Twinning, inorganic replacement, and the organism view

Ratio 23 (1):59-72 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In explicating his version of the Organism View, Eric Olson argues that you begin to exist only after twinning is no longer possible and that you cannot survive a process of inorganic replacement. Assuming the correctness of the Organism View, but pace Olson, I argue in this paper that the Organism View does not require that you believe either proposition. The claim I shall make about twinning helps to advance a debate that currently divides defenders of the Organism View, while the claim I shall make about inorganic replacement will help to put the Organism View on a par with its rival views by allowing it to accommodate a plausible intuition that its rivals can accommodate, namely, the intuition that you can survive a process of inorganic replacement. Both claims, I shall also argue, are important for those who are interested in the identity condition of a human organism, even if they do not hold the view that you are essentially an organism.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The organism view defended.S. Matthew Liao - 2006 - The Monist 89 (3):334-350.
Fitness and Propensity’s Annulment?Marshall Abrams - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (1):115-130.
The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology.Eric Todd Olson - 1997 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
When does a person begin?Lynne Rudder Baker - 2005 - Social Philosophy and Policy 22 (2):25-48.
Part and Whole in Aristotle‘s Political Philosophy.Robert Mayhew - 1997 - The Journal of Ethics 1 (4):325-340.
Persons and the metaphysics of resurrection.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2007 - Religious Studies 43 (3):333-348.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-07-10

Downloads
103 (#156,436)

6 months
3 (#445,838)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

S. Matthew Liao
New York University

Citations of this work

Animalism.Andrew M. Bailey - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (12):867-883.
Generic Animalism.Andrew M. Bailey & Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy 118 (8):405-429.
Prosthetic embodiment.Sean Aas - 2019 - Synthese 198 (7):6509-6532.
The Genetic Account of Moral Status: A Defense.S. Matthew Liao - 2012 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2):265-277.

View all 10 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references