Of human persons and animals : scholastic animalism and the metaphysics of human nature
Discussion as to whether the essence of human nature is primarily a matter of biology or of psychology has been going on for over two thousand years. Greek thought was divided between views such as Aristotle's, who saw a human being like you or me as a single living substance, an animal, and argued for persistence based on biological nature as a member of a species, and those of Plato, who identified a human being with his soul, trapped in his body, as two separable entities. Today, the debate continues between the animalists on one hand, for whom I am identical to my living body, and personalists on the other, who see each human being as a person, a self-conscious, rational entity. As such, animalists, such as van Inwagen and Olson, argue for a human being's persistence in terms of his biological life, while personalists, most notably, Baker, Shoemaker and Parfit, in sympathy with Locke, require only the presence of mind. However, while these two positions do not look to be incompatible, the accounts are usually set up in such a way that the acceptance of one is the denial of the other. For most animalists, for example, 'person' is just a phase sortal term, and human beings cannot be persons essentially,
Prestidge, Gillian Katie Mary
Of human persons and animals : scholastic animalism and the metaphysics of human nature. Discussion as to whether the essence of human nature is primarily a matter of biology or of psychology has been going on for over two thousand years. Greek thought was divided between views such as Aristotle's, who saw a human being like you or me as a single living substance, an animal, and argued for persistence based on biological nature as a member of a species, and those of Plato, who identified a human being with his soul, trapped in his body, as two separable entities. Today, the debate continues between the animalists on one hand, for whom I am identical to my living body, and personalists on the other, who see each human being as a person, a self-conscious, rational entity. As such, animalists, such as van Inwagen and Olson, argue for a human being's persistence in terms of his biological life, while personalists, most notably, Baker, Shoemaker and Parfit, in sympathy with Locke, require only the presence of mind. However, while these two positions do not look to be incompatible, the accounts are usually set up in such a way that the acceptance of one is the denial of the other. For most animalists, for example, 'person' is just a phase sortal term, and human beings cannot be persons essentially,
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