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The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person

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Abstract

I argue that a form of animalism that does not include the belief that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal has a dialectical advantage over other versions of animalism. The main reason for this advantage is that Phase Animalism, the version of animalism described here, has the theoretical resources to provide convincing descriptions of the outcomes of scenarios problematic for other forms of animalism. Although Phase Animalism rejects the claim that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal, it is still appealing to those who believe that our nature is continuous or of a similar kind to that of other physical entities.

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Notes

  1. See Wiggins (2001) for the relevant terminology.

  2. See Olson (2007) for an introduction to various theories about our own nature.

  3. The literature on animalism has grown significantly in the past 20 years. See Blatti (2014) and Bailey (2015) for useful and compelling introductions to the topic.

  4. See Mackie (1976), Chappell (1990) and Ayers (1991). How the previous claims are connected will be explained in Sect. 3.

  5. Snowdon (1990), Olson (1997, 2004, 2013, 2015, forthcoming), Mackie (1999), Hershenov (2005), DeGrazia (2005), Johnston (2007). Many other equally interesting versions of animalism are listed in Blatti (2014) and Bailey (2015).

  6. Olson uses ‘accident animalism’ to label the view according to which ‘we are animals accidentally and not necessarily’ (AA).

  7. The relationship between sortals and identity is interestingly discussed also in Nichols (2010).

  8. See Mackie (1999: 236). This view is also associated with Ayers (1991).

  9. This formulation of the problem is mainly that discussed in Johnson (2007), Parfit (2012), and Olson (forthcoming).

  10. See Olson (2007: 29–37), in particular, 35–7.

  11. See Feldman (1992: 89) and Feldman (2000).

  12. See Hershenov (2005) for a lengthy discussion of the same problem along different lines.

  13. This description is supposed to be general enough to be compatible with different accounts of what ‘particle’ and ‘parcels of matter’ refer to.

  14. The astute reader will certainly notice a similarity with Parfit (1984/7: 206).

  15. For expository reasons, I have chosen to focus on NMA instead of EA. However, a version of EA can be combined with the belief that animals are living organisms and the belief that ‘human animal’ is not a substance-sortal. See, for instance, the discussion of the remnant-person problem below.

  16. ‘Human animal’ and/or ‘person’ may also be understood in terms of modes of parcels of matter, the latter (parcels of matter) playing the role of ‘modified’ substances. On some interpretations of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding the great man took himself persons to be modes. See, for instance, LoLordo (2011). Other interpretations include those of Weinberg (2012) and Gordon-Roth (2015).

  17. Olson (2013) provides a detailed discussion of the various failed or problematic attempts of other forms of animalism to deal with gory deaths.

  18. An attempt in this direction could be an elaboration of the idea that ‘object’ (or ‘basic object’) is a sortal or a concept that provides substantial (in the sense of ‘thick’) principles of individuation and the specification of ‘body of matter’ as a kind of ‘object’ (or ‘basic object’). Significant work on this idea has been done, with a particular emphasis on the psychological aspects of the topic, in Xu (1997). See also Hirsch (Hirsch 2011), Wiggins (2001) and Casati (2004) for some critical considerations. Another connection between what is suggested in this paper and previous influential works is that described by Strawson (1959), one of the main theses of which is that material bodies play the role of basic particulars in our conceptual schemes involving referential expressions. Nihilism about certain kinds of material objects (or beings) is discussed in Van Inwagen (1990).

  19. Various forms of constitutionalism are defended and discussed in Baker (2000), Johnston (2007), and Shoemaker (1999, 2011).

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Acknowledgments

This paper was fully supported by a Grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. LU23400314).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, SAR

    Andrea Sauchelli

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Sauchelli, A. The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person. Philos Stud 174, 205–218 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0677-4

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