The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person

Abstract

I argue that a form of animalism that does not include the belief that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal has a dialectical advantage over other versions of animalism. The main reason for this advantage is that Phase Animalism, the version of animalism described here, has the theoretical resources to provide convincing descriptions of the outcomes of scenarios problematic for other forms of animalism. Although Phase Animalism rejects the claim that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal, it is still appealing to those who believe that our nature is continuous or of a similar kind to that of other physical entities

Varieties of Animalism

“…Though some would not classify non‐essentialist views as animalist views, we will count them as varieties of animalism for a couple of reasons: they fit with a straightforward interpretation of the phrase ‘Human persons are animals’, which is characteristic of all varieties of animalism, and other people (for example, Suachelli () and Olson ()) seem to take this view to be at least a variety of animalism if not animalism itself.…”