly and Liggins 2013, Gillett 2013).


### 3.4 Further Objections, Implications, and Questions



The rival candidates and thinking parts problems are instances of what
we might call "multiplication objections" to animalism.
These objections try to demonstrate how advocates of animalism are
committed to claiming (or incapable of denying) that one thing (you or
me, say) is identical to each of two or more things. Yet another such
objection is inspired by a rare type of conjoined twinning called
dicephalus, which occurs when a human zygote divides only partially
before implanting in the uterine wall. The result is twins conjoined
below the neck. These twins look like a two-headed person, with
distinct heads and necks sprouting from a single torso (Miller 1996).
According to McMahan (2002: 35), because a pair of dicephalic twins is
two people but only one animal, dicephalic twins appear to present a
walking, talking counterexample to animalism's hallmark claim,
(1). (For further discussion, see Blatti 2007; T. Campbell and McMahan
2016; Liao 2006; Olson 2014; Reid 2016.)



Other objections aim to reveal animalism's counterintuitive
verdicts concerning the seemingly endless litany of fantastical
thought experiments (many of them updated versions of Locke's
prince-cobbler case, see
 section 2.1)
 debated in the recent personal identity literature (S. Shoemaker
1963; Lewis 1976; Wiggins 1980; Parfit 1984). In one scenario, we are
to imagine removing all or part (e.g., cerebrum) of your brain and
transplanting it into a different (brain-less or cerebrum-less) human
animal, with the (*ex hypothesi*) result that your
psychological life and characteristics are continued in a different
animal from the one you presently occupy. Another scenario envisions a
similar feat via fanciful technology that can record all of your brain
states and transfer that information into a different animal's
brain (previously wiped clean). Still another thought experiment
imagines transporting you a la *Star Trek* by creating a
blueprint of your physical and psychological states at one location,
destroying you, and then replicating you at some distant location by
creating a new object with all of the same physical and psychological
states.



The differences between the details of these thought experiments are
not insignificant. But for present purposes, let us collect them
together under the label "transfer objections", since the
intuition all of them aim to arouse is that *you* can be
relocated from one animal or location to another as a result of the
processes described, so long as your memories, beliefs, desires,
character traits, etc. are preserved. If the transferability intuition
is correct, then (1) cannot be true, since psychological continuity is
not sufficient for the persistence of a human animal. Indeed, for any
of the procedures described in these cases--brain-transplant,
brain-state transplant, teletransportation--given the choice
between undergoing this procedure and annihilation, animalism entails
that there is no self-interested reason to prefer the former.



The felt conviction of our *prima facie* beliefs about what
would happen in these scenarios seems undeniable. Moreover, there is
evidence to suggest that intuitions supporting some version of the
psychological criterion are not only firmly felt, but quite common
(Nichols and Bruno 2010). So how do animalists respond? While many
animalists will concede the intuitions we have about these and other
cases, they will also point out that we harbor many other
pre-philosophical commitments besides. We are, for instance, strongly
inclined to believe that many animals (human and otherwise) are
capable of thinking (including remembering, believing, desiring,
etc.). Likewise, we believe that there is just one thinker located
where each of us is. But if, say, the intuition in the
brain-transplant case is correct and you go with your brain when it
gets transplanted into another body, then either the human animal left
behind was never capable of thinking (since the brain was thinking and
there was only one thinker in the vicinity) or there were multiple
thinkers thinking your thoughts prior to the transplant (your animal
and your brain). Surely these implications offend our
pre-philosophical beliefs about ourselves too. Consequently, if there
are answers to be had to the fundamental nature and persistence
questions, then it is likely that those answers will reveal some of
our pre-philosophical convictions to be correct, others not. (For
further discussion, see Gendler 2002; Madden 2016b; Olson 1997;
Snowdon 1991, 1995, 2014: chs. 10-11; and Wilkes 1988. And see
Snowdon 2003 for a more thorough taxonomy of objections to
animalism.)



Finally, beyond its contribution to the ancient debate over personal
identity, animalism raises practical questions of great contemporary
significance. For example, animalists are committed to claiming that
each of us was once or might someday become a non-person (e.g., a
fetus in a mother's womb, a hospital patient in a persistent
vegetative state). How are we to reconcile these implications of a
metaphysical view with our ethical commitments regarding abortion and
euthanasia? More generally, if animalism is correct, then our
fundamental nature is indistinguishable from that of blue whales, myna
birds, bonobo chimpanzees, and ring-tailed lemurs. How, in the light
of this metaphysical view, are the ethical, legal, and policy debates
that assume a sharp human/animal (us/them) contrast to be
recalibrated? Such questions are only beginning to be explored (see,
e.g., Johansson 2016; Sauchelli forthcoming, 2017a: ch. 5; D.
Shoemaker 2009, 2013, 2016).