1. animalism

2. Locke and Neo-Lockeanism
’The history of the topic of personal identity has been a series of footnotes to Locke

3. Locke’s Human/Person Distinction
Sortal: + count nouns that convey criteria of identity
‘identity is suited to the idea
‘man’ (human animal) and ‘person’ convey different identity criteria, so different persistence conditions.
Human Animal (‘Man’): a structurally complex material object whose functional organization is conducive to continued life.
Person: A thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking.

4. The Problem of Personal Persistence
Normative aspect of personhood
‘Person functions as a forensic term appropriating actions and their merit…in personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment’
In this life…
And the Resurrection World
NOTE: Olson’s diagnosis of what went wrong with traditional personal identity discussion is starting with the question of persistence rather than what it was to be a person in the first place and with the misuse of puzzle cases pumping intuitions about persistence.

5. Summary of Locke
Our capacities for self-consciousness and rationality are tied not to our being human animals, but to our being persons (and something need not be a human animal in order to be a person.
The locus of moral responsibility is not the human animal , but the person
Persons, but not human animals, persist just in case their psychological states are linked in the appropriate ways
During the course of its life, a human animal may coincide with zero, one, or more than one person

6. Animalism
Olsen’s alternative to Neo-Lockeanism

7. What is Animalism?
Each of us (ordinary persons) is numerically identical with an animal.
Identical with--not merely constituted by or other relation
I and my animal have the same persistence conditions
Not all human animals are persons
Fetus, infants, humans in a vegitative state aren’t
There might be persons who weren’t human animals
E.g. non-human animals, supernatural beings that aren’t animals at all
But highly unlikely that there are
And WE aren’t such things: we are animals

8. We are essentially and fundamentally animals
Essentially: we who are animals couldn’t exist without being animals
Fundamentally: our identity conditions derive from our being animals
We persist as long and only as long as the animals we are persist
Person is a phase sortal
We are not ‘only animals’ insofar as non-animal predicates are true of us
E.g. those involved with person being a ‘forensic term’, etc.
Compare Strawson’s P and M predicates or material and game predicates of chess pieces.

9. Neo-Lockean Alternatives
The Constitution View • Lewis’s Temporal Parts Account • Hume • People don’t exist

10. Identity, Coincidence and Constitution

11. The Statue and the Clay
The statue and the clay occupy exactly the same place
Both the statue and the lump of clay of which it’s made are shaped statuesquely, have the same weight, etc.
But they have different identity conditions

12. The Statue and the Clay The lump can survive a radical change of shape
but not loss or replacement of parts.
The statue can survive replacement of parts
but not radical change of shape

13. Lynne Baker’s Constitution View
The lump of clay constitutes the statue
Constitution is not identity!
Problem: modal properties grounded in categorial properties
Problem: different properties go with different kinds of things
Baker’s solution: things may have properties derivatively or non- derivatively
An object has a property derivatively if it instantiates it only in virtue of being colocated with another object
An object has a property non-derivatively if it instantiates that property independently of being independently of being colocated with another object

14. The Derivative/Non-Derivative Distinction
If one object, x, constitutes another object, y and both instantiate some property F then:
x (the constituting object) instantiates F nonderivatively in the event it would instantiate F even if it did not constitute y (the constituted)
y instantiates F nonderivatively in the event that x would fail to instantiate F if x did not constitute y; and
y instantiates F derivatively in the event that x would instantiate F even if it did not constitute y.

15. Persons are constituted by human animals
Persons are animals derivatively
First person perspective is essential to being a person
First person perspective is unique to persons
Each of us persons posesses the first-person perspective essentially and nonderivatively
Because the human animal that constitutes you possesses a first-person perspective only derivatively, it is unable to self-refer.

16. David Lewis’s Perdurantist View
Agrees with Locke:
Persons and animals have different persistence conditions
The persistence conditions for persons are psychological
Persistence conditions are to be understood in terms of ‘unity relations’ holding on stages
Persons are (ordinarily) temporal (proper) parts of human animals
While a person exists, every stage of the person is identical to a stage of the human animal
Ordinarily some human animal stages that animal-unity-related to person- stages are not themselves person-stages

17. Persons and Their Animals
There are lots of different (but at some times co-located) things here that count as one
time
fetus stages
corpse stages
person stages
brain-dead stages
human animal stages
human body stages

18. Arguments
Arguments for and objections to Animalism

19. The Thinking Animal Argument
There is a human animal sitting in your chair.
The human animal sitting in your chair is thinking.
The one and only thinking being sitting in your chair is you
You are that animal
This argument can be generalized (see symbolized version): conclusion is that we is (identical to) an animal
Note: the most crucial premise is 3—Olson will argue that denying animalism we get the absurd conclusion that there are two thinkers: the person and the animal.

20. Alternatives to Animalism
Alternative One: there are no human animals
Chisholm’s mereological essentialism: animals are ens sucessiva
Alternative Two: human Animals can’t think
If human animals can’t think, dogs can’t either.
‘Body’ can’t be substituted for person in every context
Alternative Three: you are not
Lewis counting overlapping individuals as one (see Problem of the Many!)
How do I know I’m the person not the animal?
Couldn’t be more than one person around
If conscious non-people ’would derive personhood of significance

21. The Problem of the Many
“Overcrowding” isn’t peculiar to the problem of personal identity
The table in the table in the table…

22. More objections to Thinking Animal Argument
Constitution View (P3 should be rejected): first-person thoughts/utterances refer only to persons, who have them non- derivatively
Rival Candidates Problem (P1 doesn’t help): there are many different kinds of things, e.g. mass of matter, mere body, etc. colocated with the animal.
Thinking Parts Objection (P1 doesn’t help): lots of different overlapping animal parts include the brain (responsible for thinking): I can’t be identical to all of them.

23. Hard Choices: Asking the Right Questions
Philosophers, beginning with Locke have begun the discussion on personal identity by asking the persistence question: ‘What makes me now the same person as me at some other time?
Motivation: interest in survival, responsibility for past actions, reward and punishment
Focus on puzzle cases of persistence, e.g. brain transplant
‘Compare the thinking animal argument with the transplant argument: Which is more likely:
no animals, no animals think, too many thinkers or
You don’t go along with your transplanted cerebrum?

24. What would it mean if we were animals?
On the misuse of puzzle cases of identity through time: consider actual cases.
We once were fetuses, and infants, and in the future, we may become brain brain-dead non-persons
Note: person is a phase sortal!
Begin not with the persistence question but the question of what am I and then consider the persistence conditions for what I am, viz. an animal

25. …Whatever else we are Are we animals?
On the orthodox (neo-Lockean) account, yes and no
At any given time I, the person, occupy the same region as an animal: to that extent I am an animal, i.e. the animal and I count as one
But as a person I have different persistence conditions than my animal so
My animal may predate and postdate me, the person
And conceivably I may survive my animal, e.g. in a resurrection world
A physicalist account of what persons are at any time doesn’t preclude a mentalistic account of personal identity through time
…Whatever else we are

26. We’re People!