Abstract
Here is a question as intriguing as it is brief: what are we? The animalist’s answer is equal in brevity: we are animals. This stark formulation of the animalist slogan distances it from nearby claims—that we are essentially animals, for example, or that we have purely biological criteria of identity over time. Is the animalist slogan—unburdened by modal or criterial commitments—still interesting, though? Or has it lost its bite? In this article we address such questions by presenting a positive case for the importance of animalism and applying that case to recent critiques.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2929-2942 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Philosophical Studies |
| Volume | 178 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Funding
Funding was provided by National University of Singapore (Grant No. FY2020-FRC1-008). Thanks to an anonymous referee and Brad Rettler for comments and to Matt Duncan for helpful conversation prior to the writing of this article. Funding from Yale-NUS College and the Singapore Ministry of Education supported this research. Co-authorship is equal.
Keywords
- Animalism
- Personal identity
- Personal ontology
- What are we?
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy