Rethinking Human Nature by Kevin J. Corcoran

Author:Kevin J. Corcoran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

1. For those who prefer bells and whistles, here is a characterization of the relationship using logical notation: x constitutes y only if: (1) x and y wholly occupy the same space, and (2) there are different sortal properties F and G and an environment E such that (1) (Fx and x is in E) and (Gy and y is in E) and (2) (Íz) [(Fz and z is in E) ½ (Îw) (Gw and w is in E) and (w ‚ z)].

2. See Lynne Baker, Persons and Bodies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), especially chap. 3.

3. It is this feature of personhood that all nonhuman animals seem to lack and that disqualifies them from personhood.

4. When I use the term essential and its cognates, I have a special meaning in mind. For starters, we need to distinguish between substance and properties. Think of substances as individual things and properties as ways those things can be or fail to be. For example, being six feet tall, being green, and weighing two hundred pounds are examples of properties. Now some things have those properties, and some do not. Some properties are had contingently by the things that have them, and others are had essentially. If a substance has a property essentially, then that substance cannot exist and fail to have that property. If a substance has a property contingently, then that substance can exist without having that property. For example, you may have the property of weighing two hundred pounds. But surely you could exist without weighing two hundred pounds. You may either gain or lose that property without ceasing to exist. But take a particular dog, Lassie, for example. Lassie has the property of being a canine. Lassie could not exist without being a canine. So, Lassie is essentially a canine. If Lassie should cease to be a canine, Lassie would cease to exist.

5. Here I reveal my commitment to the claim that material objects are essentially material. Take my son’s baseball mitt, for example. I do not believe that that very mitt can exist and fail to be a material object. This plausible claim is, for all its plausibility, not uncontroversial. Some philosophers think that some material objects are merely contingently material. Someone who believes that my son’s baseball mitt is only contingently material believes that though it in fact is material it could exist without being material. I do not believe that.

6. It should be pointed out that the Constitution View of persons is a metaphysical view of the relationship between a human person and his or her body. It is not a theory of the mind and the relationship between mental events (e.g., being in pain, etc.) and physical events in the brain (e.g., the firing of neurons). As I understand the view, it is neutral with respect to so-called reductive and nonreductive theories of mind.

7. For a more detailed account of life and why a wave, flame, or tornado does not count as an instance of life, see Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 81–97.

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