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In her book
Lynne Rudder Baker defends the Constitutive View of persons, the most important
component of which is that persons form a distinct ontological kind, a kind
distinct, that is, from that of animals, and that the relation between
human persons and those animals we call ‘human beings’ is not identity
but the relation of constitution. The
most prominent position in the recent literature which she opposes is that
known as Animalism, or the Biological View, championed particularly by Eric
Olson and Paul Snowdon, according to which human persons simply are human
beings who are persons; ‘person’ is a phase-sortal denoting a creature with a
particular set of capacities, and there is no distinctive problem of personal
identity (anymore than there is a
distinctive problem of prophet identity or genius identity)
In
what follows I wish to consider what arguments Lynne Rudder Baker has against
the Animalistic position, how convincing they are, and how defensible her own
position is against criticism. I shall
also comment on Baker’s attempt to distinguish her own position for that of the
most well-known opponent of Animalism, Sydney Shoemaker, whose psychological
continuity approach, she suggests faces difficulties that do not confront her
own.
There
are two types of argument Baker brings forward in defence of her thesis that
persons form a distinct ontological kind: one type appeals to the
distinctiveness of human persons and the discontinuity between the
psychological capacities of human persons and those of ‘mere’ animals (dogs,
cats, chimpanzees etc.). The other type
of argument appeals specifically to considerations relating to the identity
conditions of human persons and their distinctness from the identity conditions
of ‘mere’ animals and human beings.
The
first type of argument is expressed in passages like this one:
Those who take us to be essentially like
non-human animals want to describe and explain our traits in terms of general
biological traits shared by other species.
But the first person-perspective [definitive of persons], whether
selected for or not, is a biological surd in this respect. As I shall argue, it is utterly distinctive
and simply cannot be assimilated to traits of animals that do not constitute
persons. It is impossible for even the most lovable dog, having no first person
perspective, to be dissatisfied with his personality, or to wonder how he will
die, or to cogitate about what kind of thing he is….So, if one takes a person
to be identical to an animal then one must posit a break in the animal kingdom,
between animals with first person perspectives (only us) and animals without
them (all others). On the other hand,
if one takes a human person to be constituted by an animal, as I advocate, one
can regard the animal kingdom as unified. (2000:16)
Again Baker
writes:
The first person
perspective, or the abilities that it brings in its wake, may well be a product
or a by-product of evolution by natural selection. My claim is this: However the first-person perspective came
about, it is unique and unlike anything else in nature, and it makes possible
much of what matters to us. It even
makes possible our conceiving of things as mattering to us. The first-person perspective – without which
there would be no inner lives, no moral agency, no rational agency – is so
unlike anything else in nature that it sets apart the beings that have it from
all other beings. The appearance of a
first-person perspective makes an ontological difference in the universe.
(2000:163)
It is hard to
see that there is much of an argument here.
The capacity for the self-ascription of first-personal thoughts, which
is what Baker means by the first-person perspective, can surely be agreed by
everyone to have the fundamental significance in our view of ourselves and our
perception of the gap between ourselves and non-human animals on which Baker
insists, but the move to the claim that it has ontological significance is not
compelling. In a sense, as Baker says,
Animalists do not take persons seriously; they think that, however important to
us it is that we are persons, we are not essentially persons, and
personhood could cease to be a feature of the world without any entity ceasing
to exist. But Animalists will agree
that they do not take persons seriously in this stipulated sense and deny that
it shows a lack of appreciation of the significance of personhood.
In
fact Baker seems to be aware that this first line of defence of her position
will not persuade. She writes:
Here we have a
bedrock clash of intuition. On the
Animalist View, I am essentially an animal; my continued existence is nothing
other than the continued existence of an animal. On the Constitution View…I am not essentially an animal…with the
entrance of the first-person perspective in the world comes a new kind of
thing….It is obvious to me, although not to everyone, that a first-person
perspective makes an ontological difference in the world. However, I do not know how to adjudicate
intuitions at this level.
Let
is then pass on to the second type of argument Baker gives against Animalism
and in favour of the Constitution View, that human persons and human animals
differ in their identity conditions.
The appeal here is to the familiar type of thought experiment
illustrated by Locke’s Prince and Cobbler, or the updated versions put forward
by Shoemaker and other writers involving brain transplants or information-state
transfers. Baker writes:
‘If sameness
of person consists in sameness of living organism, then all of these stories
would be not only fictional, but incoherent…. Anyone who takes hundreds of
years of thought experiments as attempting to depict what is metaphysically
incoherent should show how so many have gone so badly wrong…no such account is
forthcoming from those who take personal identity to consist in bodily
identity’ (2000:123-4).
This
is a powerful argument: Animalists have to explain away intuitions, in
particular the ‘Transplant Intuition’, that a human person goes where his brain
goes, which have considerable hold on us.
Until they do so we have no reason to reject them. The situation is
really no different from other cases where Baker sees a constitution relation
as obtaining. We distinguish between
artefacts and the masses of matter that makes them up, and what makes it
compelling to do so is our conviction that artefacts can undergo change of
matter and that the matter constituting an artefact at one time might
constitute a different artefact (of the same or different type) of
another. The fact that in the case of
personal identity divergences from bodily identity are, so far as we know,
merely possible, does not lessen one whit our conviction that if such cases
were to occur persons would have to be regarded as distinct from organisms and
hence does not in any way reduce the strength of the case for the conceptual
distinction between personal identity and identity of organisms.
The
argument that our response to such cases provides for the distinction between
personal identity and identity of organisms, does not, however, take us quite
as far as Baker wants to go. The
analogous case of the relation between an artefact and its constituting matter
illustrates the point. An artefact, say
a dishpan can be repaired and patched up and the matter constituting it at one
time used to make a quite different artefact.
An artefact which has such a history must be distinguished from the
matter which constitutes it at any time.
It does not follow that every artefact of the kind must be distinguished
from its constituting matter: a dishpan created simultaneously with the piece
of plastic which constitutes it, which is annihilated along with that piece of
plastic, and differs in no actual respect from the plastic can
consistently be identified with the plastic despite the modal difference
between them (this, of course, is Lewis’s example and Lewis’s position). Similarly, it is one thing to accept that if
it is possible for personal identity and identity of organism to diverge and
another thing to accept that no actual person is identical with any actual
organism, and in particular, that no actual human person is identical with any
actual human being. The argument for
this claim cannot just appeal to possible differences, but must appeal to
actual differences. But here it is
relevant to appeal to the fact that actual human foetuses (and infants up to a
certain age) lack the first-person perspective and so are not persons in
Baker’s (wholly traditional) sense.
There are, then, actual human organisms that are not human persons. Is it also the case that there are actual
human persons that are not human organisms, or is the case merely like that of
teenagers and people (there are people who are not teenagers, but there are no
teenagers who are not people – though parents may sometimes wonder). The argument that the two cases are unlike,
i.e. that ‘human person’ is not merely a phase sortal, is precisely that we can
conceive personal identity in distinction from identity of human organism in
the way illustrated in the familiar Lockean and neo-Lockean cases.
I
think, then, that Baker presents a strong case against animalism. Although human persons need not be distinct
from human organisms (science-fiction examples of co-existence analogous to
Lewis’s example of the dishpan and the piece of plastic are conceivable), in
fact they are – or such is the conclusion to be drawn if our intuitions about
cases of bodily transference cannot be explained away.
The
main difficulty for this position, which recent discussion has brought to the
fore, is, in one version or another, the ‘Many Minds Objection’. If I am a thinking intelligent thing, so is
the human animal with whom I presently coincide (we have the same brain and
have had and will have for quite a while); so, if I am thinking that it is
raining, for example, in virtue of the state of my brain and present and past
external circumstances how could the human animal fail to be thinking and
thinking exactly the same thought. But
are there really two thinking things here, and if so when I say ‘I want
my dinner’, is there one thought being thought by two thinkers, or two
thoughts, and, in either case what is the reference of the first-person pronoun
contained in the utterance?
Baker is vividly aware of the need to
respond to the ‘Many Minds Objection’ but I think that she would have made her
position more plausible if she had pointed out that this objection needs to be
confronted by a variety of well-known positions. The position of the historical Locke is one such: for Locke
operates with a tripartite analogy of persons, thinking things and men. He distinguishes the identity conditions of
persons and thinking things but is adamant that whenever a person thinks there
is a thinking thing (non-identical with the person) thinking ‘in’ the person;
so when a person thinks an ‘I’-thought, so does the thinking substance then
thinking ‘in’ it. Is the thinking
substance then thinking about itself, or the person it is thinking ‘in’? Another position that needs to confront the
Many Minds Objection is any that accepts that persons are summations of
temporal parts and accepts with David Lewis that person-stages, like persons, are
thinking intelligent things with beliefs and desires. For on this view, as I sit here, so do many other (shorter-lived)
thinking things. It is important to
appreciate that the conception of person as four-dimensional summations of
parts is part of a general conception of all constituents as four-dimensional,
so insofar as there are good arguments for it, Animalism itself needs to
confront the Many Minds Objection.
Baker herself does not accept the four-dimensional viewpoint, but it
needs to be recognised that Animalists cannot wield the Many Minds Objection as
a weapon against their opponent in good faith unless they feel able to refute
the arguments for four-dimensionalism.
But
how can the Many Minds Objection be replied to?
I
think the neatest response for anyone who needs one (including the Animalist if
he adopts four-dimensionalism) is to reject Locke’s original definition of a
person, substitute for it the notion of the object of self-reference and
distinguish between the ‘I’-user and the reference of ‘I’. Then Locke can say that in the problematic
situation in which a person and thinking substance coincide, the thinking
substance can indeed think ‘I’-thoughts, but is not thereby constituted a
person, for the reference of its ‘I’-thought is not itself, but the
person with whom it is sharing these thoughts.
The four-dimensionalist can say the same, mutatis mutandis, about the relation between a person and its
current person-stages, and Baker can say the same mutatis mutandis, about the relation between a person and a
temporarily coincident human animal.
I
think, then, that Baker’s rejection of Animalism is well-founded and her own
point is defensible against the most popular Animalistic objection. But is there any reason to accept Baker’s
position rather than, say, the psychological continuity account defended by
Sydney Shoemaker? Baker thinks that
there is, since her account (a) does not face the reduplication objection and
so does not have to take a ‘closest continuer’ form and (b) does not allow for
indeterminacy of personal identity. The
reason for this, she thinks, is because her account is given in terms of
sameness of first-person perspective over time.
I
found this unconvincing. As Baker
explains the notion of ‘the first-person perspective’ it primarily denotes a
capacity – the capacity to self-ascribe first-person thoughts. This is a property possessed by many
distinct things. To give an account of
personal identity over time in terms of the first-person perspective Baker needs to refer to token instances of
this property, which are individuated by their possessors. But then the account is empty. It is as if one first explained the notion
of a ‘genius’ by saying that a genius is anyone with a certain level of
intellectual ability (‘genius-level’) and then gave an account of the identity
of geniuses over time by saying that genius G1 at time t1, is the same genius
as genius G2 at time t2 iff G1 has at t1 the same genius-level ability as
genius G2 at t2.
Anyway,
it is far from clear that the advantages Baker claims for her account are
indeed advantages. It is, in
particular, utterly unclear to me why the possibility of indeterminacy in
personal identity is not exactly what we should expect given that the term
‘person’, like every other empirically applicable term in our vocabulary is
fashioned for use in the situations in which we actually find ourselves, and
not the science-fictional cases in which our intuitions begin to flounder. No one would think that any future situation
must be one in which determinately either their car (or their cat)
survives or it does not. Why
should I think that any future situation must be one in which determinately either
I survive or I do not?
I
am also unpersuaded that the reduplication problem is as great a problem for a
psychological continuity account as Baker suggests. There is nothing logically incoherent about ‘best candidate’
accounts of identity over time, for persons and other things. Our concepts could be ones that conformed to
such accounts. A great many
philosophers (who are competent users of these concepts, after all) think that
they are. On the other hand, one can
defend a psychological continuity
account of personal identity without accepting that the concept of personal
identity has a ‘best candidate’ structure by adopting the multiple occupancy
view, advocated by David Lewis. Again,
there is nothing logically incoherent about this position. Our concepts could conform to the account it
gives. Perhaps they do. Or perhaps it is indeterminate whether our
concepts are correctly described by this account or by a ‘best candidate’
account. Given that it is only in
hypothetical situations that the differences come out, that would hardly be
surprising.
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