Abstract

This chapter proposes that animalism, the temporal‐parts view, and nihilism are the best accounts of what we are. It then takes up metaphysical objections to animalism hinted at earlier. It is proposed that animalists answer them by endorsing a sparse ontology of material objects. It is then argued that we can work out what we are by discovering when composition occurs: if composition is universal, we are temporal parts of animals; if there is no composition, we do not exist; and intermediate theories of composition lead almost inevitably to animalism. Finally, the view that there is no theory of composition‐‐that composition is brute‐‐is claimed to rule out any good account of what we are.