Teste pensanti. Identità personale, animali umani e ‘persone residuali’

Alfredo Tomasetta

Alfredo Tomasetta

Abstract

Animalism is the view in personal ontology according to which we are identical with human animals. This paper focuses on a major objection to animalism put forward by Mark Johnston: the remnant-person problem. Your head detached from the rest of your body seems to be a person; now, if s/he is not you, then one can bring a person into being simply by removing tissue from something, and this is absurd. If, on the other hand, s/he is you, then animalism is false. I claim that one can offer a solution to this puzzle by denying the assumption that a detached head is a person, and I want to show that this can be done without assuming very controversial philosophical theses.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Johnston, Marc (2007), “Human Beings” Revisited: My Body is not an Animal, in Zimmerman, Dean (2007), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.

Johnston, Marc (2017), Remnant-Persons: Animalism’s Undoing, in Blatti, Stephan e Snowdon, Paul (2017), Animalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.

Locke, John (1690), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, stampato da Elizabeth Holt per Thomas Bassett, London (Saggio sull’intelletto umano, trad. it. di V. Cicero e M. G. D’Amico, Bompiani, Milano 2004).

Merricks, Trenton (2001), Objects and Persons, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.

Olson, Eric (1997), The Human Animal, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York, (L’animale umano, trad. it. di S. Levi, McGraw-Hill, Milano 1999).

Olson, Eric (2003), An Argument for Animalism, in Barresi, John e Martin, Raymond (2003), Personal Identity, Blackwell, Oxford-Malden.

Olson, Eric (2017), The Remnant-Person Problem, in Blatti, Stephan e Snowdon, Paul (2017), Animalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.

Putnam, Hilary (1981), Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (Ragione, verità e storia, trad. it. di A. N. Radicati di Brozolo, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1985).

Snowdon, Paul (1990), Persons, Animals and Ourselves, in Gill, Christopher (1990), The Person and the Human Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Snowdon, Paul (2014), Persons, Animals, Ourselves, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.

Van Inwagen, Peter (1990), Material Beings, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Van Inwagen, Peter (2007), A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person, in Van Inwagen, Peter e Zimmerman, Dean (2007), Persons. Human and Divine, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York.

Van Inwagen, Peter (2009), Metaphysics, Westview, Boulder (Metafisica, trad. it. di F. Calemi, Cantagalli, Siena 2011).