Brain-based Animalism. So it would seem that the most immediately plausible metaphysical criterion of what gives an animal its identity and persistence conditions is the persistence of certain kinds of behaviour, i.e. of organic functioning proper to its kind. If that is the case, then by the same measure, what would give the brain its identity and persistence conditions would correspondingly be the persistence of functioning proper to its kind. Yet defining animals and other organic entities in terms of their “functioning” does not automatically solve all problems. For example, an immediate issue is that whether we are talking about animals or brains, this functioning can be intermittent. I go to bed every night and when I do, those parts of brain function we normally as- sociate with personal capacities are temporarily suspended during deep, non-REM sleep. Others have experienced clinical death and their bodies have temporarily ceased to perform organic function, only to be revived with defibrillation, for ex- ample. Yet we would not take these examples of cessation of functioning to be problematic to anyone’s identity. Then, the capacities and behaviours that characterise that “functioning proper to kind” can change over time. As I have grown older, I have gained many and probably lost some capacities typical of persons. As I will get to advanced old age, I am likely to lose increasingly many capacities, or at least degrees of capacities: my perception will grow duller, my memory fainter and so on. Nevertheless, it appears to me that overall Xxxxxx has to be correct in his argument that behaviour or functioning, whatever its precise metaphysical defini- tion might be, and however we work around the issues of intermittence and loss of performance over time, is the most plausible description of what is essential to the nature of organic entities. Both of the biology-based entities we have considered as plausible candidates to be the thing that I am, that is both the animal and the brain, seem most plausibly defined as entities in their own right on the basis of their functioning.33 This, however, allows for an ingenuous reconciliation between the Animalist and the Brain Theorist positions in response to the brain transplant scenario. Xxxx Xxxxxx argues in Human Persistence (2016) that the functioning that would define the animal that Xxxxx argues I am, and the functioning that would define the brain that a Brain Theorist would argue I am, are overlapping so extensively that o...
