Will I ever Be a Cyborg?1

Rui Vieira da Cunha*

Abstract

Eric Olson’s animalist view relies on the premise that

person is not a fit candidate to be a substance concept, in

Wiggins’s terminology. Instead, he claims, animal is what

best serves as the answer to what we most fundamentally are

and what determines our persistence conditions. Proposing a

thought experiment concerning inorganic replacement, I aim

to show that Olson’s animalist view cannot accommodate our

very strong intuitions about such cases. And that result

occurs even after trying two possible readings of Olson’s

account of an organism’s persistence conditions. My claim

is then that animalism either fails on its own grounds or

requires some adjustments to what exactly an organism is

and what its persistence conditions are.

Keywords

Animalism, Biological Approach, cyborg, Olson, person,

personal identity.

1 For comments on an earlier draft of this paper, I am grateful to ArtoLaitinen, Sofia Miguens, Mikko Yrjönsuuri, and, most of all, EricOlson, whose patience and detailed comments were more than I couldhope for.

** Researcher in the Mind Language and Action Group – MLAG – of thePhilosophy Institute of University of Porto – School of Arts (FLUP).FCT grant number FCT - SFRH/BD/45701/2008. Jyväskylä, November 2009.

1. INTRODUCTION

Eric Olson’s animalist view relies on the premise that

person is not a fit candidate to be a substance concept, in

Wiggins’s terminology. Instead, he claims, animal is what

best serves as the answer to what we most fundamentally are

and what determines our persistence conditions. Proposing a

thought experiment concerning inorganic replacement, I aim

to show that Olson’s animalist view cannot accommodate our

very strong intuitions about such cases. My claim is then

that animalism either fails on its own grounds or requires

some tuning regarding what exactly an organism is and its

persistence conditions. I will examine Matthew Liao’s

attempt to accommodate such intuitions within an animalist

view. I will begin by explaining the basics about Olson’s

animalist view but let us first look at the basic outline

of my thought experiment. The essentials are as follows,

the rest I will provide later, as we go along.

2. A CYBORG2 THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

2 I would like to thank Mimosa Pursiainen for pointing out that I amnot using the word cyborg in a technical sense. If we take a cyborg tobe something partly biological and partly inorganic, then we can onlyconsider Tom a cyborg in the first stage of our experiment, that is,in 2060. By 2090, after the last surgery, Tom will be fully inorganicand he won’t be a cyborg. Still, for practical and stylistic reasons,I chose to go with the word cyborg when I refer to Tom, both in 2060 asin 2090.

Suppose the year is 2020. Tom has just been born. He

is a human animal (or just plainly an animal or a member of

the species Homo sapiens or an organism). Now suppose, for

argument’s sake, that during his career Tom will undergo

transformations of the kind that transhumanists envisage as

possible (and even likely and desirable) in the future. And

let us leap further into the future to describe such

transformations.

In 2060, Tom has become an enhanced human. He has

nanobots running through his bloodstream that fight

infections and aging processes and monitor his life

functions. Most of the matter that was ever part of his

body has been replaced by inorganic parts, far more

efficient and enduring. In short, he has technology of the

sort some futurists claim to be possible in the very near

future and more sceptical scientists assume possible in a

more distant future (Bostrom, 2003). We can say that Tom

has almost become a full cyborg. Almost every part of his

body has been replaced by artificial parts. But not all the

parts: Tom’s brain (including his brainstem) has not been

replaced.

In 2090, Tom is about to undergo another

transformation. There are now inorganic brains available

and these come with inorganic brainstems, that function as

control and coordination centres much in the same way

organic brainstems have always functioned for human

animals: they regulate the body’s metabolism, the capacity

to breathe and circulate blood, etc. The procedure is by

then common to everyone: Tom’s brain and brainstem will be

gradually replaced, bit by bit and not all at once. At no

point in the procedure will Tom’s vital functions ever be

interrupted. Whatever memories or psychological features

Tom may have, they will be reproduced exactly in the

inorganic brain. Nevertheless, Tom’s friends are worried.

They wonder if he will survive in the process.

Tom’s friends are worried because they believe Olson’s

animalist view to be true. They believe he has persisted

through such a long time as the same animal because his life

functions have been assured by that brainstem. And they now

fear that undergoing the procedure may cause him to cease

to exist.

In order to fully grasp everything I am pursuing with

this thought experiment, let us stop for a while and recall

Olson’s animalist view and consider how this thought

experiment and the resulting intuitions would be explained

on that view.

3. OLSON’S ANIMALIST VIEW

Eric Olson’s defence of the animalist view on matters

of personal identity rests on the claim that animal is a

more adequate concept than person to be a Wigginsian

substance concept. Based on his reading of Wiggins (1980,

15), Olson assumes that

“every particular object falls under some kind

or concept that tells us, in a special sense,

what the object is, and not merely what it

does or where it is located or some other

accidental feature of it. And that concept

determines persistence conditions that

necessarily apply to all (and perhaps only)

things of that kind. Concepts of this sort are

substance concepts.” (1997: 28)

Thus, a substance concept 1) tells us what the object is,

as opposed to merely telling us what it does, and 2)

determines persistence conditions that necessarily apply to all

things of that kind. Moreover, we can infer that two

objects falling under the same substance concept will share

the same persistence conditions and that any object that

falls under a substance concept will always have those

persistence conditions, i.e., “a thing cannot change its

criterion of identity partway through its career” (Olson

1997: 29).

Substance concepts, according to Olson, can be

distinguished from what Wiggins calls phase sortals, or sorts,

such as child or athlete or philosopher. These concepts do not

tell us what the object most fundamentally is but rather

what it is at some point of its existence. Furthermore, an

object can undergo a change during its existence such that

it continues to exist but no longer falls under that phase

sortal. To take the example provided, something that is an

athlete comes into existence before he or she is an athlete

and can cease being an athlete without ceasing to exist. As

Olson puts it, “there are such things as former athletes

and potential athletes. Athletes don’t have the criterion

of identity that they have by virtue of being athletes.”

(1997: 30).

According to the Biological Approach supported by

Olson, our substance concept, the concept that best answers

the question about what we most fundamentally are, is not

person but rather Homo sapiens or animal or living organism. In

his own words: “Animal (or organism or human animal) is a

paradigm case of a substance concept, and so is an ideal

candidate for determining a thing’s persistence

conditions.” (1997: 36)

Olson’s rejection of person as a substance concept is

based both on the fact that personhood “is merely a capacity

or ability of a thing” (1997: 35) and not something that is

closely connected with that thing’s “internal, structural,

or intrinsic features” (1997: 34)3 and on the fact that

biological entities like us can persist under the same

conditions as many non-people, such as human embryos and

human vegetables. A human embryo or a human foetus or a

human vegetable cannot be counted as persons but they are

3 One may of course wonder why a thing’s capacity or ability isn’tclosely connected to its intrinsic features. Moreover, one can doubt,along with Nichols (2010), the grounds for the distinction between athing’s structure and its capacities. In fact, Nichols (2010) hasobjected to Olson’s line of reasoning on the grounds that (1) humananimal, animal, and organism are all functional concepts, and (2) thedistinction between what something is and what something does is illegitimatein the reading that Olson’s argument needs. Since my point here is totake the animalist view at face value and argue that it faces aproblem concerning inorganic replacement, I will not argue againstsuch assumptions here.

still human animals and so, Olson argues, that is what we

most fundamentally are: animals. Saying that we are animals

is an excellent answer to the question what something is.

Person, on the other hand, is but a phase sortal, in the

sense that to say that something is a person doesn.t tell

us what something is but rather what it does and also in

the sense that something (in our case, a human animal) can

exist before coming to be a person and can continue to

exist (as a human animal) even after ceasing to be a

person4.

One aspect of Olson’s account that should be evident

by now is his interchangeable use of the terms animal,

human animal, and organism. One could also include living

organism in this list but it is less often used and,

considering that Olson deems life to be a fundamental

characteristic of organisms5, it would be redundant to do

so, since there could be no non-living organisms. Or so he

claims. For the time being, I shall also use those terms

interchangeably, although later on some specification will

need be made.

When attempting to accurately describe the Biological

Approach, Olson is clear on a number of issues that concern

4 Olson further illustrates the inadequacy of person as substanceconcept by means of an analogy with a “Locomotive Criterion” ofidentity (1997: 31).5 Olson (1997: 136): “This proposal entails that an animal necessarilyceases to exist when it dies. In that case there is no such thing as adead animal, strictly so called. We may call something lying by theside of the road a dead animal, but strictly speaking what is lyingthere are only the lifeless remains of an animal that no longerexists”.

us. First, it does not exclude other kind of persons –

wholly immaterial, like Gods or angels or Cartesian Egos,

or even material persons, made “out of nuts and bolts, or

wires and diodes” or of other biological species (1997:

124). And, of course, it does not exclude that these

different kinds of persons will have different persistence

conditions (1997: 27, 124f.); in fact, it implies so. It

does exclude, however, that an organism could ever come to

be a non-organism or a non-biological organism (1997: 125)

– and that is something to be explored when we return to my

thought experiment. Another important reminder when it

comes to Olson’s animalist view is that, as he warns us, it

must not be confused with the Bodily View that states that

“we are identical with our bodies, or that we persist just

in case our bodies continue to exist” (1997: 19) or with

any modified version of it that would rely on some sort of

physical criterion of personal identity, that would somehow

focus on the brain and answer any question just by looking

where the brain is6.

Olson’s Biological Approach makes two main claims:

first, that we are animals, members of the species Homo

sapiens. Second, that psychological continuity is neither

necessary nor sufficient for a human animal to persist

6 Olson (1997: 144) gives a number of reasons against the idea thatbody could be a substance concept – the fact that an object could besomeone’s body for a while and then someone else’s body and continueto exist, for instance. Or the fact that an object can cease to be ahuman body and continue to exist. The main issue, however, is put moreclearly by Olson (2007: 25-26): “I have never seen a good account ofwhat makes something someone’s body (...). I am unable to complete theformula ´necessarily, x is y’s body if and only if...´”.

through time. Now, the first claim does not seem something

that anyone would want to deny. At least, in a weak sense,

everybody agrees that we are animals or that we are

constituted by an animal or that we stand in some special

relation to an animal. What some may be tempted to deny is

the stronger sense of that claim, which in fact is exactly

the one Olson endorses. In that stronger sense, when we say

that you are an animal, we are not just saying that you are

constituted by an animal or that you have the body of an

animal but that you are numerically identical with an

animal, that you are essentially an animal. To be accurate,

this should actually count as a further claim, or as a

special qualification of the claim that we are animals,

since this is in fact the claim that we are essentially an

animal. The is in “Tom is an animal” is not the is of

constitution but an is of identity. And if that is correct,

then we have our persistence conditions by virtue of being

animals, members of the species Homo sapiens. Once the first

claim is correctly understood in its stronger sense, in

this qualified form, the second claim – that psychological

continuity is neither necessary nor sufficient for a human

animal to persist through time - seems more easily

acceptable.

Now, for Olson to enunciate those persistence

conditions, he needs to provide a more detailed account of

what an animal is. This is the point where it seems to me

that Olson’s interchangeable use of the terms animal, human

animal, and organism requires some specification. In the

only two direct statements of identity conditions Olson

provides us with, one refers to animal7 and the other to

organism8. However, it seems clear to me that he is

considering the same question in both of them and although

he constantly shifts between these terms, he seems to show

some preference for organism. I will then assume that, even

though Olson uses either of those terms interchangeably, it

is organism that somehow best expresses what he has in mind9

and it’s an organism’s persistence conditions he is looking

for. In doing that, ultimately he relies on biology and so

his account is scientifically informed. Metabolism,

teleology, and organized complexity are the relevant

features of a living organism. What about the identity

condition of these organisms, then?

In the process of explaining what an organism life

consists in, Olson constantly refers to the brainstem, “the

organ that is chiefly responsible for directing your life-

sustaining functions” (1997: 140). That is the reason I

mentioned it when I presented my thought experiment and

7 “If x is an animal at t and y exists at t*, x=y if and only if thevital functions that y has at t* are causally continuous in theappropriate way with those that x has at t.” (1997: 135).8 “For any organism x and any y, x=y if and only if x’s life is y’slife” (1997: 138).9 I find some further comfort for this view in Olson’s later statementthat “(…) animals, including human animals, have more or less the samemetaphysical nature as other biological organisms. This is not to denythat some animals may have properties of considerable metaphysicalinterest – rationality and consciousness, for instance – that no plantor fungus could ever have. But if we ask what organisms are made of,what parts they have, whether they are concrete or abstract, whetherand under what conditions they persist through time, and the like, Ibelieve that the answer will be more or less the same for humanorganisms as it is for plants and fungi. So we need an account of themetaphysical nature of organisms generally.”(Olson 2007: 27).

since it is now time to get back to that, I will leave the

considerations on the brainstem’s importance for the next

section of this paper.

Given this description of Olson’s animalist view, I

think it can now be asked what it is about my thought

experiment that may counter this view. You might be asking

yourself what is the problem of a human animal turning into

a cyborg. Since the animalist only cares if there is still

a human animal living, even if the cyborg were to retain

Tom’s psychological characteristics (his memories, habits,

and so on), the only question would be whether he is still

a living animal or not. Perhaps the animalist can simply

reply that the enhancements Tom underwent in 2060 have

simply changed some of his features but his life functions

have persisted and so has the organ that directs them. And

if Tom’s brain and brainstem were to be replaced by an

inorganic device in 2090, then the human animal known as

Tom would cease to exist. The fact that the cyborg

resulting from the procedure could have the same

psychological properties Tom had is not a problem for the

animalist view, you could be tempted to reply. The

resulting being would simply be something like Tom’s copy.

It would not have his biological life.

Perhaps now is a good time to disclose one essential

fact of my thought experiment. If you read it again, you

will notice I never mentioned Tom’s choices or thoughts. In

fact, nothing even remotely close to Tom’s actual mental

life. That is because in 2059 Tom fell into a persistent

vegetative state. Does that make a difference?

4. BACK TO THE CYBORG

I think it is clear by now why I decided Tom should

have such an unfortunate event in his future. Had I

presented the thought experiment in the usual manner,

granting that Tom would still have higher mental functions

such as memory and reasoning even after becoming a cyborg,

the focus would be on the necessity of psychological

continuity or connectedness in the matter of personal

identity. However, I have stated that my aim is to show

that the animalist view either fails on its own grounds or

requires some tuning regarding what exactly an organism is

and its persistence conditions. Unfortunately for Tom, this

purpose is best served if he is in a persistent vegetative

state, maintaining all of his vital functions throughout

our experiment. So, what can we say about the events in

Tom’s imagined future and the way they could – if indeed

they could – affect our judgement concerning his numerical

identity? What plausible intuitions, if any, arise from

those events? And, more importantly, can the animalist view

accommodate such intuitions?

Consider Tom in 2059, when he lapses into a persistent

vegetative state. Let’s assume it is an irreversible one:

Tom’s cortex is damaged beyond repair, even if his

brainstem is untouched. After the enhancement surgery, we

could practically call him a full cyborg, even if his brain

(still damaged) and his brainstem (untouched) are not

replaced. The most plausible intuition would be to say that

Tom survived such a process. That is, of course, if we

grant that Tom still persisted after lapsing into a

vegetative state. Even if some of us would say that he did

not, I believe they would probably say this because of the

lack of psychological features. But in that case it would

be the audience who would reject Olson’s view to begin

with. Olson’s approach grants absolutely no importance to

those features. Its main characteristic is that it puts

biology in the place of psychology (Olson 1997: 16). That

is not the audience I am seeking. I want to show that we

can be persuaded by the animalist view and still have some

very strong and plausible intuitions about this thought

experiment that that view cannot explain. And I also

believe one of the strongest points for the animalist view

is that it grants that in a case such as Tom’s in 2059

(Olson’s Human Vegetable Case) you would persist. The human

animal that you are would not cease to exist just because

its higher mental functions are gone. I think that is a

very strong intuition most of us will share with the

animalist view.

Let us now turn to Tom’s state in 2090. Could the

severely mentally debilitated Tom survive the last surgery?

Would it still be Tom after that procedure? I believe we

can say so. You may object that such a process of inorganic

replacement is neither possible nor conceivable. These

procedures do not strike me as impossible or inconceivable.

To put it as Parfit does(1984: 219)10, I would deem them

technologically impossible but not deeply impossible.

Regardless of what our position on thought experiments and

their validity in drawing conclusions in philosophy, it

seems this one is not more far-fetched than any other

commonly described in addressing personal identity: Olson

himself considers the possibility of inorganic replacement

– and even in a situation where consciousness and thought

is maintained during the process, as we shall see. If we

can consider that, my thought experiment must be a lot

easier to consider. And I argue that the intuition it

elicits is that Tom or you and I or any other human animal

could survive such a process.

Remember the story once more: Tom had already lapsed

into a persistent vegetative state when his transformations

began. If not having any of the other parts removed made

any difference, why would the brain and brainstem be more

important? His mental life has been gone since the

10 “It may be impossible for some of these cases to occur, whateverprogress may be made in science and technology. I distinguish twokinds of case. Some cases contravene the laws of nature. I call thesedeeply impossible. Other cases are merely technically impossible. Doesit matter if some imagined case would never be possible? This dependsentirely on our question, on what we are trying to show. Even inscience it can be worth considering deeply impossible cases.” I cannotbe so bold as to claim that inorganic replacements of the kindenvisaged here do not contravene any law of nature. However, even ifthey do, there is still the possibility (also sustained by Parfit1984: 219) that we can derive some intuitions from them, as long as wepose the right questions. And I am fairly confident that the scenarioimagined here includes and specifies all relevant conditions as Wilkes(1988: 9) would demand.

beginning of the experiment, so that is not interfering. If

that did not keep us from saying he ceased to exist, why

would it deter us now? But perhaps it is not the

psychological aspects. Perhaps by now you have become so

persuaded by the animalist view that the idea of a

brainstem replacement is holding you back. The animalist

view is clearly attractive in that it can account not only

for our persistence conditions but for those of other

animals as well. And it not only coincides with our

intuitions about numerical identity in most of our ordinary

life but it also seems scientifically informed, as far as

possible. So, since you have figured out the importance

Olson’s animalist view attributes to the brainstem, you

might feel tempted to say Tom would die if he had his

brainstem replaced with an inorganic one. But why should

the brainstem matter all that much?

I believe the explanation of the brainstem’s

importance in the animalist view is best given if I present

what I take to be two possible readings of Olson’s account

of an organism’s persistence conditions. These are not

absolutely incompatible readings, I think, but they do

contain some discrepancies and might render different

results when addressing Tom’s situation. To be thorough, I

will begin with another reading, one I wouldn’t even

consider a possible reading at all but which, even if I

consider it incorrect, I must mention, since there seems to

be some room to interpret Olson in that sense. In his

explanation of what is an organism’s life, Olson’s writing

is increasingly analogical and metaphorical. He compares

life to thunderstorms, for instance, to account for the

fact that a life permanently integrates new matter into the

organism which life it is (“A life is a sort of storm of

particles in constant motion” 1997: 136). He states at a

certain point that “Every organism has a life, and it is

hard to see how there could be a life without there being

an organism whose life it was. And an organism cannot be

animated by two lives, at least not at once.” (1997: 137).

Some readers might take this as Olson engaging in some sort

of vitalist path, some sort of inhabitancy of the body by a

life, somewhat like a breath of life or something almost as

mystical. That, I think, couldn’t be further away from

Olson’s intentions and, in fact, from his achievement and I

hope it is clear why I dismiss this. Olson explicitly

mentions biology and biological issues so many times that

it would simply be unbelievable to assume that, not to say

downright inconsistent. If it means anything at all, I

would venture to say it can be no more than Olson’s– and

any philosopher of biology or even any biologist, for that

matter – inability to scientifically convey what life is in

a biological sense.

So then, what are the true possible readings of

Olson’s account of an organism’s persistence conditions?

The first is the reading that focuses on the brainstem’s

importance directly or just by itself. Olson seems to

endorse this reading several times: when describing the

Human Vegetable Case, for instance, he states that “Neither

is the animal “brain-dead”, for those parts of its brain

that direct its vegetative functions remain fully intact.”

(1997: 8). Later on, when considering a case where the

brainstem is missing, he states:

“But a detached cerebrum is not an animal (…)

because its parts do not coordinate their

activities in the way that the parts of an

organism coordinate theirs. (…) The reason is

not just that many life-sustaining organs –

´heart, lungs, digestive tract, and just about

everything else – have been removed from the

cerebrum, but also that those organs that once

coordinated the life-sustaining functions that

went on in the arm or cerebrum have been cut

away.” (1997, 115)

And, more emphatically, he also states “I have

suggested that your brainstem, as the organ that is chiefly

responsible for directing your life-sustaining functions,

is essential to you, for without it there is no Lockean

life and no living human organism at all.” (1997: 140).

There are many other passages of this sort11, which may

lead one to think the brainstem’s importance is so that one

cannot live without it: in fact, we have just seen Olson

stating this. And one may be led to assume that it is11 See, for instance, 1997: 132: “That is because the organs that oncedirected those activities – the pons, medulla oblongata, andhypothalamus, among others – are missing.”); or 1997: 10: “Imagine,then, that our surgeon leaves the rest of you intact when she removesyour cerebrum, so that your brainstem continues to do its job ofdirecting your heartbeat, circulation, breathing, and digestion (…)”.

absolutely impossible for anyone to have their brainstem

replaced and, therefore, that Tom is no exception. On this

reading, then, Olson’s view would accommodate our

intuitions about Tom in 2060. At that time Tom is still a

human animal. He just happens to have had most of his parts

replaced by inorganic ones. He is reduced to his brain and

brainstem, that much is obvious. But in Olson’s view that

would probably be only an extreme case of amputation, of an

animal being pared down to the bare minimum that ensures

his survival12. His brainstem, the organ responsible for

his life function, has suffered neither any sort of injury

nor intervention whatsoever. It still plays the same role

as in any other human who has not been enhanced the way Tom

was. True that most of Tom’s body is made up of inorganic

attachments which are not part of it. But that is not

problematic for the animalist view: attaching a prosthesis

to Tom cannot bring about his death. And it is definitely

not a matter of how many prostheses or how many organs and

parts are being replaced but of which organs and parts.

Now, Tom in 2090 would be a completely different matter for

the animalist view. Remember Olson stated that there would

be no living organism without its brainstem. If this

reading of Olson’s view were right, then we would have to

say that Tom dies in 2090, when he has his brainstem

replaced.

However, that is not what I would consider Olson’s

truest reading, and even those evidences of it are, it

12 It would be pretty much like the case of a detached head connectedto a life-support system Olson considers (1997: 133).

seems to me, pretty clear concerning what Olson actually

means when he refers to the brainstem. It is not that the

brainstem matters per se but that it matters in as much as

it controls the vital functions of the organism. In all of

the above statements, every reference of the brainstem

includes a reference to its role, its job, its activity,

within the organism: it coordinates the vital functions, it

directs those life-sustaining functions, it is chiefly responsible

for those functions. So, the important thing is not the

brainstem but the brainstem’s job, the functions it

coordinates. In case the quotations above are not

convincing enough, we may consider these:

“Your life-sustaining functions are not disrupted when

you lapse into a persistent vegetative state” (1997:

11);

“(…) the human vegetable in the story is biologically

continuous with you – that your life-sustaining

functions continue on in that animal (...)” (1997:

12);

“What it takes for us to persist through time is what

I have called biological continuity: one survives just in

case one’s purely animal functions – metabolism, the

capacity to breathe and circulate one’s blood, and the

like – continue.” (1997: 16).13 13 Other examples could be the following: “(…) you are an animal, andan animal ceases to exist when it dies – when its vital functionscease and its tissues decay beyond the point where they can bereanimated. (…) you could be immortal only if it is possible for thelife-sustaining functions of a biological organism to continueforever.” (1997: 71); “On the Biological Approach, what it takes forus to survive remains the same throughout our careers: like otheranimals, we persist as long as our life-sustaining functions remain

So, if we suspected the first reading to be not quite

wrong but not quite accurate either, we can now look at

this second reading as the more rigorous one, the one Olson

himself would certainly endorse. It is not the case that

the brainstem matters by itself but that it matters in a

derivative sense, because of its functions14.

So, is Olson’s view on this second and more accurate

reading now able to accommodate our intuitions about Tom in

2090? It would seem that there would be nothing to object,

from Olson’s view, to a replacement of the original

brainstem by an inorganic brainstem. If the brainstem is

granted such importance only because of its functions, one

might think that it is irrelevant whether it is something

intact.” (1997: 89); “(…) its organic functions are continuous withyours: your metabolism and other life-sustaining functions havecontinued on without interruption and are now the life-sustainingfunctions of the brainless animal.” (1997: 116); “Consider thebiological concept of death. (…) most biologists would agree that ithas something to do with the irreversible cessation of those metabolicand other activities that distinguish living organisms from non-livingthings.” (1997119).14 Note that on the first reading the organ is being enthroned onitself, because of being what it is and not of doing what it does. Mystress in this last sentence is merely to draw attention to the factthat Olson’s most suitable reading, the one which is closer to hisintentions and which has on its side the overwhelming textualevidence, is one in which the basics of his substance concept aredefined on the grounds of what something does rather than whatsomething is. And that was exactly Olson’s reason to reject person as asubstance concept in the first place. Of course it can be argued thatthese are different levels of explanation. But it has also been argued– and very convincingly so, I may add – that the distinction betweenwhat something is and what something does is illegitimate on the reading Olsonneeds to prefer animal over person as a substance concept - see Nichols,op. cit..

organic or inorganic, as long as it does its job, as long

as it coordinates the life-sustaining functions.

Unfortunately, even though it may seem unproblematic,

the idea of an inorganic brainstem is something the

animalist view cannot accept. At a certain point,

considering the possible existence of other kinds of

persons different than human animals, Olson is very clear

on stating that no organism can survive a process of

inorganic replacement of its brainstem:

“It may be possible to replace all of your

parts, including your brain, gradually and

piece by piece, with inorganic prostheses in

such a way that your mental capacities were

preserved throughout (...) The result would be

a wholly non-biological person – with

rationality, consciousness, free will, the

works – who was both psychologically and

materially continuous with you. Nevertheless,

according to the Biological Approach that being

would not be you, for you are a biological

organism, and no organism could come to be a

non-organism (or so I shall argue).” (1997:

125)

The argument Olson is referring to in the end of that

statement is his account of what an organism is, as I

presented it supra, with the relevant features being

metabolism, teleology and organized complexity. On Olson’s

view, Tom would survive just until 2090, because his

brainstem is controlling his life-sustaining functions. The

moment it would be replaced, the organism would perish.

However, it’s not the case that Tom would perish just

because his vital functions were gone or because there was

nothing there to direct them. Tom would also cease to exist

because he would cease to be an organism and, given Olson’s

insistence that organism is a substance concept, Tom could

never cease to be an organism without ceasing to exist.

Olson is perfectly aware, I think, of the problem that

inorganic replacement poses to the animalist view and so,

after he has presented his account of what an organism is,

he addresses the issue once more:

“... imagine that your brainstem is replaced by an

inorganic substitute gradually, bit by bit, rather than all

at once … there is never a period when your life-sustaining

functions are left without an organ to coordinate them, or

when your cerebrum is not aroused and activated in the

normal way by the brainstem. As a result, there need be no

interruption in consciousness throughout the operation

(suppose the surgeons use only a local anaesthetic). The

result would be a rational, conscious being with your mind.

Isn’t it obvious that you would be that being? My view,

however, entails that you could not survive this … For

something with an inorganic brainstem, I argued, could not

be an animal at all” (1997: 141-142)

In this statement, Olson is focusing on a situation

where consciousness is maintained throughout the whole

process and so it seems that the only reason why we

intuitively say that the being resulting from the operation

would be you is due to psychological factors. In Tom’s

case, however, there are no such factors to consider and, I

argue, the intuition remains: we still think Tom is Tom and

has not ceased to exist just because he has that last

surgery in 2090. So, given that Tom can become a cyborg and

given that he started out as a human organism, there seems

to be only two possible answers (apart from denying that

Tom has ceased to exist): either to conclude that Tom was

not, after all, a human organism, at least not essentially;

or to conclude that an organism can survive inorganic

replacement15. Either animalism fails on its own grounds,

given that this thought experiment was “untainted” with

psychological features, or animalism requires some

adjustments concerning what exactly an organism is and what

its persistence conditions are. The first answer amounts to

giving up the animalist view altogether. The second answer

would allow us to accommodate our intuition within the

animalist view. But how could this be done?

One way of going about it is Liao’s way. Liao (2010)

argues for the possibility of accommodating a process of

inorganic replacement within the animalist view – or the

Organism View, as he puts it. Liao considers that a being,

X, is essentially an organism, if

15 Here I am particularly indebted to Eric Olson, who has shown me theneed to clarify this point.

“a) X begins to exist when the capacity to regulate

and coordinate its metabolic and other life processes

is there; b) X persists as long as there is what may

be called “organismic continuity”, which is the

continuing ability to regulate and coordinate its

metabolic and other life processes; and c) X ceases to

exist when the capacity to regulate and coordinate its

metabolic and other life processes is permanently

gone.” (2006: 337)

This account of what an organism is, is not all that

different from Olson’s. The main difference is that Liao

thinks that “there could be non-carbon-based life forms

that have non-carbon-based interdependent parts that are

used to regulate and coordinate various life processes such

as absorption, assimilation, metabolism, and so on, in

order to process certain material into fuel so that they

would be able to function. If so, it seems that these non-

carbon-based life forms would also qualify as organisms.”

(2009: 17). If this were correct, then inorganic

replacement would no longer pose a problem to the animalist

(or organism) view and our very strong intuition that Tom

would survive the surgery in 2090 may sit easily with that

view. Liao (2010: 68) even presents a thought experiment

similar to Tom’s except that consciousness is maintained

throughout the process and the experiment is in reverse:

you would begin your existence as a non-carbon-based life

form and then have all your parts gradually replaced by

carbon-based functional equivalents.

I said in the beginning that my thought experiment

poses a problem to the animalist view. Given a case like

Tom’s, I think an animalist is left with two options: he

can bite the bullet and deny Tom survives the 2090

replacement of his brainstem or he can choose Liao’s

solution. If he denies that Tom survives after 2090, he

cannot accommodate our intuition that Tom does not cease to

exist just because a small organ is replaced. In this case,

I argued, my thought experiment is more damaging to the

animalist view because they cannot dismiss our intuition

just by saying that we are biased or influenced by

psychological considerations. That option is not available

for an animalist in Tom’s case and so he must admit this is

a strong blow to the animalist view. If we somehow think

Tom can survive a gradual process of inorganic replacement,

it seems we can no longer say that Tom falls under the

substance concept “organism”. After all, Tom began to exist

as an organism but has ceased being an organism without

ceasing to exist. So, is being an organism just a phase in

Tom’s existence, just like being a child, an athlete, or a

philosopher? It certainly seems so.

As for Liao’s solution, I believe it comes at a very

high cost for the animalist (or organism) view. The cost of

redefining what an organism is in such a broad way that it

may cease to be a substance concept. Of particular note,

for instance, is Liao’s case for the possibility or

conceivability of non-carbon-based life forms:

“But while it may be the case that organisms that are

most familiar to us are all carbon-based life forms,

there is no reason to suppose that all organisms are

necessarily carbon-based life forms. Strictly speaking,

organisms are just entities that have interdependent

parts.” (2009: 17, my emphasis16)

You can object that there is nothing wrong with Liao’s

solution, that it just broadens the concept of organism. In

doing so, you would say, Liao is just providing a more

detailed account of what an organism is. Isn’t that what I

said my thought experiment was meant to show about the

animalist view? That in order for it not to fail on its own

grounds, it would need some finer tuning concerning what

exactly an organism is and its persistence conditions? That

is true. I do not think, however, that Liao’s tuning can be

made while still maintaining organism as a substance

concept17. Remember, a substance concept in Wigginsian

16 My emphasis here should by no means be understood as saying thatthis is all there is to Liao’s definition of organism – which I havealready presented earlier. What I want to point out is that given thatdefinition, and the fact that an organism could be non-carbon-based inhis account, that aspect – being an entity that has interdependentparts – is one of the main features of an organism. And that issomething perhaps too many things in the world possess.

17 I thank Arto Laitinen for suggesting that perhaps Liao’s solutionwould require us to think of organism as the substance concept and ofcarbon-based or non-carbon-based as a phase sortal. Though I am tempted tosay that would be an accurate rendition of Liao’s proposal, I am notsure if it is. And I am also not sure if that explains away the fact

terminology is something that tells us what a thing

fundamentally is. It tells us that thing’s most essential

metaphysical nature. It helps to set that thing apart from

other things which do not share its nature. If we take

Liao’s solution, even though his explicit definition of

what an organism is seems very close to Olson’s, we are

broadening the concept to such an extent that I believe too

many different things in the world could count as

organisms.

Olson himself is very aware of all the problems this

poses for the animalist view, I think. Right after

addressing the topic of inorganic replacements, in the

above excerpt, he states that there is little that he can

say to reply to our intuition that we could survive such a

process. And he is clear regarding the options that are

left: “If you want to insist that you could survive such a

thing, you must either deny that you are a living organism,

or come up with an alternative account of what it takes for

an animal to persist through time” (1997: 142). Liao’s

solution is probably an attempt at such an alternative

account. However, the way I understand it, it can also be

seen as falling terribly close to being an outright denial

that we are essentially living organisms, that is, that

organism is the substance concept under which we fall.

that we do tend to think of organisms and its being carbon-based asone essential feature of it, as something an organism could not ceaseto be without ceasing to exist. Talk of a non-carbon based organismmay be acceptable but doesn’t that force us to count many differentthings as organisms?

I have tried to show how Olson’s animalist view fails

to explain our strong intuition about Tom’s survival in my

thought experiment. Even after trying two possible readings

of Olson’s account of an organism’s persistence conditions,

there is no plausible answer the animalist view can offer

us. Since I resorted to no psychological or mental

continuity or connectedness of any sort to bring about such

intuitions, there is no way we can say that we were

influenced by a psychological approach nor, I dare say, by

practical attitudes about “what matters in identity”

(Olson, 2007: 43). My claim that animalism fails on its own

grounds thus means that it cannot offer plausible answers

even to an audience willing to consider only biological

factors when accounting for our persistence conditions. I

see no other alternative than to conclude that animalism

requires some adjustments regarding what exactly an

organism is and what its persistence conditions are.

Whether these adjustments can be satisfied with something

like Liao’s solution, I am not quite sure, considering the

possible implied consequences of such a solution on the

central premise of animalism: that organism is a substance

concept.

5. CONCLUSION

The main premise of Eric Olson’s view on personal

identity issues is that animal or human animal or organism is

what best serves as the answer to what we most

fundamentally are and what determines our persistence

conditions. That that is, in short, our substance concept.

Resorting to a thought experiment concerning inorganic

replacement, I have tried to show that things like you and

I can become totally inorganic. If organisms cannot become

such inorganic things, then you and I are not (essentially)

organisms. If organisms can become inorganic things, then

we need a better definition of organism. As I claimed at

the beginning of this paper, Olson’s animalist view cannot

accommodate our very strong intuitions about such cases and

the only options left for an animalist, apart from trying

to deny that premise – that Tom and you and I can become

totally inorganic – are either to give up animalism

altogether or come up with a better account of what exactly

an organism is and what its persistence conditions are.

Liao’s solution, even though cleverly argued, is one that

in attempting to achieve the latter, does so in such a

broad way that it comes too close to achieving the former.

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