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What are we? What owns our thoughts and experiences? Are we anything at all? After an introduction, Section 2 assesses a 'no-bearer' theory of experience, and the 'no-self' contention that self-representations are about no real entity, before introducing a positive hypothesis about the objects of our self-representations: the 'animalist' claim that we are biological organisms. Section 3 discusses the classic challenge to animalism that brain transplantation is something we could survive but no animal could survive. This challenge introduces positive alternatives to animalism, as well as animalist responses, including one which questions the assumption that psychology is irrelevant to organism persistence. Section 4 surveys a 'thinking parts' problem and conjoined twinning and commisurotomy, also considered problematic for animalism. The interpretation of these cases revisits questions about bearers of experience, objects of self-representation, and the relation of biology and psychology. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
I explain why the compositionalist conception of ordinary objects prevalent in contemporary metaphysics places the manifest image of the human self in a precarious position: the two theoretically simplest views of the existence of composites each jeopardize some central element of the manifest image. I present an alternative, nomological conception of ordinary objects, which secures the manifest image of the human self without the arbitrariness that afflicts compositionalist attempts to do the same. I close by sketching the consequences of the recommended position for the traditional personal identity debate about the nature and persistence of human selves.
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