Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive

Animalism

First published Mon Apr 7, 2014; substantive revision Mon Jul 15, 2019

Among the questions to be raised under the heading of “personalidentity” are these: “What are we?” (fundamentalnature question) and “Under what conditions do we persistthrough time?” (persistence question). Against the dominantneo-Lockean approach to these questions, the view known as animalismanswers that each of us is an organism of the speciesHomosapiens and that the conditions of our persistence are those ofanimals. Beyond describing the content and historical background ofanimalism and its rivals, this entry explores some of the argumentsfor and objections to this controversial account of our nature andpersistence.

1. Formulating Animalism

Despite its Aristotelian heritage, animalism is a relative newcomer tothe personal identity debate. While early intimations of the view canbe found in work by Wiggins (1980) and Wollheim (1984), thoseprimarily responsible for injecting the view into the contemporarydebate 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 metaphysicalnature: whether we are material or immaterial; simple or composite;substance, property, process, or event; organic or inorganic; etc. Inthis context, the animalist asserts simply:

(1′): We are animals.

Despite its plainness, (1′) is easily misinterpreted (fordiscussion, see D. Mackie 1999b: 230–33; Olson 2003:318–21; and Snowdon 2014: ch. 1). According to the intendedreading, the ‘we’ picks out human persons such as you andme. Nevertheless, (1′) should not be taken to assert thatall persons are animals. It leaves open the possibilities ofboth non-animal people (e.g., robots, angels, aliens, deities) andhuman animals that are not people (e.g., patients in persistentvegetative states, human fetuses). The ‘are’ reflects the‘is’ of numerical identity. Consequently, animalism is notthe view that each of us is “constituted by” a particularorganism, in the way that a statue is sometimes said to benon-identically constituted by the hunk of matter with which itcoincides (seesection 2.3). Nor still should (1′) be understood to claim that each of ushas a body that is an animal—as if you were one thingand your animal body another. Finally, ‘animals’ refers tobiological organisms—members of the primate speciesHomosapiens. While participants on both sides of the debate overanimalism tend to treat these terms interchangeably, some prominentcritics 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′) issometimes 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 objectx, ifx is ahuman person, thenx is an animal, i.e., necessarily, humanpersons are animals. While neither (1′) nor (1″) isunproblematic (see, e.g., Johansson 2007 and Toner 2011), it is clearenough what they donot suggest. According to the animalismaccount 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. Campbell2006);
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’spositive assertions, rather than on animalist criticisms of each ofits rival views. The interested reader is directed to Olson 2007 andSnowdon 2014, which not only include qualified defenses of (1), butalso raise a host of criticisms of the foregoingalternatives—criticisms that, if not motivated by an acceptanceof (1), are at least consistent with its truth.

It bears mention that animalism is sometimes formulated slightlydifferently as:

(1‴): We are essentially animals.

On this construal, animalism is the view that we could not existexcept as animals. Indeed, some have alleged that a commitment to(1′) is insufficient to qualify anyone as an animalist and thatthis label should be reserved only for those committed toboth (1′) and (1‴) (Belshaw 2011: 401; cf. Olson2007: 26–27, Snowdon 1990). Insistence on this point is probablyinnocuous, 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 readilyassociated with the name, animalism also incorporates a view about ourpersistence. Stated in its most general form, this view asserts thefollowing:

(2): The conditionswhose satisfaction is necessary and sufficient for a past or futurebeing to be identical with a human person that exists now just arethose whose satisfaction is necessary and sufficient for a past orfuture being to be identical with an animal that existsnow.

All animalists subscribe to (2), so far as it goes. But it does not govery far. What exactlyare the conditions of (human) animalcontinuity? Although animalists are mostly in agreement, there is asubtle and seldom acknowledged rift between two camps of animalistthinking about the answer to this question.

According to the first camp, remaining alive is both a necessary and asufficient condition for the persistence of human animals.Human-animal persistence thus consists in the continuation of thoseprocesses constitutive of biological life. As Olson puts it,“one survives just in case one’s purely animalfunctions—metabolism, the capacity to breathe and circulateone’s blood, and the like—continue” (1997: 16). Onthis view, an animal’s life is understood as

a self-organizing biological event that maintains the organism’scomplex internal structure. The materials that organisms are made upof are intrinsically unstable and must therefore be constantlyrepaired and renewed, or else the organism dies and its remains decay.An organism must constantly take in new particles, reconfigure andassimilate them into its living fabric, and expel those that are nolonger useful to it. An organism’s life enables it to persistand retain its characteristic structure despite constant materialturnover. (Olson 2007: 28)

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

(2a): Given a humananimal,x, existing at one time, \(t_1\), and something,y, existing at a later time, \(t_2\),y is identicalwithx if and only ify continues the life processespreviously undergone byx.

Once (2a) is conjoined with the animalist answer to the fundamentalnature question, (1), we have a view that might be labeled“organic animalism”. Notable advocates of this viewinclude Olson and van Inwagen (1990). Of course, it follows from theorganicist view that death will constitute the end of our existence.Whatever else may remain following our deaths, each of us will ceaseto exist when we die. Indeed, strictly speaking on this view, there isno 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 anecessary condition for the persistence of human animals. On theirview, a human animal (like all organisms) is a functionally organizedphysical object whose membership in a particular species is attributedto its origin and structure. Only if it is so gruesome as to destroythis structure will an organism’s death bring about itsnonexistence. We persist, David Mackie puts it, “as long as thisorganisation of [our] constituent parts remains sufficiently nearlyintact” (1999b: 237).

But this focus on the functional organization of animal bodies shouldbe taken neither as discounting altogether the significance of thelife processes emphasized by organicists nor as affirming atraditional bodily criterion of persistence. On the contrary, on thisview, a human animal’s

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

“But”, Ayers continues, “that is not to say thatwhen it dies the thing itself will cease to exist: merely that anexplanation of the existence and structure of the thing will thenrefer to a life that is over” (ibid.).

In contrast with their organicist counterparts, these animalistsanswer 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 theirnatural 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 humananimal,x, existing at one time, \(t_1\), and something,y, existing at a later time, \(t_2\),y is identicalwithx if and only ify retains a sufficient degree ofthe life-apt structure of constituent parts previously exhibited byx.

Hereafter, ‘somatic animalism’ will refer to theconjunction of (1) and (2b). In addition to Ayers and Mackie, notablesomaticists include Carter (1989, 1999) and Feldman (1992).

It is worth emphasizing that the debate between somatic and organicanimalists is not merely verbal and that the sort of linguisticevidence sometimes marshaled (e.g., by D. Mackie 1999b) is—whilegermane—unlikely to settle the question at issue. The debatebetween somaticist and organicist conceptions of the conditions ofanimal continuity reflects a substantive (if, as yet, inadequatelyexplored) disagreement about the nature of (human) animals. (Are theyessentially living? How ought life itself be understood?) Moreover,while the issue of whether something can be both an animal and deadillustrates the somaticist-organicist debate, it is hardlythe only context in which that debate manifests itself. The samedebate 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 generalphilosophical theory … the debate on personal identity hashardly moved on since the innovations of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. (1991: vol. 2: 281)

In a similar spirit, S. Shoemaker recently adapted Whitehead’sfamous remark, observing that “the history of the topic ofpersonal identity has been a series of footnotes to Locke”(2008: 313). It is certainly undeniable that no single discussion ofpersonal identity has done more to shape the current debate than thechapter titled “Of Identity and Diversity” that Lockeadded to the second edition of hisEssay Concerning HumanUnderstanding (II.xxvii). (Hereafter, all textual references to Locke are to this work, Locke 1689 [1975].) Also undeniable is the effect thesepages have had on the emergence of the animalist alternative to theLockean approach to personal identity. For whatever intuitive appealanimalism may seem to have in our secular, post-Darwinian climate, inthe wake of Locke’s work, the falsity of animalism was longtaken for granted.

2.1 Locke’s Human/Person Distinction

From an animalist perspective, the most significant aspect ofLocke’s famous discussion is the sharp distinction he drawsbetween the human animal (“man”) and the person. Unlike amass of matter—which consists merely in “the Cohesion ofParticles … any how united” (II.xxvii.4)—a livingorganism (e.g., oak tree, horse, human animal) is a structurallycomplex material object whose functional organization is conducive tocontinued life. A person, by contrast, is a “thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and canconsider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in differenttimes and places; which it does by that consciousness, which isinseparable from thinking” (II.xxvii.9).

By classifying “man” with other organisms and then drawinga distinction between organisms and persons, Locke recognizes that heis prying apart the traditional notion of “man” asrational, on the one hand, and animal, on the other. Against thistraditional understanding, he introduces a thought experimentinvolving a rational parrot (II.xxvii.8). Our unwillingness to callthis parrot a “man” simply because it is an animalpossessed of language and reason illustrates that not all rationalanimals are men. Nor are all men rational animals: “whoevershould see a Creature of his own Shape and Make, though it had no morereason all its Life, than aCat or aParrot, wouldcall him still aMan” (ibid.). The human/persondistinction gains traction once it is coupled with one oftheEssay’s key insights, viz. that sortal concepts(e.g.,human animal,person) are often (though notalways) associated with different identity criteria.“Identity”—as he puts it in the title of the sectionin which this insight is first registered—is “suited totheIdea”: “such as is theIdeabelonging to [a] Name, such must be theIdentity”(II.xxvii.7). Locke is keenly aware of the significance of thisprinciple; “if it had been a little more carefully attendedto”, he admonishes, it “would possibly have prevented agreat deal of that Confusion, which often occurs about this Matter… especially concerningPersonal Identity” (ibid.). And indeed, it is thisinsight about the association of sortal concepts and identity criteriathat encourages the thought in Locke that human animals and personsare governed by different criteria of identity. Whereas a human animalpersists just in case “the same continued Life [is] communicatedto different Particles of Matter, as they happen successively to beunited to that organiz’d living Body” (II.xxvii.8), whenone “consider[s] whatPerson stands for”, Lockecontends, one finds that its persistence consists in “thesameness of a rational Being”. He explains: “as far asthis consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action orThought, so far reaches the Identity of thatPerson” (II.xxvii.9).

The impetus behind Locke’s human/person distinction was theongoing debate amongst seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theologiansand philosophers concerning the metaphysics of resurrection. Theirchallenge was to account for the Biblical prediction that the deadwould be resurrected on judgment day. But what is it exactly that getsresurrected? The physical particles associated with a living organismare in a state of constant flux. The set of particles associated withan organism changes from one moment to the next and may turnovercompletely (perhaps several times) during the course of anorganism’s life. Moreover, whether due to decomposition and/orbecause they are consumed by other organisms, the particles associatedwith an organism at its death will be widely dispersed. These factsalone make it unlikely, if not impossible, that the resurrection ofeach individual will involve the reconstitution of thatindividual’s former “body”. The human/persondistinction supplies Locke with the resources to resolve this problembecause, on his view, something is a personnot because ofthe material or immaterial substance in which it is grounded—aquestion on which Locke remains steadfastly agnostic, though he isinclined to think the underlying substance is immaterial(II.xxvii.25)—but in virtue of the psychological capacities itexercises, viz. self-consciousness and rationality. And a personpersists “as far as” the exercise of those capacities“reaches” (II.xxvii.9): “For the same consciousnessbeing preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances,the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Thusthe way is clear for Locke to assert that one and the same person maybe resurrected even if that person comes to inhabit an altogetherdifferent body than any with which she was previously associated(II.xxvii.15).

It is in the context of his solution to this problem that Lockeintroduces the famous thought experiment involving the prince and thecobbler—not as a puzzle in need of explanation, but as a casewhose 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 ofthe Prince’s past Life, [were to] enter and inform the Body of aCobler as soon as deserted by his own Soul”, Locke enjoins hisreader, “every one sees, he would be the same Personwith the Prince, accountable only for the Prince’s Actions: Butwho would say it was the same Man?” (II.xxvii.15, emphasisadded). This thought experiment is often taken to support apsychological criterion of personal identity. The precise form of sucha criterion has been the subject of much dispute, both inLocke’s time and subsequently. Locke himself is sometimes said(probably incorrectly) to have advocated a memory criterion, accordingto which a person,x, existing at one time, \(t_1\), and a person,y,existing at a later time, \(t_2\),y is identical withxif and only ify remembers experiences had byx. Whetheror not this was Locke’s view, generally speaking, psychologicalcriteria of personal identity assert that a psychological relation ofsome sort (i.e. a relation involving memory, characteristics anddispositions, beliefs, desires, rationality, etc.) is necessary and/orsufficient for each of us to persist through time.

Another important dimension of the human/person distinction is alsosignaled in this example, viz. the person as locus of moralaccountability. On Locke’s view, it is in virtue of theircapacities for self-consciousness and rationality that persons notonly persist through time, but also are prudentially concerned andmorally and legally responsible for actions committed at other times.According to Locke, a person should be punished only for those actionsthat she can remember having committed (II.xxvii.20). This is true notonly 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 deedsundertaken throughout the course of our lives (II.xxvii.26)—butalso, more generally, in the course of everyday legal and moralaffairs. So it is that ‘person’ functions as “aForensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit” (ibid.)and in “personal Identity is founded all the Right andJustice of Reward and Punishment” (II.xxvii.18).

In discussing these normative aspects of personhood, Locke raises andanswers an obvious objection in a way that anticipates some strains ofthe contemporary debate. “Suppose”, he says,

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

Locke replies that, although they typically refer to both the samehuman animal and the same person, self-referring personal pronouns canbe equivocal. So the question “Did I do such and so?” canbe ambiguous as between “Did the person to which ‘I’presently refers do such and so?” and “Did the humananimal to which ‘I’ presently refers do such andso?” In Locke’s amnesiac case, the answer to the firstquestion is no, while the answer to the second question is yes:“the WordI is applied to … the Man only”(ibid.).

Two aspects of Locke’s discussion of this case are salient tothe contemporary discussion. The first, of course, is the view that,if I am incapable of recalling having done this or that, then theperson responsible for the action in question is not the person I am,even if the person who is responsible for that action occupied thesame human animal presently occupied by the person I am (see Johansson2016, D. Shoemaker 2009, 2016, and Sauchelli 2017a). The second is theidea that the first-person pronoun can refer equivocally in a way that tracks the human/person distinction (seesection 3.2).

A host of interpretive questions can be raised concerning thehistorical distinction between human animals and persons, and some ofthese may be of interest to participants in the contemporary debatebetween animalism and its rivals. For example, whether Locke’sdistinction reflects a conceptual or an ontological difference remainsa point of controversy amongst historians of the period (e.g., Bolton1994; Chappell 1989; Thiel 1997 and 1998). But setting aside thesescholarly matters, the features of Locke’s distinction that areuncontroversially endorsed by Locke as well as especially relevant forthe current debate include the following:

our capacities for self-consciousness and rationality are tied notto our being human animals, but to our being persons;
the locus of moral responsibility is not the human animal, butthe person;
persons, but not human animals, persist just in case theirpsychological states are linked in appropriate ways; and
during the course of its life, a human animal may coincide withzero, one, or more than one person, and something need not be a humananimal in order to be occupied by a person (e.g., Locke’srational parrot).

2.2 Animalism and the Human/Person Distinction

It should be emphasized at this point that animalists do not deny thatthere is a distinction to be drawn between human animals and persons.This, in part, is why the formulation of (1) that is sometimesascribed to animalists—“persons are humananimals”—is misleading. In fact, there are several aspectsof Locke’s discussion that animalists uphold.

For example, animalists often ally their answer to the persistencequestion with Locke’s identity criteria for human animals (e.g.,Olson 2007: 28). Of course, since organic animalists affirm andsomatic animalists deny that being alive is a necessary condition ofour 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 theEssay suggest otherwise(some of which Mackie himself acknowledges—e.g., inII.xxvii.4–5) that the more circumspect conclusion may be thatLocke was either inconsistent or just ambivalent on the matter.Animalists are also sympathetic to Locke’s account ofpersonhood—albeit with a different understanding of the type ofconceptperson is—and this alternative understandingallows 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 aphase sortal concept (orstatus 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 thepersistence conditions of its instances, a phase sortal concept is aconcept to which its instances belong temporarily, for only a phase oftheir existence (e.g.,teenager). Simply by reaching aparticular age, for example, something that was not a teenager canbecome a teenager without ceasing to exist. Likewise, something thatwas a teenager can cease to be a teenager without ceasing to exist. Sotoo, animalists say, withperson. Personhood, they claim, isa phase that something begins upon acquiring the psychologicalcapacities that Locke identifies (self-consciousness and rationality)and concludes upon losing those capacities. In this way, being aperson is a matter of what something cando, rather than whatsomethingis. In Olson terminology,person is a“functional kind”, akin tolocomotor (1997:31–37). A locomotor is anything that is able to move about underits own power, be it a garden slug or a ballistic missile. Likewise,Olson argues (following Locke), a person is anything that is able tothink in certain ways—anything that “is rational, …ordinarily conscious and aware of itself as tracing a path throughtime and space, … [and] morally accountable for itsactions” (1997: 32). Many things besides human animals can bepersons on this view: an angel, a god, a machine, an animal, animmaterial soul, an alien, etc.. In the case of human animals, weordinarily become persons not at conception or at birth, but aroundthe age of two. And while it is possible for a human animal to go outof 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 humananimal 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 datesback at least as far as a prominent exchange between Noonan (1998,2001) and D. Mackie (1999a). Also, the first monograph dedicated toanimalism mounts a sustained attack on the “psychologicalapproach” to personal identity—an approach whose“best-known advocate … is, of course, Locke” (Olson1997: 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 commoncommitment to a psychological criterion of personal identity (whetherthat criterion requires direct psychological connectedness or merelyoverlapping chains of psychological continuity) that animalistsuniversally oppose. But ultimately, the simple “animalism vs.neo-Lockeanism” dichotomy is too coarse-grained and exclusionaryto provide a particularly informative taxonomy of the contemporarydebate. For example, whilst all animalists resist a psychologicalcriterion of persistence, the distinction between organic and somaticanimalisms (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 isopposed by a wide range of views, not all of which are properlyclassified as neo-Lockean. Moreover, as we shall see in what follows,the “neo-Lockeanism” label both obscures importantlydifferent varieties of neo-Lockeanism and ignores different rationalesgiven for those views.

Whilst a comprehensive taxonomy of alternatives to animalism isneither feasible nor necessary in the present context, one step in theright direction would be to differentiate those neo-Lockean views thatrely on the notion of material constitution from those that do not.Those that do—call this type of view “constitutionalistneo-Lockeanism”—are today regarded as the leadingopposition 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 beingmaterially colocated and yet distinguished by one or more modal,temporal, and/or relational properties. On this view, we are personsnon-identically constituted by human animals.

Despite this common reliance on the notion of material constitution,there are significant differences between the views advocated byanimalism’s constitutionalist neo-Lockean opponents. Accordingto S. Shoemaker (1984), for instance, it is the capacity for thoughtthat distinguishes the mental subject you are from the human animalthat constitutes you. Partly because it is embedded within hisbroader, functionalist response to the mind/body problem,Shoemaker’s arguments against animalism and animal thought arecomplex (seesection 3.2 for further discussion). But roughly, on his view, animals areincapable of thinking because they do not persist under theappropriate conditions. Psychological continuity is sufficient for thepersistence of any being endowed with the capacity to think, and sincepsychological continuity is not sufficient for a (human) animal topersist, animals are not thinking beings. And because each of us is athinking being, we are not animals. (For a thorough presentation ofShoemaker’s most recent thinking on this topic, see his 1999,2004, 2008, 2011, 2016.)

Perhaps the most extensive elaboration of the constitutionalistapproach has been given by Baker (2000, 2002, 2007). On her view, theproperty that distinguishes the persons we are from the human animalsthat constitute us is a form of self-consciousness that she calls the“first-person perspective” (2000: ch. 3). It is from thisperspective that “one thinks of oneself as an individual facinga world, as a subject distinct from everything else”; it is whatenables us “to conceive of one’s body and mental states asone’s own” (2000: 60, 4). On her view, persons have theirfirst-person perspectives essentially, and they “persist as longas [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). Constitutionalistsmaintain that constituting objects (e.g., pieces of marble) andconstituted objects (e.g., statues) can share some of theirproperties. For instance, a statue shares its physical and aestheticproperties with the piece of marble that constitutes it; likewise,Baker will claim, a person shares its physical and psychologicalproperties with the human animal that constitutes it. But theseobjects cannot share all of their properties in the same way, or elsethere would be no difference between the constituting and theconstituted. So Baker draws an exhaustive and mutually exclusivedistinction between two ways that objects can instantiate properties:derivatively or nonderivatively. Roughly, an object has a propertyderivatively if it instantiates it only in virtue of being colocatedwith another object, whereas an object instantiates a propertynonderivatively if it instantiates that property independently ofbeing colocated with another object. We might express this distinctionmore perspicuously as follows. If one object (x) constitutesanother object (y) and both objects instantiate some property(F), then

x (the constituting object) instantiatesFnonderivatively in the event it would instantiateF even if itdid not constitutey (the constituted object);
y instantiatesF nonderivatively in the event thatx would fail to instantiateF ifx did notconstitutey; and
y instantiatesF derivatively in the event thatx would instantiateF even if it did not constitutey.

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

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

On Baker’s view, the first-person perspective is unique topersons. Without this perspective, she argues, a being cannot refer toitself using first-person pronouns, for this ability requires that onebe able to conceive of oneself both as the subject of mental eventsand as the object that embodies the subject of those events. Becausethe human animal that constitutes you possesses a first-personperspective only derivatively, then, it is unable to self-refer. Thatsaid, Baker does not claim that person-constituting human animals lackcognitive and experiential capacities altogether. Nor does she claimthat they possess these capacities only derivatively. Like many of the“higher” nonhuman animals, human animals are subjects ofan array of mental phenomena, including pains and pleasures, beliefsand desires. Such phenomena require not the “strong” or“robust” first-person perspective characteristic ofpersons, but only what Baker calls a “weak” or“rudimentary” first-person perspective—roughly, thecapacity to experience the world from an egocentric point of view(2000: 60–64). And just as the statue inherits the property ofbeing three meters tall from the piece of marble, so too the personpossesses these lesser psychological capacities only derivativelybecause the human animal would possess these capacities even if it didnot constitute the person.

Neo-Lockean resistance to animalism that isnot linked toconstitutionalism is an even more diverse lot. One of the prevailingviews in the non-constitutionalist neo-Lockeanism category rejectsanimalism by identifying the person with a proper part of the humananimal—typically, the brain or one of its (spatial or temporal)parts. On this view, the human animal thinks only derivatively, invirtue of having a thinking brain as a part. Among those who advocateviews along this line are Puccetti (1973), Persson (1999), McMahan(2002), Hudson (2001), and more recently Parfit (2012). Animalistresponses to these views are given by Hershenov (2005b, 2016) andOlson (2007: ch. 4). Also relevant are the various thought experimentsraised by non-constitutionalist neo-Lockeans (e.g., Lewis 1976; Parfit1984) that seem to count against animalism; for instance, thoughtexperiments involving teletransportation and transplantation. Seesection 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-lengthtreatment 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 propositionto assert. It is natural to respond to its assertion in the words ofWittgenstein: “Only whom are we informing of this? And on whatoccasion?”. (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 humananimal eats, sleeps, or talks. When you look in the mirror, and animallooks back at you. Most ordinary people suppose that we are animals.… Compared with [competing] proposals, the idea that we areanimals looks like plain common sense. (2007: 23)

But common sense will not settle the issue because some ofanimalism’s rivals are supported by other, equally intuitiveconsiderations. In addition to common sense, then, what arguments canbe 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 wasdeveloped by Snowdon (1990: 91), Carter (1988), McDowell (1997: 237),and Ayers (1991, vol. 2: 283). It has since been sharpened andpopularized by Olson (1997: 106–09, 2003: 325–30, 2007:29–39). Here it is:

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

Whilst none of (P1), (P2), and (P3) is incontestable, nor is any oneof them easily contested. Save perhaps for far-reaching metaphysicalreasons (e.g., an antecedent commitment to idealism), few would denythe very existence of animals, nor the fact that a perfectly goodspecimen of the speciesHomo sapiens is presently seated inyour chair. So (P1) is not easily rejected.

Moreover, concerning (P2), since it would be odd (to say the least) todeny that human animals think while accepting that porpoises andporcupines do, and since we can assume that the human animal in yourchair is not atypical of its kind, whatever reasons one has foraccepting that various nonhuman animals think apply equally to thehuman animal in your chair. While there are those who deny (in asense) that any animal can think (e.g., Descartes, Johnston, S.Shoemaker), their positions strain empirical credibility and/or dependon 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 torequire positing the existence of a thinking being in your chair otherthan yourself. For if (P1) and (P2) are true, and if it is true thatyou exist and are thinking, then denying (P3) results in theimplication that you are but one of (at least) two thinkers seated inyour chair. Such a view faces a host of difficult questions: practicalquestions (e.g., which of these beings owns the car parked outfront?), epistemic questions (how do you determine which of thesebeings you are?), linguistic questions (to which of these beings doinstances of the first-person pronoun refer?), ontological questions(what is the relationship between you and the qualitatively identicalbeing with which you are associated?), and so on. These challengeshave not passed unnoticed, and serious attempts have been made toaddress them. But, the animalist says, the trouble can be avoided fromthe start simply by conceding the truth of (P3).

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

3.2 Replies to the Thinking Animal Argument

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

For instance, according to Baker’s (2000, 2007) constitutionview, (P3) should be rejected, since “thinking being sitting inyour chair” is ambiguous as between the constituted person whothinks nonderivatively and the constituting human animal who thinksderivatively (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 toanimals. On his view, we must distinguish between the referent offirst-person thoughts and utterances, on the one hand, and the thinkerof those thoughts and utterances, on the other hand. Noonan does notdeny that the human animal sitting in your chair is capable offirst-personal thinking. Nor does he deny that such thoughts (and theutterances that express them) successfully refer. But he does insistthat, when the animal has a first-person thought or utters‘I’, that thought or utterance refers not to the animalwho thinks the thought but to the person with whom the animal sharesits thoughts. (For further discussion, see Noonan 2012 and Olson2002a, 2007: 37–39.)

And, although not initially developed as a response to the thinkinganimal argument, S. Shoemaker’s (1984, 1999, 2004) viewrepresents a direct and formidable challenge to (P2). On his account,the human animal sitting in your chair is not thinking because noanimal is capable of thinking. This in turn is because the capacityfor thought requires persistence conditions that all animals, human orotherwise, lack: “mental properties”, Shoemaker writes,“can belong only to things having psychological persistenceconditions” (2004: 528). A thinker’s psychological statesplay characteristic causal roles, and these states (in combinationwith others) tend to cause the thinking being whose states they are tobehave in certain ways. Thus, for example, the state of being in painmay be caused by bodily damage of some kind and may dispose the onewho is in pain to cry out or recoil.

The linchpin of Shoemaker’s view is his claim that the causalrole of any psychological state as well as any other states involvedin that causal role must all be states of one and the same thinkingbeing (1999: 300). In other words, the effects typically brought aboutby a being’s psychological states cannot fail to occur in thatvery being. Olson summarizes the consequence of this commitment asfollows:

if your cerebrum gets put into my head tomorrow, your current mentalstates will have their characteristic effects in the being who ends upwith that organ, and not in the empty-headed thing left behind. ByShoemaker’s reasoning, the subject of thosestates—you—must therefore be the being who ends up withyour transplanted cerebrum. Any being whose later states or actionsare caused in the appropriate way by your current mental states mustbe you. In other words, psychological continuity of a sort mustsuffice for you or any other mental being to persist through time.Since no sort of psychological continuity suffices for any organism topersist … it follows that no organism could have mentalproperties. The nature of mental properties makes it metaphysicallyimpossible for animals to think. (Olson 2007: 33–34.)

Shoemaker’s functionalist theory of mind has receivedconsiderable attention in the philosophy of mind. His view thatanimals cannot think and the implications of that claim for thethinking animal argument are discussed in Árnadóttir2010, Hershenov 2006, Olson 2002b, and S. Shoemaker 2004, 2008, 2011,2016.

Beyond these discussions of (P2) and (P3), much of the recentdiscussion concerning animalism has focused on such questions aswhether one or more than one thinker is sitting in your chair; if morethan one, which one is doing the thinking; and in what sense.Zimmerman (2008), for instance, objects to (P1) by noting that therationale for the claim that a human animal is located where youare—in effect, that it is just obvious that there is an instanceof the speciesHomo sapiens currently located where youare—extends equally to such things as “mere hunk ofmatter”, “mere body”, “psychologicalperson”, and the like. Since the animalist does not accept thatwe are identical to any of these non-animals, the evident truth of(P1) will not be sufficient to establish the thinking animalargument’s conclusion. What is required, in other words, is notsimply a reason for believing that (P1) is true—animalists, letus assume, are correct in insisting that few would deny it—butalso a reason for denying the presence of other things besides a humananimal. This is the “rival candidates problem”.

Closely related to this problem is another. The “thinking partsproblem” charges that, even if you are a thinking being, noreason has been given to suppose that you are a thinkinganimal rather than any of the other thinking beings currentlylocated where you are. To begin, consider all the parts of a humananimal that are plausibly regarded as thinking: the head, the brain,the right-leg complement (i.e., the entire animal body minus the rightleg), the entire animal from the waist up (torso, neck, and head), theleft-arm complement minus a single electron in the animal’sliver, the left-arm complement minus a different electron in theanimal’s liver, etc. For each of these thinking parts, anargument structurally analogous to the thinking animal argument couldbe constructed. For instance:

(P1′): There is ahuman head currently located where you are.
(P2′): The humanhead currently located where you are is thinking.
(P3′): You are thethinking being located in your chair.
(C′): Therefore,the human head located where you are is you.

Likewise:

(P1″): There is atorso-neck-and-head currently located where you are.
(P2″): Thetorso-neck-and-head currently located where you are isthinking.
(P3′): You are thethinking 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 wouldfollow (per impossibile) that you are identical with each ofan infinite number of nonidentical thinking parts. Since you could beidentical with no more than one of those things, and since theanimalist has provided no principled explanation for why you are thewhole animal and not one or another of the animal’s thinkingparts, the thinking animal argument should be rejected.

Much of the discussion about animalism has been concerned with therival candidates and thinking parts problems. (See, for instance,Blatti 2016; Lowe 2001; Madden 2016a; Olson 2007: 215–19 and2015; Parfit 2012; Yang 2015.) One line of response draws on vanInwagen’s (1990) view of composite material beings. According tovan Inwagen’s answer to what he calls the “specialcomposition question”, the only composite objects that exist areliving organisms. Only a living organism unifies the particles thatcompose it at any given moment, on this view. Such things as“mere hunk of matter” and “right-legcomplement” are gerrymandered objects. And since they are notgenuine composite objects, they are neither genuine rivals nor genuinethinkers. Olson (2008: 38–42) is, however, quick to acknowledgethat this riposte will be welcomed only by those antecedentlypersuaded of van Inwagen’s view. And proponents of the rivalcandidates and thinking parts problems are particularly unlikely tocount among van Inwagen’s supporters.

3.3 Animal Ancestors Argument

Even if these objections to the thinking animal argument can beanswered, there is some irony in the fact that the fate of thehallmark argument for animalism should hang in the balance of disputesover the nature of mental properties and the individuation ofthinkers. Thought is an essential ingredient not in animalism’stheory of our fundamental nature, but in the theories advanced byanimalism’s neo-Lockean rivals. It is precisely our capacity forthought that animalists deny is essential to us; on the contrary,animalists say, each of us was once a non-thinking fetus and each ofus may yet become a non-thinking persistent-vegetative-statepatient.

Thus, a second argument attempts to ground animalism’s defensein a broader naturalistic context. The “animal ancestorsargument” takes the form of a reductio. If (1) is false and weare not animals, then nor are our parents animals, in which case norare our parents’ parents, nor our parents’ grandparents,and so on, as far back as our ancestries extend. But in that case, thefalsity of animalism entails the rejection of evolutionary theory (orat least that theory’s applicability to us), since it deniesthat 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 oughtto be rejected. Whilst Blatti (2012) argues that this argumentwithstands 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 whatwe might call “multiplication objections” to animalism.These objections try to demonstrate how advocates of animalism arecommitted to claiming (or incapable of denying) that one thing (you orme, say) is identical to each of two or more things. Yet another suchobjection is inspired by a rare type of conjoined twinning calleddicephalus, which occurs when a human zygote divides only partiallybefore implanting in the uterine wall. The result is twins conjoinedbelow the neck. These twins look like a two-headed person, withdistinct heads and necks sprouting from a single torso (Miller 1996).According to McMahan (2002: 35), because a pair of dicephalic twins istwo people but only one animal, dicephalic twins appear to present awalking, talking counterexample to animalism’s hallmark claim,(1). (For further discussion, see Blatti 2007; T. Campbell and McMahan2016; Liao 2006; Olson 2014; Reid 2016.)

Other objections aim to reveal animalism’s counterintuitiveverdicts concerning the seemingly endless litany of fantasticalthought experiments (many of them updated versions of Locke’sprince-cobbler case, seesection 2.1) debated in the recent personal identity literature (S. Shoemaker1963; Lewis 1976; Wiggins 1980; Parfit 1984). In one scenario, we areto imagine removing all or part (e.g., cerebrum) of your brain andtransplanting it into a different (brain-less or cerebrum-less) humananimal, with the (ex hypothesi) result that yourpsychological life and characteristics are continued in a differentanimal from the one you presently occupy. Another scenario envisions asimilar feat via fanciful technology that can record all of your brainstates and transfer that information into a different animal’sbrain (previously wiped clean). Still another thought experimentimagines transporting you à laStar Trek by creating ablueprint of your physical and psychological states at one location,destroying you, and then replicating you at some distant location bycreating a new object with all of the same physical and psychologicalstates.

The differences between the details of these thought experiments arenot insignificant. But for present purposes, let us collect themtogether under the label “transfer objections”, since theintuition all of them aim to arouse is thatyou can berelocated from one animal or location to another as a result of theprocesses described, so long as your memories, beliefs, desires,character traits, etc. are preserved. If the transferability intuitionis correct, then (1) cannot be true, since psychological continuity isnot sufficient for the persistence of a human animal. Indeed, for anyof the procedures described in these cases—brain-transplant,brain-state transplant, teletransportation—given the choicebetween undergoing this procedure and annihilation, animalism entailsthat there is no self-interested reason to prefer the former.

The felt conviction of ourprima facie beliefs about whatwould happen in these scenarios seems undeniable. Moreover, there isevidence to suggest that intuitions supporting some version of thepsychological criterion are not only firmly felt, but quite common(Nichols and Bruno 2010). So how do animalists respond? While manyanimalists will concede the intuitions we have about these and othercases, they will also point out that we harbor many otherpre-philosophical commitments besides. We are, for instance, stronglyinclined to believe that many animals (human and otherwise) arecapable of thinking (including remembering, believing, desiring,etc.). Likewise, we believe that there is just one thinker locatedwhere each of us is. But if, say, the intuition in thebrain-transplant case is correct and you go with your brain when itgets transplanted into another body, then either the human animal leftbehind was never capable of thinking (since the brain was thinking andthere was only one thinker in the vicinity) or there were multiplethinkers thinking your thoughts prior to the transplant (your animaland your brain). Surely these implications offend ourpre-philosophical beliefs about ourselves too. Consequently, if thereare answers to be had to the fundamental nature and persistencequestions, then it is likely that those answers will reveal some ofour pre-philosophical convictions to be correct, others not. (Forfurther discussion, see Gendler 2002; Madden 2016b; Olson 1997;Snowdon 1991, 1995, 2014: chs. 10–11; and Wilkes 1988. And seeSnowdon 2003 for a more thorough taxonomy of objections toanimalism.)

Finally, beyond its contribution to the ancient debate over personalidentity, animalism raises practical questions of great contemporarysignificance. For example, animalists are committed to claiming thateach of us was once or might someday become a non-person (e.g., afetus in a mother’s womb, a hospital patient in a persistentvegetative state). How are we to reconcile these implications of ametaphysical view with our ethical commitments regarding abortion andeuthanasia? More generally, if animalism is correct, then ourfundamental nature is indistinguishable from that of blue whales, mynabirds, bonobo chimpanzees, and ring-tailed lemurs. How, in the lightof this metaphysical view, are the ethical, legal, and policy debatesthat assume a sharp human/animal (us/them) contrast to berecalibrated? Such questions are only beginning to be explored (see,e.g., Johansson 2016; Sauchelli forthcoming, 2017a: ch. 5; D.Shoemaker 2009, 2013, 2016).

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Remy Debes, Eric Olson, Gideon Rosen, andPaul Snowdon for helpful feedback on various drafts of this entry.

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