Eric T. Olson

This chapter explains what it means to ask what we are. It begins by breaking the question up into smaller ones, such as what we are made of, what parts we have, and whether we are substances. It makes clear that the question is not about people in general, but only about us human people. It considers two ways of rephrasing the question: What do our personal pronouns and proper names refer to? and What sorts of beings think our thoughts and perform our actions? The question is distinguished from the question of personal identity over time and from the mind‐body problem. It is then argued that thinking about personal identity without considering what we are leads to metaphysical trouble.

This chapter is about the view that we are simple immaterial substances–immaterialism–and related views. It is claimed to be best supported by the difficulty of saying what material things we could be. For instance, the paradox of increase threatens to show that nothing can have different parts at different times, and materialists can solve it only at considerable cost. Immaterialism is then shown to face grave problems concerning the relation of souls to material things. Compound dualism, Swinburne's view that each of us is composed of an immaterial soul and a material body, is shown to face difficulties in addition to those of immaterialism. The Thomistic view that we are hylomorphic compounds is shown to combine the problems of compound dualism with those of the bundle view. The views of Chisholm and Lowe that we are simple material things are then critically discussed.

Personal identity deals with the many philosophical questions about ourselves that arise by virtue of our being people. The most frequently discussed is what it takes for a person to persist through time. Many philosophers say that we persist by virtue of psychological continuity. Others say that our persistence is determined by brute physical facts, and psychology is irrelevant. In choosing among these answers we must consider not only what they imply about who is who in particular cases, both real and imaginary, but also their implications about our metaphysical nature in general

This chapter examines the view that we do not exist because there are no human thinkers: nihilism. Nihilism is defended against the charge that it is an absurd denial of the obvious, or that it is self‐refuting. Attempts by Kant and others, such as Russell, Unger, and Wittgenstein, to defeat nihilism by showing that thought requires a thinker are examined and found wanting. Attention then turns to attempts to paraphrase statements apparently about people into terms compatible with nihilism. Although this is difficult because nihilists will want to deny the existence of any composite objects, no conclusive objections to the project are found. It is then argued that nihilism, like solipsism, is depressing, and that someone who accepted it consistently would appear to deprive herself of any reasons for action.

This chapter examines animalism, the view that we are biological organisms. It is based on the claim that human organisms think just as we do. This implies that if I am not an organism, I am one of at least two thinkers of my thoughts, making it hard to see how I could know that I am the nonanimal thinker: the thinking-animal problem. Some proposed solutions are critically examined, notably Shoemaker's claim that human organisms cannot think and Noonan's account of how we might know that we are not the animals thinking our thoughts. Familiar objections to animalism are then reviewed, such as its implication that personal identity does not consist in psychological continuity. It is argued that these objections are weak and that more serious worries lie elsewhere.

This chapter considers Hume's proposal that we are made up entirely of particular mental states and events: the bundle view. An argument for the bundle view is based on the claim that the traditional idea of substance is dismissed. The bundle view is then shown to follow naturally from widely held claims about diachronic and synchronic personal identity. Reid's objection that bundles of thoughts cannot be thinkers is elaborated and endorsed. It is then argued that the bundle view cannot easily avoid the thinking‐animal problem. There follows a critical discussion of two related views: that we are bundles of universals and that we are something like computer programs. Both are found to be hopeless.

This chapter is about the view that we are material things constituted by organisms; this view is advocated by Baker, Shoemaker, and others. Each of us is made of the same matter as an organism, but our persistence conditions or essential properties preclude our being organisms ourselves. This goes together with the general view that qualitatively different objects can be made of the same matter at once: constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is supported by arguments involving the persistence of artifacts. It is argued, however, that the view faces the thinking‐animal problem, that it rules out any principled account of when one thing constitutes another, that it cannot explain why our boundaries lie where they do, and that it conflicts with a popular claim about synchronic identity.

It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with dementia.

That grass is green, that pigs don’t fly, and that you are now awake are all hard facts. But there is often said to be something soft about matters of identity over time. Is today’s village church the very church that was first built here, despite centuries of repairs and alterations? How many parts of my bicycle do I need to replace before I get a numerically different bike? If a club disbands and years later some of the original members start a similar club with the same name, have we got two clubs, or one club with a discontinuous history? It is tempting to say that there are no hard answers to these questions laid up in heaven. There is no determinate fact of the matter. Those who disagree about such things are arguing about words, not facts. We are free to say what we like.

ABSTRACTMany philosophers say that the nature of personal identity has to do with narratives: the stories we tell about ourselves. While different narrativists address different questions of personal identity, some propose narrativist accounts of personal identity over time. The paper argues that such accounts have troubling consequences about the beginning and end of our lives, lead to inconsistencies, and involve backwards causation. The problems can be solved, but only by modifying the accounts in ways that deprive them of their appeal.

Beginning with Locke, most philosophers writing on personal identity have claimed that some sort of psychological continuity is necessary for a person to persist from one time to another. I argue that this "psychological approach" to personal identity faces ontological difficulties that many of its proponents have not appreciated. In its place I advocate a "biological approach" to personal identity: you and I are human organisms, and our persistence, like that of other organisms, consists in narrowly biological facts alone. ;Since its biological functions are distinct from its psychology, a human organism can survive without psychological continuity. Thus the psychological approach apparently entails that you and I are not human organisms. But what are we, if not organisms? And how are we related to "our" human organisms? I consider a number of possible answers: perhaps we are not material objects at all; perhaps each of us is a material object coincident with though numerically distinct from a human organism; perhaps identity is not "absolute" but "relative," and a human organism may be different persons at different times; perhaps you and I do not really exist; perhaps we are temporally extended, "four-dimensional" objects and typically share most of our temporal parts with a human organism. The last option is the most popular, and rightly so. However, I argue that it faces technical problems and that it is wildly at odds with our ordinary beliefs about ourselves. ;After considering a wide range of arguments for the psychological approach, I conclude that most are grounded in confusion and have no force whatever. The best arguments appeal to our intuitive convictions about whether we would survive in various science-fiction stories in which the psychological and biological approaches diverge . Without dismissing these intuitions, I argue that they do not unequivocally support the psychological approach

What is a temporal part? Most accounts explain it in terms of timeless parthood: a thing's having a part without temporal qualification. Some find this hard to understand, and thus find the view that persisting things have temporal parts--fourdimensionalism--unintelligible. T. Sider offers to help by defining temporal parthood in terms of a thing's having a part at a time. I argue that no such account can capture the notion of a temporal part that figures in orthodox four-dimensionalism: temporal parts must be timeless parts. This enables us to state four-dimensionalism more clearly.

Philosophers often talk as if what it takes for a person to persist through time were up to us, as individuals or as a linguistic community, to decide. In most ordinary situations it might be fully determinate whether someone has survived or perished: barring some unforeseen catastrophe, it is clear enough that you will still exist ten minutes from now, for example. But there is no shortage of actual and imaginary situations where it is not so clear whether one survives. Here reasonable people may disagree. There are "fission" cases where each of one's cerebral hemispheres is transplanted into a different head; Star-Trek-style "teletransportation" stories; actual cases of brain damage so severe that one can never again regain consciousness, even though one's circulation, breathing, digestion, and other "animal" functions continue; and stories where one's brain cells are gradually removed and replaced by cells from someone else, to name only a few favorites.

The paper concerns the metaphysical possibility of life after death. It argues that the existence of a psychological duplicate is insufficient for resurrection, even if psychological continuity suffices for personal identity. That is because our persistence requires immanent causation. There are at most three ways of having life after death: if we are immaterial souls; if we are snatched bodily from our deathbeds; or if there is immanent causation ‘at a distance’ as Zimmerman proposes--but this requires an ontology of temporal parts.

In The Human Animal I argued that we are animals, and that those animals do not persist by virtue of any sort of psychological continuity. Rather, personal identity in this sense consists in having the same biological life. And I said that a human life requires a functioning brainstem. Rina Tzinman takes this and other remarks to imply that personal identity consists in the continued functioning of the brainstem, which looks clearly false. I say it doesn’t follow. But Alan Shewmon appears to have refuted my claim about the brainstem.