Substance concepts and personal identity

Substance concepts and personal identityAuthor(s): Peter NicholsSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 150, No. 2 (September 2010), pp. 255-270Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40856554 .

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Philos Stud (2010) 150:255-270 DOI 10.1007/sl 1098-009-9412-8

Substance concepts and personal identity

Peter Nichols

Received: 31 October 2008 /Accepted: 29 April 2009 / Published online: 15 May 2009 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract According to one argument for Animalism about personal identity, animal, but not person, is a Wigginsian substance concept - a concept that tells us what we are essentially. Person supposedly fails to be a substance concept because it is a functional concept that answers the question "what do we do?" without telling us what we are. Since person is not a substance concept, it cannot provide the criteria for our coming into or going out of existence; animal, on the other hand, can provide such criteria. This argument has been defended by Eric Olson, among others. I argue that this line of reasoning fails to show Animalism to be superior to the Psychological Approach, for the following two reasons: (1) human animal, animal, and organism are all functional concepts, and (2) the distinction between what something is and what it does is illegitimate on the reading that the argument needs.

Keywords Personal identity · Substance concepts · Animalism · The Psychological Approach · Animal · Person · Eric Olson

According to Animalism, we are not essentially persons.1 Instead, we are essentially biological entities - animals - who temporarily acquire the property of personhood. Accordingly, say the animalists, our persistence conditions are provided by the substance concept animal - not the concept person. Thus, I am identical with an animal, and the beginning and end of my existence correspond precisely with the beginning and end of the existence of this animal. Animalism sharply contrasts with the family of views Eric Olson calls the Psychological Approach to personal

1 Snowdon (1990), Olson (1997), and DeGrazia (2005) are prominent defenders of Animalism.

P. Nichols (El) University of Wisconsin, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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256 P. Nichols

identity, according to which we are essentially psychological beings - persons - and our persistence conditions are provided by the concept person.

According to one argument for Animalism, animal, but not person, is a Wigginsian substance concept - a concept that provides the most fundamental answer to the question "what are we?"2 Person supposedly fails to be a substance concept because it is a functional concept that answers the question "what do we do?" without specifying what we are. Consequently, person cannot provide the criteria for our coming into or going out of existence; only animal (or, alternatively, organism or human animal), which is a substance concept, can provide such criteria.3 Parts of this line of reasoning appear in PF. Snowdon's (1990) and David DeGrazia's (2005), but Eric Olson (1997) gives the most detailed version of it. In what follows, I shall take Olson's version as representative.4

In the following pages, I shall argue that the above line of reasoning does not favor Animalism over the Psychological Approach. Specifically, I shall advance two main criticisms of this argument: (1) human animal, animal, and organism are all functional concepts, and thus, i/we accept the above argument, these concepts also fail to be substance concepts, and (2) we ought not to accept the above argument anyway: the "what it is/what it does" distinction is illegitimate on the reading which the argument needs, and thus cannot ground a distinction between substance concepts and other sorts of concepts. On the other hand, I shall not argue in favor of the Psychological Approach to personal identity; I shall merely be aiming to establish that this argument does not show Animalism to be superior to the Psychological Approach.

1 The psychological approach, animalism, and substance concepts

Theories of personal identity are typically intended to answer to the following question: Where χ is a person, under what conditions is χ at ti identical with some object y at t2? Most philosophers have attempted to answer this question by appealing, in some form or another, to psychological characteristics. According to these views, some psychological relation is both necessary and sufficient for an object that is a person at one time to be identical with an object at a later time. Olson calls this family of views of our identity through time the Psychological Approach to personal identity (I'll abbreviate this as PA), and it includes psychological continuity theories,5 closest continuer theories,6 and, Olson claims, even "same brain" theories.7 One common thread that unites the various versions of this

2 Wiggins (1967, 1980, 2001).

3 Olson (1997). 4 Carter (1982) also engages this issue, and also argues that person is not a substance concept, though he does not defend animalism. 5 Lewis (1976); Parfit (1984); Shoemaker (1984), and Noonan (1989) each defend different types of psychological continuity theories of personal identity. 6 See Nozick (1981). 7 See Nagel (1986).

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approach to personal identity is the conviction that each of us is essentially a

psychological being, and if we believe that identity is what matters, that what has value in our survival is the continuation of our psychological lives.8 This conviction is very well motivated; its pre-theoretical intuitive appeal is bolstered by a long history of thought experiments - such as brain-transfer cases and cerebrum-transfer cases9 - that give it some philosophical credibility.

Animalists are unconvinced by the PA. According to Olson, the key difference between this approach and Animalism hinges on the answer to the following question: Are we essentially (or fundamentally) persons or animals?10 The PA is

plausible only if we are essentially persons. In this context, 'person' refers to

something with certain psychological characteristics - perhaps most notably, rationality and the capacity for self-consciousness - and Olson interprets the PA as implementing this use of the term.11 On the other hand, 'animal,' along with

'organism' and 'Homo sapiens' (Olson uses these three terms interchangeably, an issue to which I shall return later), are biological terms, referring to something that has metabolism, teleology, organized complexity, and other life-giving features.12 Olson claims that the issue of our identity through time hinges crucially on whether we are essentially (or fundamentally) persons or animals, and that the PA assumes without argument that we are essentially persons. To say that we are essentially persons implies that necessarily, anything that is a person at some time in its existence is a person throughout its existence. DeGrazia calls this

assumption of the PA person essentialism}3 Although, as DeGrazia notes, it may be possible to adopt the PA without committing to person essentialism, nearly everyone who adopts the PA also embraces person essentialism.14 (For this

purposes of this article, I shall take the PA as committing itself to person essentialism, since Olson makes that assumption in the argument under examination.)

8 Although, as is well-known, Parfit has argued that identity is not "what matters" in survival. Still, even

Parfit agrees that identity usually contingently coincides with what matters. 9 Shoemaker's (1962) "Brown and Brownson" case is the first brain transfer thought experiment. It is a contemporary version of Locke's (1995/1693) much earlier soul transfer thought experiment. The overwhelming intuitive response to both thought experiments is that a person follows his or her psychology (whether that psychology is grounded in a soul, brain, or something else), even if that psychology leaves one's own body. Olson (1997) believes that the brain transfer case is neutral between the Psychological Approach and Animalism, and thus proposes a cerebrum transfer case. If we believe that we go where our cerebrum goes, that allegedly supports the Psychological Approach, although Olson argues that it only supports a Psychological Approach to what matters - not identity. 10

My interpretation of Olson here is based on what he says in Chap. 2 and p. 121 of The Human Animal. 11 This use of 'person' appears to be a descendent of the Lockean conception of 'person' as a forensic term, perhaps with some modifications Locke (1995/1693). 12 Olson (1997, p. 130). 13 DeGrazia (2005). 14 DeGrazia (2005, pp. 30-31). The PA, he says, could just accept the de dicto thesis that psychological continuity is required in order for one to continue to exist qua person. In his (1997), Olson seems to think that all versions of the PA are committed to person essentialism, but he qualifies this to "nearly all" in his (1999).

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According to Animalists, person essentialism is false, and therefore, so is the PA.15 Olson claims that in order to answer this question of what we are essentially (i.e. the fundamental kind to which we belong), we need to make the Aristotelian/

Wigginsian distinction between asking, of some x, the following two questions: (i) "what is x?" and (ii) "what does χ doV16 The most fundamental answer to (i) yields what Wiggins calls (following Aristotle) a substance concept', answers to (ii), on the other hand, cannot yield substance concepts. Here is Wiggins:

If somebody claims of something named or unnamed that it moves, or runs or is white, he is liable to be asked the question by which Aristotle sought to define the category of substance: What is it that moves (or runs or is white)?... Yet it seems certain... that for each thing that satisfies a predicate such as 'moves', 'runs' or 'white', there must exist some known or unknown, named or nameable, kind to which the item belongs and by reference to which the 'what is it' question could be answered... Where someone fully understands what he is judging when he says that this, that or the other

things [sic] moves, or runs or is white, he will know what the thing in question is.17

Thus, we need to know what we are, not what we do, if we are to determine the fundamental kind to which we belong. But recall the sense of 'person' that figures into the PA: a person is something that thinks (has rationality), has the capacity for self-consciousness, and perhaps additionally, has moral capacities. But these

defining features of person, Olson notes, only tell us what we do - that we have certain dispositions - but they do not tell us what kind of thing bears these

dispositions. That is, person does not tell us what we are; it does not tell us whether we are animals, Cartesian egos, synthetic machines, angels, or any other type of

entity that could conceivably bear a mental life with the aforementioned

capacities. In addition to providing a fundamental answer to "what is x?" a substance

concept provides persistence conditions, or criteria of identity, for the entities that fall under that concept.19 Thus, if F is a substance concept and some object χ is an F, then if χ ceases to be an F, x necessarily ceases to exist. Moreover, no previously existing thing can acquire the property of being an F and remain the same thing; once the property of being an F is instantiated, a new thing has come into existence. Olson claims, however, that person is what Wiggins calls a phase sortal; it is a

concept that something can full under temporarily, like child and athlete. Phase sortais, unlike substance concepts, do not provide criteria of identity for anything. If G is a phase sortal and some object y is a G, then y can cease to be a G without

15 If we are allowing for the possibility of adopting the de dicto thesis, then what follows is that all versions of versions of PA that rely on person essentialism are false. 16 Aristotle, Categories, Metaphysics, Book Z; Wiggins (1967, 1980, 2001). 17

Wiggins (2001, p. 21). 18 Olson (1997, p. 32. 19 The view that identity is dependent on a sortal (but not relative to a sortal) comes from Wiggins (1967, 1980, 2001). Although it is not uncontroversial, it is a widely accepted view of identity.

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going out of existence. Moreover, y can acquire the property of being a G without thereby ceasing to exist and being replaced by a new existing thing. Thus, to say that person is a phase sortal is to explicitly deny person essentialism; it is to say that some other thing (a substance, such as an animal) can come to have the accidental property of being a person and can lose that property without ceasing to exist. As a result, person essentialism, and thus the PA, is false: nothing has the persistence conditions of a person.

In further support of his argument, Olson draws an analogy between the concepts person and locomotor, where a locomotor is something that exists if and only if it has the ability, roughly, to move around on its own.20 Locomotor is a purely dispositional concept that appears to be a poor candidate for a substance concept. In the first place, to say of some χ that χ is a locomotor does not tell us what χ is' it only tells us what χ does. It leaves open whether χ is a human, a bird, a boat, a robot, or numerous other sorts of things that have the capacity of locomotion. By analogy, saying something is a person does not tell us what kind of thing has the property of personhood. Second, something can survive the loss of the capacity of locomotion without going out of existence, and nothing new necessarily comes into existence when the capacity of locomotion becomes instantiated. By analogy, something (an animal, for instance) can survive the loss of the property of personhood without going out of existence, and nothing new necessarily comes into existence when personhood becomes instantiated. Thus, Olson states, "[T]o say something is a person is rather like saying that something is a locomotor. Personhood, like locomotion, is merely a capacity or ability of a thing, and different kinds of people may have no more intrinsic similarity than do different kinds of locomotors."21 Thus, person fails to be a substance concept for the same reasons that locomotor fails to be a substance concept.

On the other hand, Olson alleges, animal (or human animal, organism, or Homo sapiens) does tell us what something is, and thus, animal is a substance concept. According to Olson, in order for a kind to be a fundamental answer to the "what is it?" question, the defining properties of that kind must be intrinsic and structural; they cannot be functional or relational. Olson presents this view as part of the diagnosis of why locomotor is not a substance concept:

Why doesn't "It's a thing that can move", or "It's a locomotor", answer the question What is it? This is a difficult matter, but I think part of the answer is that locomotion is a dispositional or functional property that can be realized in a wide variety of intrinsic structures. Different locomotors may have little in common besides the fact that they are locomotors... The mere fact that two things are locomotors seems to be, in an important sense that is hard to define, a superficial similarity, whereas the mere fact that one thing is a locomotor and another is not is a superficial difference.

Olson adds that

20 Olson (1997, pp. 32-36). 21 Olson (1997, p. 35), emphasis added.

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[LJocomotion is a mere capacity: to say that a thing is a locomotor is merely to say something about what it can do. Moreover, it is a capacity that is not closely connected with a thing's internal, structural, or intrinsic features. Locomotor, like carburetor or heat sink, is a functional kind... That is at least part of the reason why locomotor is not a substance concept.22

As I read Olson, the primary reason that concepts such as person and locomotor cannot be substance concepts is that they express functional kinds that fail to refer to any intrinsic, structural features of the things belonging to that kind. Note, however, that one might read Olson as claiming that the overall heterogeneity among the members of functional kinds is the main reason why those kinds cannot yield substance concepts. On this second reading, it is not the fact that a kind is functional that prevents it from yielding a substance concept; rather, it is the fact that the kind is too heterogeneous to yield an answer to "what is it?" I think this second reading is the wrong way to read Olson, but I nevertheless consider it in Sect. 4 as a potential response to my criticism of the first reading.

Although there are a number of other arguments that have been advanced in favor of Animalism, my aim in this article is simply to address the above line of reasoning. Despite the fact that this argument has not received a great deal of attention in the personal identity literature, the argument plays a significant role in Olson's and Snowdon's cases against the PA, and perhaps a somewhat lesser role in DeGrazia's case against it.23 Indeed, in his (2007), Olson considers a number of candidate responses to the question "what are we?" but immediately disqualifies person as even a candidate because, he says, different kinds of things can be

persons. DeGrazia's reasoning is similar: he points out the various possible kinds of

thing that can be persons and concludes that animal is a much more plausible basic kind.24 But this consideration is not nearly weighty enough to rule out person as a basic kind, or as a candidate answer to "what are we?" We might as well argue that because different kinds of things can be (indeed are) animals - humans, earthworms, sea urchins, and polar bears - that animal is not a plausible basic kind, or candidate answer to "what are we?"

Even earlier, in his (1997), Olson admits that the argument against person essentialism plays a major role in his overall argument for Animalism. Even though he raises many intuitive considerations against the PA, Olson admits that there are also powerful intuitive considerations against Animalism when he considers the

following potential objection to his argument:

22 Olson (1997, pp. 34-35), emphasis of 'dispositional', 'functional', and 'intrinsic structures' added. 23 According to Snowdon (1990) "Surely if we ask to what entities the functional predicate (person), as elucidated by Locke, does apply, the answer we all want to give is - a certain kind of animal, namely human beings" (p. 90). DeGrazia (2005) claims that "Rather than regarding personhood as a basic kind, we should regard it as comprising a set of capacities that things of different basic kinds might achieve. On this view, personhood represents merely a phase of our existence" (p. 49). 24 DeGrazia (2005, p. 49). He gives the same sort of argument against McMahan's (2002) "mind essentialism" on p. 71.

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For every apparently absurd consequence of the Psychological Approach. . .the Biological Approach has an equally absurd consequence. Both views face parallel difficulties. The score is even. The real question is whether person or animal is a substance concept: whether we are essentially people or essentially animals, and whether we have our persistence conditions by virtue of being people or whether we have them by virtue of being animals. To establish the Biological Approach you must argue that we are essentially animals and only accidentally people. But you have done nothing to show that.25

To this objection Olson makes the following admission:

This is a powerful objection, and it represents perhaps the most promising strategy for defending the Psychological Approach against the challenges brought forth in this chapter and the previous one. I have relied on the assumption that animal, or at any rate human animal, is a natural kind and therefore a substance concept, and that any animal has the persistence conditions that it has by virtue of being an animal. . .But I have not offered any defense of that claim.26

Given this admission by Olson, along with the role the argument against person essentialism plays in Snowdon's and DeGrazia's cases for Animalism, I find it surprising that this argument has not received more attention from advocates of the PA. If this argument fails, as I shall argue it does, then the Animalist's case against the PA is seriously undermined.

2 Why animal, organism, and Homo sapiens are functional kinds

As stated above, Olson does not argue for the claim that animal is a substance concept; instead, he seems to take it for granted:

Animal (or organism or human animal) is a paradigm case of a substance concept, and so is an ideal candidate for determining a thing's persistence conditions... for "an animal", unlike "a locomotor" or "a thinker", is an excellent answer to the question what something is - what it is that can move or think.27

At first glance, this assertion may seem plausible enough, and perhaps that's why Olson does not provide more argument for it. But the above claim does not withstand scrutiny. One problem is Olson's continual shifting among organism, animal, human organism, and related concepts, for these are not interchangeable (although in his 2007, Olson appears to express some preference for organism). Presumably, Olson and other animalists only mean to argue that some biological

25 Olson (1997): 121. 26 ibid. 27 Olson (1997, p. 36).

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concept is a substance concept that provides our persistence conditions.28 But all the

biological concepts Olson talks about are functional, as I will now argue, beginning with organism.

Organism appears to be a paradigm functional concept; it is not clear that

organism picks out any intrinsic, structural features whatsoever. Elliott Sober, for instance, defines 'organism' as follows:

First, at a given time, the parts of an organism causally interact with each other in characteristic ways. Second, parts at different times are, for the most part, related to each other by a kind of ancestor/descendant relationship. The cells that now are in your heart are mostly descended from other cells that were in

your body at an earlier time... And finally, because of the dramatic difference between growth and reproduction, the lifetime of an organism has a

reasonably precise beginning and end.29

Nowhere in this description does Sober mention intrinsic structural features. Instead, he lists a functional feature, causal interdependence; a relational feature, cells having descended from their ancestors; and another relational feature, having a

precise beginning and end. Granted, defining 'organism' is no easy matter, and Sober' s definition is by no means the only candidate. But Sober is a foremost

philosopher of biology, and he appeals only to functional and relational features in his definition.30

Indeed, it is very difficult to see how one could define 'organism' purely in terms of intrinsic, structural features. Even Olson gives 'organism' a functional definition!

According to Olson, a living organism is "[A]nything that has these "life-giving" features - metabolism, teleology, organized complexity - and whatever further

properties necessarily go along with them, such as self-directed growth and

development, an internal genetic plan, low internal entropy, and perhaps the

capacity for evolution by natural selection."31 The only features Olson mentions here that are plausibly regarded as intrinsic and structural are "organized complexity" and "an internal genetic plan," but these are not spelled out

specifically enough to say for sure. But Olson explicitly appeals to a capacity, as well as metabolism, teleology, low entropy, and growth and development, all of which are functional properties. David Hershenov (2005), who is sympathetic with Animalism, goes even further than Olson, arguing that 'organism' cannot be defined

by structural features, and that the concept organism is purely functional: "What is so important about structure! I understand an organism to be an entity that functions as a unit... The structure does not matter metaphysically, only the systematic

28 Indeed, DeGrazia is deliberately noncommittal regarding the precise boundaries of our kind; he insists only that it is biological (2005, pp. 48-49. However, since organism, animal, and human organism are the most plausible of these candidate biological kinds, and since it would be tedious to survey all the other candidates, I shall confine my discussion to these three kinds. 29 Sober (2000, p. 152). 30 Rob Wilson (2005) also defines 'organism' largely in terms of functional features. He contends that 'organism' is best defined by a homeostatic property cluster, in which many of the important properties are functional. 31 Olson (1997, p. 130), emphasis added.

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processes do... It is these processes that are essential, not the particular structure or

organization that realizes them at any particular time."32 It is overwhelmingly plausible to regard organism as a functional concept. Thus, organism cannot be our fundamental kind, according to Olson's interpretation of the Wigginsian substance test; to say that we are organisms only tells us what we do, not what we are.

Contrary to what Olson implies, animal is also a functional concept, for two reasons. First, even if we grant that the controversial five-kingdom system is correct, Biology textbooks commonly appeal to the property of being heterotrophic - that is, being unable to make one's own food - in defining 'animal.'33 This is quite obviously a functional property - a capacity or disposition (and a negative one at that) - and not an intrinsic, structural one. To be sure, it is far from clear that we should uncritically accept what might be a controversial definition, but if we are to

appeal to biological concepts such as animal, then we should be prepared to at least

provisionally accept the textbook definitions of these concepts that are used in the same field. Even if we were to grant that these definitions may turn out to be faulty, the burden of proof is certainly on Olson to show how we can define 'animal' purely in terms of intrinsic, structural properties. In the absence of such a definition, we should employ the concept of animals that biologists give us (to the extent that there is only one such concept), which has at least one functional property in its definition. Thus, part of the answer to "what is an animal?" is "something that cannot produce its own food." By Olson's own criteria, that makes animal a functional concept, and therefore not a substance concept. Secondly, it is plausible to think that necessarily, all animals are organisms (a corpse is not an animal),34 and that organism will therefore enter into the definition of animal. Put differently, since a necessary condition of x's being an animal is that χ is also an organism, it is part of the definition of animal to be an organism. Consequently, the concept animal will inherit the functional characteristics of organism. Thus, in virtue of being heterotrophic, and in virtue of being organisms, animals form a functional kind.

One may wonder, however, whether the fact that animal (and perhaps organism) is partially defined in terms of intrinsic, structural features (such as lacking cell walls) is enough to make animal a substance concept. Perhaps all Olson needs to claim is that only kinds that are purely functional cannot yield substance concepts. This maneuver, however, will not work, since at least some of the same factors that motivate Olson's rejection of wholly functional substance concepts should also motivate a rejection of partially functional substance concepts. If a functional property enters into the definition of a concept or kind, that property is either grounded in an intrinsic structure, or it is not. If it is so grounded, then we need not appeal to the functional property in our definition, since the intrinsic structure is doing the work. If it is not so grounded, then we cannot distinguish the kind in question from other kinds without reference to a purely functional property. But that means that our partially functional kind will - in virtue of its kind-defining functional property - be realizable in a variety of internal, intrinsic structures

32 Hershenov (2005, pp. 49-50), emphasis in original. 33 See, for instance, Campbell, et al. (1997), and Wallace (1997). 34 Olson (1997, 2007) affirms that literally, there is no such thing as a dead organism or dead animal.



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(at least, if Olson's claim that functional properties generate heterogeneity is correct). But it was precisely that feature that at least partially motivated Olson's rejection of functional substance concepts. Moreover, it is clear that such heterogeneity of intrinsic structure does indeed arise in the case of animals -

compare a human and a sea anemone. If we consider all possible animals, it is even more obvious that there will be heterogeneity of intrinsic structure. (This is indeed what we should consider, since it is only by considering all possible persons that Olson and DeGrazia are able to generate the claim that different kinds of things can be persons.) Thus, given what Olson says about why locomotor is not a substance concept - locomotion is a functional property realizable in a wide variety of different intrinsic structures - there is good reason to think that he should say the same thing about concepts that are only partly functional. Animal is such a concept.

As for Homo sapiens and human animal, both are crucially functional and relational. Both are functional in that species are usually individuated by the capacity to reproduce fertile offspring with other members of the same species.35 (This problem may not affect human animal if it picks out a genus.) As for the relational component, many biologists and philosophers of biology have abandoned the view that species (and genera) are individuated by similarity of intrinsic features. Instead, a popular view today - called cladism - is that species are historical entities that are individuated by their respective lineages.36 Finally, since species and genus concepts are also parasitic on the concept organism (a corpse is not a member of the species Homo sapiens), they will inherit all the functional properties of that concept. Species and genus concepts are thus both functional and relational; therefore, according to Olson's criteria, they are not substance concepts. Thus, if we are to use Olson's interpretation of Wiggins's test to determine whether something is a substance concept, then organism, animal, Homo sapiens, and human animal fare no better than person.

3 Against the "what it is/what it does" distinction

In this section I argue that the foregoing considerations need not undermine either person or animal and its cognates as candidates for what we are essentially. That is because, as I shall argue, the Wiggins substance test - at least as Olson interprets it - is erroneous. The distinction between what something is and what it does is an illegitimate one. Consequently, functional concepts are not ruled out as substance concepts simply in virtue of the fact that they are functional and fail to pick out

35 One might wonder whether this capacity (and perhaps some of the others definitive of animals, organisms, and species) is grounded in an intrinsic, structural feature, such as DNA. (Thanks to Alan Sidelle for suggesting this to me.) That certainly is a live possibility, but this sort of empirical consideration is just as applicable to person. That is to say, if something like Nagel's (1986) "same brain" view is right, then the property of personhood is indeed grounded in an intrinsic, structural property, namely, the structure of the human brain. So, while I certainly do not mean to presuppose that there is no structure underlying the capacity to reproduce fertile offspring with other individuals, I also think that one should not presuppose that there is no structure underlying the capacity for personhood. So I think that animalism and the Psychological View are on approximately equal footing in this matter. 36 See Sober (2000), Chap. 6.

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intrinsic, structural properties. Far from conflicting with what I have been arguing heretofore, I take this point to be partly motivated by the fact that we received such odd results when we applied the Wiggins substance test to biological kinds. Given the heavy reliance on functional concepts in individuating biological entities, one

may have begun to wonder whether functional concepts really do fail to answer the "what is x?" question, as Olson claims they do. Indeed, I shall claim that functional definitions (including dispositional definitions) can and often do provide a fundamental answer to the "what is x?" question. It is thus erroneous to say that because some concept only tells us what something does - at least on one

interpretation of 'does' - that that concept is not a substance concept. First, notice that "what does χ do?" can be read in two ways, which Olson does

not clearly distinguish. The first reading is reflected in the quoted passage from

Wiggins, and interprets 'does' as a present-tense verb; the resulting question is thus "what is χ doing?" The second reading is dispositional and thus asks the question "what is χ capable of doing?" According to the first reading, it may be reasonable to demand that we must know what the 'it' is that is doing something (although sentences such as "it is raining," might give some reason for doubt). But the

dispositional reading is relevant to the present discussion (since person is defined in terms of dispositions), and it does not seem to encounter this problem. On the

contrary, appealing to dispositions or functions can adequately explain what

something is. Consider some examples. One rather ordinary example comes from artifacts. If a child sees a car and asks

"what is that?" not only is it admissible to answer the question in terms of the car's function - it is necessary. If I do not tell the child that the car transports people from

place to place at a high speed, I have not adequately answered the child's question. Yet automobile, like other artifact concepts, is plausibly regarded as a substance

concept. (As Eli Hirsch argues, when the automobile is crushed or dismantled, something has gone out of existence.37) Examples could easily be multiplied. Desks, chairs, drinking glasses, computers, and books are all ordinary objects that are good candidate substances,38 and function is indispensable to individuating these objects. For any of these items, if I have not specified its function - what it does - I have not adequately answered the question of what it is. Indeed, there seem to be very few entities for which the proper answer to "what is it?" is given only by intrinsic, structural properties; perhaps this is true only of chemical kinds such as gold and water.

But perhaps one is unconvinced by the artifact example. First, some folks argue that artifacts do not exist.39 Second, most artifacts are not purely functional, and that may tempt one to think that, contra my earlier claims, the real issue here is whether purely functional concepts can be substance concepts. To address these worries, consider fundamental particles, such as quarks and leptons. The concepts that pick out these entities are defined purely in terms of what the entities are capable of doing; that is, the concepts are purely dispositional. To say that something is an

37 Hirsch (1982). 38 Although some would disagree: see Van Inwagen (1990) and Merricks (2001). 39 See Van Inwagen (1990) and Merricks (2001).

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266 P. Nichols

electron, for instance, is to say that it has a negative charge, a determinate mass, and a certain spin. But each of these properties is dispositional; it specifies what sort of behavior the electron will exhibit under certain circumstances. To be sure, some will

argue that even properties of fundamental particles must be realized by an intrinsic, structural "categorical base," and thus are not purely dispositional. But as George Moinar (2003) points out, two points create a presumption against this view: first, there is no evidence of any such base, and second, physicists typically talk about these entities as if they were purely dispositional.40

To illustrate the latter point, consider the four fundamental physical forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. In the Standard Model, each of these forces is carried by a particle, called a force-

carrying particle, and oil matter particles are individuated in terms of these forces. Moreover, each of these forces, though being theoretically reducible to particles, is a mere power or disposition; Brian Greene refers to a force particle as just "...the smallest packet or bundle of the force."41 Thus, there is some principled reason for

thinking that even matter particles are purely dispositional: their defining properties (e.g. mass, charge, and spin) are all pure propensities to respond in such-and-such a

way to the four fundamental forces. Granted, the above considerations are not conclusive. It may be possible to re-

describe fundamental particles in some way such that they are not essentially dispositional, and moreover, the Standard Model could be false; perhaps there are lower levels to reality, even infinitely. Still, we need not settle the debate; the crucial

point here is that we seem to know - to some extent anyway - what we are talking about when we talk about quarks and leptons, even though the defining features of these entities are purely dispositional The purely dispositional definitions tell us what these things are; indeed, the dispositional definitions are indispensable if we wish to know what these particles are. However, if we apply Olson's substance test to the three main cases discussed so far - biological kinds, artifacts, and fundamental particles - it yields the implausible result that the concepts that pick out these things are not substance concepts. This is despite the fact that in each case, the (partially or wholly) functional or dispositional definition is indispensable to

answering our question, "what is it?" The most reasonable conclusion to draw from the above considerations is that the

"what it is/what it does" distinction (at least as Olson interprets it) does not track the substance/non-substance distinction, and that the latter distinction is therefore

grounded in something else. Consequently, the fact that some concept tells us what

something does on the dispositional reading of 'does' - the fact that it is a functional or dispositional concept - does not disqualify it from being a substance concept. I shall not attempt to provide a different way of grounding the substance/non- substance distinction here, as that is not important for my argument. The crucial

point I hope to have shown in this section and the previous one is that Olson's version of the Wiggins substance test does not show Animalism to be superior to the PA. As I argued in the previous section, if we do adopt this test, Animalism fails just

40 For example, see Hawking (1988). 41 Greene (1999, p. 11).

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as assuredly as the PA, and for the same reasons. If we do not adopt this test, as I have argued in this section we should not, the PA is not rendered implausible by its commitment to person essentialism.

4 The appeal to heterogeneity

Perhaps the Animalist can retreat a bit here and argue that the reason person is not a substance concept is not that person is a functional concept, but rather that it picks out an overly heterogeneous class. (Indeed, this might be one way to read DeGrazia's (2005) arguments against person essentialism, and it appears to be what Olson says in his (2007) against person essentialism.) In support of this move, the Animalist could invoke Olson's locomotor analogy. Perhaps the reason locomotor is unfit to be a substance concept is not that it is functional, but rather, that locomotor picks out such a broad category of things. The problem seems to be the degree to which locomotor is realizable; different locomotors, as Olson points out, need exhibit only superficial similarity. Perhaps it is this heterogeneity among different locomotors that is the problem. Saying that something is a locomotor tells us very little about that thing - not because locomotor is functional, but because it is so non- specific and therefore widely realizable. Thus, perhaps person and locomotor are both unfit to be substance concepts because both pick out classes that are overly heterogeneous - never mind whether the concepts are functional or relational. Call this response the Appeal to Heterogeneity.

Is the class of persons as heterogeneous as the class of locomotors? We need not answer that question, because the crucial question for our purposes is whether person is more closely analogous to locomotor than are animal and its cognates; remember - the Appeal to Heterogeneity is supposed to be an argument for Animalism. With regard to the locomotor analogy, it is far from clear that Animalism fares any better than the PA. On the contrary, I find it intuitively implausible that I am more similar to some other animals (e.g. sea urchins) and organisms (e.g. oaks) than I am to putative non-human persons; even if the similarities between me and other possible persons are merely superficial, they nevertheless seem highly important. If anything, animal and its cognates are more closely analogous to locomotor than is person. Organism and animal, for instance, appear to be at least as widely realizable as person. Again, consider how heterogeneous organisms such as oaks, sea urchins, bacteria, and humans are, or how heterogeneous different animals such as clams, earthworms, and humans are. In addition, these different types of organisms and animals are all actual - not merely possible. If we were to also consider all possible types of organisms or animals, the problem would become much worse (remember - it is only by considering the class of all possible persons that we are able to allegedly generate heterogeneity among persons). It is plausible to think that the class of all possible organisms, or even animals, is more heterogeneous than the class of all possible persons. But I am content merely with the weaker claim that it is not at all clear that the class of possible persons is more heterogeneous than the class of either possible organisms

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268 P. Nichols

or possible animals. Correspondingly, it is far from clear that person is more closely analogous to locomotor than are animal and organism.

However, the concept Homo sapiens (or human animal, or human being) is very homogeneous, and therefore (according to the Appeal to Heterogeneity) a much better candidate for a substance concept than locomotor. Moreover, the class of Homo sapiens is plausibly regarded as much more homogeneous than the class of persons, at least when we consider not only actual persons, but possible persons (and Homo sapiens). Thus, perhaps the Appeal to Heterogeneity does favor the Biological Approach to personal identity - if not specifically Animalism - over the PA. Our fundamental kind is given by Homo sapiens - not person - because the class of Homo sapiens is far more homogenous than the class of persons. That is the lesson of the locomotor analogy. Forget about the fact that both Homo sapiens and person are functional concepts that don't pick out intrinsic, structural properties. The latter concept is more closely analogous to locomotor than the former concept because persons are heterogeneous in the same way locomotors are, while Homo sapiens are not.

We ought not to be persuaded by the above line of reasoning. First, note that the current proposal selects Homo sapiens, or a very similar concept such as human animal, as the biological concept that uniquely determines our fundamental kind. But why are we privileging Homo sapiens over the numerous other biological concepts under which we fall, such as mammal, primate, and chordatel Why is it that of all these biological concepts, only Homo sapiens is a substance concept? Presumably, the answer is that Homo sapiens is the narrowest concept, and as a result, picks out the most homogeneous class out of the aforementioned concepts. But if a constraint on a candidate fundamental kind for entity Ε is that it be the most homogeneous kind that includes E, then only duplicate entities will be members of a common fundamental kind. Consequently, the best candidate for my fundamental kind will not be Homo sapiens, but rather, the type of which I am a token; all other members of my fundamental kind will have to be duplicates of me. Thus, if we were to require substance concepts to pick out maximally homogeneous kinds, we would need a different substance concept for each human being. That is, each human being would form his or her own kind, perhaps excepting cases of identical twins, triplets, etc., in which more than one human being arguably instantiates the same type (though they are not perfect duplicates). Moreover, note that Homo sapiens is not even the narrowest biological concept that picks us out, since a duplicate of me would share my DNA (arguably, it would be at least partly in virtue of shared DNA that someone would be my duplicate) and thus, duplicate human beings could

reasonably be regarded as forming a biological kind. Thus, the requirement of

avoiding heterogeneity, taken to its extreme, yields a view that does not even resemble Animalism, and will likely strike us as quite counterintuitive.

On the other hand, if we want to allow some heterogeneity among different members of the same kind, as I assume we do, it is extremely difficult to determine

exactly how much heterogeneity is permissible. Without some criterion by which to determine the amount of permissible heterogeneity among members of a fundamental kind, it is unacceptably arbitrary to say that of all the biological kinds to which we belong, the kind Homo sapiens alone is fundamental. The Animalist

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would need to either say which respects of similarity are relevant to determining fundamental kinds, or she would have to provide some criterion in addition to similarity that would allow us to non-arbitrarily select just one of the many biological concepts we satisfy as providing our fundamental kind. Perhaps the Animalist can provide such a criterion, but we would need a proposal to work with, and no obvious candidate presents itself. Thus, the dilemma confronting the Appeal to Heterogeneity is as follows: Either this appeal rules out organism, animal and Homo sapiens as substance concepts (because none of the kinds picked out by these concepts are maximally homogeneous), or it fails to show why human being, or any other biological concept, uniquely picks out our fundamental kind (because of its lack of specificity). I conclude that the Appeal to Heterogeneity does not show the Biological Approach to personal identity to be superior to the PA.

5 Conclusion

I have not argued in this paper that the PA is superior to Animalism. Instead, I have attempted to establish that one of the main considerations that Animalists have raised against the PA applies with equal force to both theories. Moreover, I have argued that we should not accept the line of reasoning that leads to these alleged problems for the two theories. That is, I contend that the "what it is/what it does" distinction is an inadequate criterion for separating substance concepts from other sorts of concepts such as phase sortais. Additionally, amending the argument by appealing to heterogeneity also fails to favor Animalism over the PA. There are other arguments for and against Animalism, and I have not commented on any of those. Instead, I hope to have presented some convincing reasons for thinking that arguing for Animalism and against the PA via substance concepts and the "what it is/what it does" distinction is a strategy that is bound to fail.

Acknowledgements For valuable feedback on this article, I would like to thank Mark Anderson, Holly Kantin, Carolina Sartorio, Eric Stencil, and especially Alan Sidelle.

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Substance concepts and personal identity