Eric Olson, The Human Animal (New York: Oxford University Press, l997)

Abstract

In this stimulating book Eric Olson vigorously opposes what he calls the " PsychologicalApproach" to the topic of personal identity. This is the view, descended from Locke's memory theory, which holds that personal identity is in some way constituted by psychological continuity and connectedness. As Olson says, this has been the dominant view in recent discussions of this topic. On most versions of this view it is possible in principle for a person to have different bodies at different times as the result of a transfer, via a brain transplant or some sort of brain scanning procedure, of the person's psychology from one body to another. Olson is certainly not the first to question this view. Bernard Williams and Judith Thompson, among others, have defended bodily continuity accounts of personal identity. 1 And others, including Michael Ayers and Paul Snowdon, have defended the "animalist" view that the identity of a person is the identity of a living human animal, and constituted by biological rather than psychological continuity. 2 Olson's view, which he calls the "Biological Approach," is a highly sophisticated version of the latter view. It is lucidly and brilliantly argued, and the book should be read by anyone interested in the topic.Following David Wiggins~and Aristotle!, Olson holds that in a case of genuine persistence the persisting subject must essentially fall under a "substance concept," one that provides an answer to the question "What is it?" And according to Olson, the substance concept we fall under is not person but living human animal. The concept person is a phase concept, not a substance concept. We are not essentially persons, and we all begin our lives as non-persons, namely as fetuses. One of his arguments against the Psychological Approach rests on the fact that during the fetal period of human existence there is no psychology present, and so no psychological connectedness or continuity that could constitute continued identity.Although Olson holds that our identity consists in the identity of living human animals, he does not insist that this is true of all possible persons. Going along with the Lockean definition of person as "Thinking, intelligent being...," he allows that there could be persons that are not living human animals-gods, angels, demons, Cartesian egos, electronic

Prevalence and distribution of illicit drug use in the workforce and in the workplace: Findings and implications from a U.S. National survey.

“…The conceptual literature on employee substance use suggests that three general paradigms can be used to organize the major workplace predictors of illicit drug use (Frone, 1999; Harris, 2004). The first is the social control paradigm, which comes out of the general deviance literature (e.g., Shoemaker, 1996). Applied to work organizations, this paradigm proposes that employees who are not integrated into or regulated by the work organization are at higher risk of using illicit drugs.…”