Evangelian Collings

Animalism claims that each of us is identical with a human animal. Animalists point to biology to inform a definition of ‘organism’ that can supply our existence and persistence conditions. But biologists use multiple distinct definitions of ‘organism’ that give different verdicts on what counts as an individual organism in certain ‘problem’ cases. Importantly for animalism, one of these cases occurs in human animals: pregnancy. Under some definitions, the fetus and pregnant animal are separate organisms, but they are one unified organism under other definitions. Animalists who want to defer to biology for our existence and persistence conditions, rather than merely point to it, are left with a problem. They cannot choose just one definition of organism, but neither can they accept a plural notion of organism while preserving the structure of their central claim that we are human animals. The case of pregnancy shows that animalism cannot pass the buck for defining the existence conditions of animals to biologists, and reveals a challenge for the view in accounting for our existence as individuals throughout the duration of our life cycles.

In this MA thesis, I consider the question “Can a machine be an agent?” and argue that the answer to this question is no. The main basis for this answer is in the relationship that machines have – or rather, lack – to the goods that make up reasons for action. The main argument for this appears in the first two chapters. There, I explain the links between agents, reasons, and goods. Chapters three and four elaborate upon what counts as having reasons for action by way of addressing objections to my claim that machines do not act for reasons. The fifth and final chapter considers the difficulty of agency as a design problem, and emphasizes my argument’s basis in the relationship between humans and machines.