学术资讯｜哲珠科技哲学论坛第十五讲：新动物主义New Animalism

Introduction

Before joining CUHK’s Department of Philosophy at the beginning of 2022, I was a lecturer at Jilin University, in Changchun, China (2018 – 2021). I received a BA in philosophy and English literature from Duke University in 2006, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2008, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 2018 (dissertation supervisor: Trenton Merricks).

ABSTRACT

Old animalism says that we are fundamentally and essentially animals (so, not essentially persons) and that we have brute-physical (rather than psychological) persistence conditions. New animalism affirms that we are animals but denies at least some of old animalism’s modal or criterial claims. Adopting new animalism allows us to say that we are animals who, in cerebrum transplants, go with our cerebra. But almost nobody says this. Those who do say one of two things about our persistence – either that there are no necessary and jointly sufficient (informative) criteria for our persistence, or that it is sufficient for our persistence that we stand in either biological or psychological continuity relations. In this presentation, I consider which (if any) varieties of new animalism both allow us to say that we are animals who go with our cerebra and are independently plausible. I conclude, among other things, that no extant version of new animalism meets both desiderata, and that this is because no extant version distances itself far enough from old animalism. I then develop and defend a version of new animalism according to which psychological continuity is both sufficient and necessary for our persistence.

主讲人简介

Nicholask Rimell, 香港中文大学哲学系助理教授，弗吉尼亚大学哲学博士。 曾担任吉林大学讲师(2018 – 2021)。 其主要研究领域涉及形而上学、心灵哲学和伦理学。 论文发表于Philosophy、Acta Analytica、Journal of Medicine and Philosophy、Erkenntnis等一流哲学刊物。 近些年，他开始关注人格同一性问题。

讲座内容简介

旧版本的动物主义认为，我们从根本上和本质上是动物(所以，不是本质上的人)，我们有野蛮身体的(而不是心理)持续性条件。 新版本的动物主义则断言我们是动物，但至少否认一些旧动物主义的形式或标准主张。 采纳新的动物主义让我们认为，我们是在大脑移植过程中，伴随着大脑一起的动物。 但几乎没人这么认为。 关于持续性的观点，另一派人选择了二者之一——要么我们的持续性没有必要，并且也缺乏共同的、充分的（信息丰富的）标准，要么我们站在生物或心理连续性关系中足矣。 在这次报告中，我将考虑那些(如果有的话)改造后的新动物主义——既允许我们认为我们是伴随大脑的动物，也是可以独立于大脑的动物。

我的结论是，现存的新动物主义版本中，没有一个能同时满足这两个条件，这是因为现存的新动物主义版本中没有一个能与旧动物主义版本保持明显的差异。 此外，我提出并捍卫了一种新版本的动物主义，根据这个版本，可以说明心理上的连续性对于我们的坚持是充分且必要的。