Animalism (philosophy)

Not to be confused with animism or Animal Farm.

In the philosophical subdiscipline of ontology, animalism is a theory of personal identity that asserts that humans are animals.^[1] The concept of animalism is advocated by philosophers Eric T. Olson, Peter van Inwagen, Paul Snowdon, Stephan Blatti, David Hershenov and David Wiggins.^{[2][page needed]} The view stands in contrast to positions such as John Locke's psychological criterion for personal identity or various forms of mind–body dualism, such as Richard Swinburne's account.

Thinking-animal argument

A common argument for animalism is known as the thinking-animal argument. It asserts the following:^[3]

1. A person that occupies a given space also has a Homo sapiens animal occupying the same space.
2. The Homo sapiens animal is thinking.
3. The person occupying the space is thinking.
4. Therefore, a human person is also a human animal.

Use of term in ethics

A less common, but perhaps increasing, use of the term animalism is to refer to the ethical view that all or most animals are worthy of moral consideration.^[4] It may be similar, though not necessarily, to sentientism.

See also

• Human evolution

References

Footnotes

1. Olson 2007, sec. 2.1.
2. Blatti & Snowdon 2016; Garrett 1998; Snowdon 2017.
3. Olson, Eric (2003). "An Argument for Animalism" (PDF). Personal Identity: 318–34.
4. The Animalist. "What Is Animalism?". Medium. Retrieved 29 March 2019.

Bibliography

• Blatti, Stephan; Snowdon, Paul, eds. (2016). Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, & Identity. Oxford University Press.
• Garrett, Brian (1998). Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-16573-0.
• Olson, Eric T. (2007). What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology. Oxford University Press.
• Snowdon, Paul (2017). Persons, Animals, Ourselves. Oxford University Press.

Further reading

• Baker, Lynne Rudder (2005). "When Does a Person Begin?". In Paul, Ellen Frankel; Miller, Fred D. Jr.; Paul, Jeffrey (eds.). Personal Identity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 25–48. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511759345.003. ISBN 978-0-511-75934-5.
• Blatti, Stephan (2020). "Animalism". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 ed.). Stanford, California: Stanford University. ISSN 1095-5054. Retrieved 30 November 2020.