Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Our animal interests

  • Published:
Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Animalism is at once a bold metaphysical theory and a pedestrian biological observation. For according to animalists, human persons are organisms; we are members of a certain biological species. In this article, I introduce some heretofore unnoticed data concerning the interlocking interests of human persons and human organisms. I then show that the data support animalism. The result is a novel and powerful argument for animalism. Bold or pedestrian, animalism is true.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. For more detailed characterization of animalism and its rivals and an extensive bibliography, see Bailey (2015, 2016a); see also all the essays in Blatti and Snowdon (2016).

  2. On animalism, then, we are not merely constituted by or intimately related to animals, contra rival views.

  3. Many philosophers endorse either moderate or pure dualism. Which disjunct they opt for is not always clear. See Barnett (2010), Harrison (2016), Hasker (2010), Meixner (2010), Moreland (2013), Nida-Rümelin (2010), Unger (2006), Zimmerman (2010). For specific discussion of Barnett’s, Harrison’s, and Moreland’s recent arguments, see Bailey (2014b, 2016b), and Bailey and Rasmussen (2016).

  4. Lowe (2010) and Meixner (2010): 436–437.

  5. Swinburne (1997): 145.

  6. Baker (2000), Corcoran (2006), Johnston (1987, 2007), Shoemaker (2008).

  7. Brainists include McMahan (2002): 88–94, Parfit (2012), Searle (1983): 230, and Tye (2003): 142.

  8. Hudson (2001, 2007). See Bailey (2014a) for discussion. For a similar view according to which we are sums of psychologically continuous temporal parts of organisms (but distinct from those organisms), see Lewis (1976) and Perry (1975).

  9. Throughout, I shall use “interest” and its cognates in this way: the things that are good for or benefit you are in your interest, and those that are bad for or harm you are not in your interest.

  10. For brief discussion of an argument in this neighborhood that the present article supersedes, see Bailey (2015): 871–872.

  11. Snowdon (2014): 81.

  12. If you think that simplicity has no place at all in metaphysical theorizing (or theorizing in general), then I invite you to read my main argument as supporting a conditional along these lines: if simplicity is a theoretical advantage, then animalism enjoys that advantage.

  13. Baker (2007), 69: “The onset of a first-person perspective is the coming into existence of a new entity in the world. A human person essentially has a first-person perspective; a human animal does not. Your persistence conditions are first-personal: You did not exist until there was something that it is like to be you.” See also Baker (2007): 79, fn 41 (referring to Baker’s earlier work, emphasis added): “… a person comes into being when a human organism develops a robust first-person perspective or the structural capacity for one.” I interpret capacity talk here as causal—a capacity just is a causal power. So, positing a new item with a capacity is positing new causal structure.

  14. Shoemaker (2008): 323: “… a person and her biological animal can have the property of having a certain disease, or the property of having an immunity to a certain disease. But if persons can in principle change bodies and biological animals can’t, then there is a slight difference in the ways these biological properties can be lost in the two cases—the person, but not the biological animal, can lose the disease or immunity by changing bodies. Since the causal profile of a property will include the ways in which the property can be lost, the disease and immunity properties of the person will have slightly different causal profiles from the disease and immunity properties of the biological animal…”.

  15. Plantinga (2006): 5, “Now it seems possible-possible in that broadly logical sense-that medical science should advance to the point where I remain fully dressed and in my right mind (perhaps reading the South Bend Tribune) throughout a process during which each of the macroscopic parts of my body is replaced by other such parts, the original parts being vaporized in a nuclear explosion-or better, annihilated by God. But if this process occurs rapidly-during a period of 1 microsecond, let's say [my body] will no longer exist. I, however, will continue to exist, having been reading the comic page during the entire process.”

  16. Plantinga (2006): 11, “…no material objects can think—i.e., reason and believe, entertain propositions, draw inferences, and the like. But of course I can think; therefore I am not a material object.”

  17. Another pure dualist who thinks that material objects cannot enjoy conscious mental thought is David Barnett (2010).

  18. I thank anonymous referees for pressing this objection.

  19. For the record, you should not find the counter-evidence persuasive. But establishing that claim is a task for another day, and one admirably accomplished by, among many others, Olson (1997) and Snowdon (2014).

  20. It is unclear whether Aristotle himself thought we were wholly material or not; but many contemporary hylomorphists—such as Toner (2011)—classify their view as a kind of non-materialist animalism. On contemporary hylomorphism, see Bailey and Wilkins (forthcoming); on the varieties of animalism and whether the animalist must endorse materialism see Thornton (2016) and (MS).

  21. Olson (1997): 16.

  22. It is sometimes unclear whether Olson takes the Biological Approach to be about what it takes for us to last over time or what it takes for human animals to last over time. I mean the latter.

References

  • Bailey, A. M. (2014a). The elimination argument. Philosophical Studies, 168, 475–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, A. M. (2014b). You needn’t be simple. Philosophical Papers, 43, 145–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, A. M. (2015). Animalism. Philosophy Compass, 10, 867–883.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, A. M. (2016a). You are an animal. Res Philosophica, 93, 205–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, A. M. (2016b). On the concept of a spirit. Religious Studies. doi:10.1017/S0034412516000275

  • Bailey, Andrew. M., & Rasmussen, Joshua. (2016). How valuable could a material object be? Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2, 332–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, A. M., & Wilkins, S. M. (forthcoming). The resurgence of hylomorphism in contemporary philosophy. Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy.

  • Baker, L. R. (2000). Persons and bodies: A constitution view. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, L. R. (2007). The metaphysics of everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, D. (2010). You are simple. In R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (Eds.), The waning of materialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blatti, S., & Snowdon, P. F. (2016). Animalism: New essays on persons, animals, and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Corcoran, K. (2006). Rethinking human nature. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, G. (2016). A moral argument for substance dualism. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2, 21–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hasker, W. (2010). Persons and the unity of consciousness. In R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (Eds.), The waning of materialism: New essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2001). A materialist metaphysics of the human person. New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hudson, H. (2007). I am not an animal. In P. van Inwagen & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Persons: Human and divine (pp. 216–234). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, M. (1987). Human beings. Journal of Philosophy, 84(February), 59–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, M. (2007). Human beings revisited: My body is not an animal. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 3, 33–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, D. (1976). Survival and identity. In A. O. Rorty (Ed.), The identities of persons (pp. 17–40). Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lowe, E. J. (2010). Substance dualism: A non-cartesian approach. In R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (Eds.), The waning of materialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMahan, J. (2002). The ethics of killing: Problems at the margins of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Meixner, U. (2010). Materialism does not save the phenomena and the alternative which does. In R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (Eds.), The waning of materialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moreland, J. P. (2013). A conceptualist argument for a spiritual substantial soul. Religious Studies, 49, 35–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nida-Rümelin, M. (2010). An argument from transtemporal identity for subject-body dualism. In R. C. Koons & G. Bealer (Eds.), The waning of materialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, E. (1997). The human animal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parfit, D. (2012). We are not human beings. Philosophy, 87(01), 5–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perry, J. (1975). Personal identity, memory, and the problem of circularity. In J. Perry (Ed.), Personal identity. Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plantinga, A. (2006). Against materialism. Faith and Philosophy, 23, 3–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shoemaker, S. (2008). Persons, animals, and identity. Synthese, 162(3), 313–324.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Snowdon, P. F. (2014). Persons, animals. Ourselves: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Swinburne, R. (1997). Evolution of the soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, A. K. (2016). Varieties of animalism. Philosophy Compass, 11, 515–526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, A. K. (MS). Disembodied animals.

  • Toner, P. (2011). Hylemorphic animalism. Philosophical Studies, 155(1), 65–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tye, M. (2003). Consciousness and persons: Unity and Identity. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Unger, P. K. (2006). All the power in the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zimmerman, Dean. (2010). From property dualism to substance dualism. Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 84(1), 119–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Thanks to anonymous referees, Alex Arnold, Nathan Ballantyne, Brian Pocock Boeninger, Brianna Campbell, Neil Mehta, Brad Monton, Al Plantinga, Evangeline Pousson, Josh Rasmussen, Mike Rea, Brad Rettler, Alex Skiles, Jeff Speaks, Philip Swenson, Allison Krile Thornton, Patrick Todd, Chris Tweedt, Peter van Inwagen, Joshua Wong, and audiences at Pepperdine, Yale, CU Boulder, Edinburgh, William and Mary, and Biola University for probing comments on this paper and its ancestors. I extend special thanks to all the students in my Metaphysics of Human Nature class (Yale-NUS, Fall 2016) for extensive discussion and critique.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale-NUS College, Singapore, Singapore

    Andrew M. Bailey

Authors
  1. Andrew M. Bailey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew M. Bailey.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bailey, A.M. Our animal interests. Philos Stud 174, 2315–2328 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0800-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0800-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation