Animalism and the Lives of Human Animals

ANIMALISM AND THE LIVES OF HUMAN ANIMALS

Paul Snowdon

ABSTRACT: It is suggested that the best way to interpret animalism is as an identity thesissaying that each of us is identical to an animal. Since there are disagreements aboutthe nature of animal persistence, this means that animalism itself not does not explic-itly propose criteria of identity for persons. It implies the negative claim that featuresthat have nothing to do with animal persistence have nothing to do with our persis-tence. Thinking of it as an identity thesis also makes sense of the nature of thearguments surrounding the thesis. Central to such arguments are claims about thepersistence of animals and persons in certain imagined scenarios. To adjudicate sucharguments, we need a secure grip on some claims about animal persistence. Oftenthese are generated by a theory of animal persistence. In the second part of the paper,it is argued that the attempt to build such theories on the assumption that life isessential for animal existence is implausible. In the way we speak, we seem not torecognise death as the ceasing to exist of an animal. No better way to think of animalsis proposed in this paper.

I have adopted the title of the Spindel Conference itself as the title of my ownpaper, since that title matches rather well my own themes. I want to presentsome thoughts about animalism, about human life and existence, and aboutthe connections between them. These reflections are, sadly, rather less con-clusive that I would have wished.1

Paul Snowdon has been the Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College Londonsince 2001. Before that he was, for 30 years, a Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy at ExeterCollege, Oxford. He has written about perception and the philosophy of mind more generally,personal identity, and the history of twentieth century philosophy. He is shortly bringing out abook on animalism with OUP, entitled Persons, Animals, Ourselves. He is also bringing out acollection of his essays, again with OUP, entitled Essays on Perceptual Experiences. He and StephanBlatti are also editing a collection entitled Essays on Animalism to be published in 2014 by OUP.

1 The background to this paper is a developing sense that the assessment of variousarguments brought against animalism turn on judgments about the persistence of individualanimals in imagined scenarios. How are we to know what the truth is here? What better, then,than a conference that brings together people who think about animalism and people who think

The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 52, Spindel Supplement2014

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 52, Spindel Supplement (2014), 171–184.ISSN 0038-4283, online ISSN 2041-6962. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12074

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1. ANIMALISM AND SOME ARGUMENTS

We have, many of us at least, a fascination with knowing what kind of thingswe are, that is what we fundamentally are. Humans have revealed a tendencyto mark themselves out as a basic kind of thing in nature, and we are alsoprone to adopt theories of our nature which strongly emphasize the differ-ences between us and other things in the world. However, according to theconception of the world that we currently hold, one truth is that where I am,there is also an animal. That animal, we think, can be placed in an evolvingchain of increasingly complex organisms, going right back to the start ofanimal life. This same general point, of course, also applies to you. Once wethink about the question—what are we?—in the knowledge that where eachof us is there is an animal, an object of that sort, there has to be a strongtemptation to identify ourselves with that animal. One thesis, then, that thelabel ‘animalism’ stands for is that each of us is identical with the animal thatis where each of us is, and I want in this paper to work with that elucidationof it.

Now, this makes animalism into an identity thesis, and I want to suggestthat to think of animalism as such an identity thesis illuminates the characterof the debate about it in a number of ways.

One point is this, animalism is not, per se, a theory about the persistenceconditions of creatures of our sort, something that is usually called a theory ofpersonal identity. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the name “theory ofpersonal identity,” it is surely obvious what kind of theoretical enterprise lhave in mind here. All animalism tells us is that our persistence conditions arethe same as those of the animal we are, since those things are the self-samething. We get from this claim a theory of our persistence conditions only if wecan articulate a theory of animal persistence and apply it to ourselves (or atheory for animals of the kind we are). But clearly there are disagreementsabout animal persistence, just as there about personal persistence. If this iscorrect, we can also see that it is a mistake in debates about animalism toassume that the views on animal persistence that are often accepted byanimalists are themselves definitive of animalism. If animalism is the identityclaim, it is consistent with any theory of animal persistence. One thing thismeans is that the basic character of animalism is different from the wayof thinking that the term ‘Lockeanism’, ancient or modern, picks out. Thelatter purports to specify conditions of persistence that apply to us, whereas

about animals in general, and human beings in particular? This was Stephan Blatti’s excellentgoal for the Spindel Conference. My aim in this paper is to explain this perspective on how theissues are joined and to advance some claims about how we should think about animals. I amstill in the process of thinking through what emerged in the conference itself.

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animalism does not. What does, perhaps, follow from the basic identity claimis that our persistence conditions do not include or rest on elements thatobviously do not apply to animals. It seems to me that it is fairly obvious thatanimal persistence has nothing to do with mental relations over time, or withthe retention of mental capacities. Think simply of the kinds of experimentson animals that can result in an animal losing these capacities without theanimal being destroyed. So the adoption of animalism implies that suchfeatures have nothing to do with our persistence conditions, and, of course,that implication might be true even if animalism is not. What positively shouldbe said remains to be determined, even given acceptance of animalism.2

Next, the fundamental commitment of an identity claim that A = B is thatA and B must share all their properties. Hence, the identity can be disprovedif a property P can be found which A possesses but B lacks. The strategy ofanti-animalists is to persuade us that they have found some such property.Any detected property difference is enough to disprove the identity, but whencomparing ourselves to the cohabiting animals what is striking, surely, is howsimilar we are. Thus, the physical properties I think of myself as possessing arealso ones I think of the animal here possessing. We have the same shape,weight, color, hair length, and so on. I also think of myself as alive, breathing,digesting food, and suffering ailments, and I think of the animal as the same.The resemblances, it must be said, are very striking.

But the resemblances seem not to end with the physical and biologicalfeatures already mentioned. If asked about the human animal here whetherit (or he) has sensations, perceives, acts, thinks, and communicates by speech,the obvious answer is that it does. Supposing that is correct, a style ofargument in favor of animalism suggests itself. If we deny that I and theanimal here where I am are identical, we seem committed to the existence oftwo things both of which have the same mental properties. It would furtherseem that if one is a person in virtue of that mental life then so is the other.So a denial of animalism seems committed to the existence of two psycho-logical lives, one of the animal, the other of me (in the case under consider-ation), and, perhaps, the existence of two persons. Now, neither implicationseems to be acceptable. Can there really be two psychologically endowedentities here? This is, of course, simply a sketch of the style of argument now

2 At the conference it was suggested by some, including John Dupré, that animalism iscommitted to the idea that animals are continuing objects, but that really they should bethought of as processes. However, if it is correct to regard animals as belonging in the generalcategory of processes, then the identity claim is not threatened since we can regard ourselves asprocesses. The identity thesis leaves even that open. Further, it cannot be said, I believe, thatthinking of animals as processes was established by those who believe it.

ANIMALISM AND THE LIVES OF HUMAN ANIMALS 173

known as the two lives problem. It alleges that here is something close to aparadox in the denial of animalism.

The current popularity of animalism flows from the realization by variousphilosophers more or less simultaneously in the 1980s that there are animalswhere each of us is and that denying there is an identity at least seemsparadoxical. Now, opponents of animalism have devoted considerable effortsto show there is nothing paradoxical here, and that debate remains, as far asI can see, still alive. However, what I want to stress here is that it is a seriousmistake to regard the so called two-lives argument as the only pro-animalistargument and to think that rebutting it would leave animalism unsupported.In fact, the long-standing debates about the psycho-physical identity theory inthe philosophy of mind provide one possible argumentative pattern in favorof identities that could in principle be employed by animalists. Thus, one canargue that A = B, given premises of the form: A = the F and B = the F. So, ifone could find such an identity that applies to me and also applies to thehuman animal, here one would have another pro-animalist argument.3

Again, identities can be supported in inferences to the best explanation. Thuswe might conclude in a case where there is some uncertainty that a certainman is identical to the man married to someone else, because it is the bestexplanation as to why he has certain information (about the marriage cer-emony, say). Similarly it is worth considering whether the truth of the identityclaim that is animalism might not provide the best explanation for certainotherwise unexplained facts about ourselves. Further, there might be plau-sible general principles that apply to animal evolution that support the con-clusion that the new capacities that emerge in evolution must belong toemerging animals.4 This list, I suggest, reveals the extent of other possiblearguments for animalism.

However, what most philosophers seem to be struck by are not the simi-larities between us and the animals, nor the plausibility of these arguments,but rather some supposed differences. The major candidates for such differencesconcern the contrasting possibilities for survival that we and the animals have.One supposed sort of difference is that the animal can survive despite a totalloss of mental functioning, whereas we cannot survive that. A potential

3 It should be pointed out that arguments with this pattern can be generated to supportviews which are inconsistent with animalism. Thus, at the Spindel Conference, Carl Gillettproposed an argument along the following lines to show that each of us is identical to his or herbrain. (1) I am the thing doing this thinking here and now. (2) My brain is the thing doing thisthinking here and now. (3) So, I am my brain. This argument plainly has the same structure.Reflection on this candidate argument, I think, brings out why it is difficult to give persuasiveexamples of it.

4 This is, in outline, the thought that Blatti (2012) is attempting to articulate.

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example would be when an accident leaves a human alive but in a state ofwhat is called persistent vegetation. Many think this amounts to the survivalof the animal but not one of us (or, as it is said, the person). A contrasting sortof possible case is one where one of us (the person) can survive due to asignificant part of us being transplanted and continuing to function, but itbeing too small a part to count as yielding survival for the animal. Tradition-ally with this sort of case the focus has been on brain-transplants. Now, it istrue that these two argumentative patterns are not the only ones that anti-animalists can or do employ, but they do seem to me to be the most exploitedones (in some form or other) in standard debates.

A crucial question is, of course, whether there are good counterexamplesto animalism amongst these sorts of cases. Fundamentally, what they involveis the judgment that in certain sorts of supposedly possible cases either theanimal is still there but the person is not, or the person is still there but theanimal is not. Clearly, anyone making such judgments supposes themselves tobe in a position to make judgments about animal persistence and what wemight call person persistence. Now, in the supposed cases where the animalsurvives but the person (or the thing of our kind, whatever that is) does not,there really is no dispute about whether the animal does survive, sincenothing in the cases even seems to remove the animal. It is there, say, asleepin the hospital bed or on the experimentalists table. In these examples whatis at issue is the other judgment to the effect that the person is not there.However, by contrast in the cases where there are significant subtractionsfrom the animal, it is not always obvious what has happened to the animal orwhat has happened to the person. The imagined cases are not easy for us tojudge because they are not actual, and it is hard to be sure what to think aboutthem. An example to illustrate this kind of difficulty would how to trace theanimal if the head of the animal were removed and kept alive in someartificial structure. Would that head count as a severely truncated animal ornot? It is clear that arguing against animalism on the basis of such an examplerelies on being confident that it would not.

One reaction at this point is to search for a theory of animal persistence, orwhat might be called animal identity. Such a theory cannot, though, beregarded as necessary in order for people to propose or to reject this style ofanti-animalist argument. For in order to support the adoption of a generaltheory, the theory must rest on accepted judgments about particular cases. Itmust in some way generalize from more particular judgments. The presenceof a general theory is, therefore, not necessary to make judgments that we canrely on for argumentative purposes. But philosophers in this debate have beenprone to suggest general theories of animal persistence. And in the secondpart of this paper I want to reflect on the role of the notion of life in such a


theory. Frequently such theories center themselves on the assumption thatanimal persistence is tied to life. They build up their theories from that centralassumption. So an important question is whether that assumption is true. Itneeds to be added that even if it is not a prelude to constructing a generaltheory, the issue as to what the relation is between animals and life is aninteresting one.

2. LIVES

Before engaging with the issue, I want to distinguish between two employ-ments of the term ‘life’. The first use, when we are talking about animals, and,if this is different, ourselves, is that “life” is understood as the period duringwhich the animal (or we) is (or are) alive. The life of the animal is whathappens to that animal when alive, and in this use the life of the animal isfinished, is over, once the animal dies. Then the animal no longer has a life.This we might call “life as living.” But there is a second use of ‘life’. On thisuse we can talk about the life of a planet or of a building or a natural processlike a hurricane. We then mean, roughly, those things that happen to it whileit exists. The life of a planet ceases when that planet ceases to exist. This usewe might label “life as existing.”5

Now, with that distinction before us, we can note a potential ambiguity inthe term ‘lives of human animals’. Does it mean their lives while alive, or doesit mean their lives while existing? According to one conception of human andanimal existence these things can exist only if alive. So although there is adifference between the two notions of lives, there is no possibility of themcoming apart with animals. This is, however, I suggest, not something that iscompletely obvious and certainly does not go without saying. What I want todo is to explore what the relation actually is between an animal being aliveand its existing. Given animalism, what this relation is for animals will also beits relation for us.

3. THE LIVES OF HUMAN ANIMALS

Until recently it was assumed by most philosophers that life is a necessarycondition for animal existence. Such a view seems to have been endorsed byboth Aristotle and Locke, and recent prominent supporters of it areDummett, Wiggins, and Olson.6 A number of other philosophers have,

5 When people sometimes advise another to “get a life,” they are using ‘life’ in a third way.6 The necessity of life thesis was certainly the view that was widely assumed in Oxford in the

1970s and 80s. Probably Michael Ayers’ was the only dissident voice there during that period.

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though, argued for the opposite claim.7 I am going to defend two propositionsabout animals which place me in agreement with this second group oftheorists.

(A) Life processes are not necessary for animal persistence. The reason forsaying this is that it seems we can put an animal into a state of what is calledfrozen animation. In this state, life processes do not occur. The animal is therebut frozen solid. Further, it may be possible to unfreeze the animal so that itslife processes resume. The animal surely remains there if that is a possibility.Although freezing the animal may in fact be the only way to preserve itwithout life processes occurring in it so life can resume, it is not unthinkablethat physical processes other than lowering temperature might have achievedthe same result. There seems, therefore, to be nothing problematic in the ideaof an animal existing without life processes occurring in it.8 One commentthat might be made about this example is that if in fact there is no viableresuscitation process, then freezing the animal does in fact kill it. That may bea reasonable comment, but it does not touch, rather, it concedes, the pointthat an animal can remain in existence without life processes occurring in it.

(B) An animal does not cease to exist at death. This proposition is morecontroversial than (A). I propose therefore to put forward first some argu-ments in favor of thesis (B) and then to consider some arguments against it.There is an established nomenclature in relation to this debate. The claimthat death is the end of existence for an animal is known as the TerminationThesis. Employing that name, it can be said that (B) is the denial of theTermination Thesis. Obviously, if (B) is correct, an alternative positiveaccount of animal persistence is needed.

What can be said in favor of denying the Termination Thesis? (i) Let usconsider first what our ways of talking and thinking about dead things is.What sorts of things do we say? We would say, in a certain situation, “Thisanimal is alive, but that animal is dead.” This seems to mean we regard someentity as both an animal (“that animal”) and as dead, just as we regardanother entity as an animal which is alive. We would say, “I have a deadbutterfly in a box.” This seems to mean that we think something is both deadand a butterfly. If it is a butterfly, though, it is surely an animal. We would sayof a particular horse, “Red Rum died last night and is now available to beseen at the stable.” This also seems to imply that there is an animal called RedRum which is still there to be seen but also dead. We can say, “Red Rum isbeing cremated today,” where we treat an object as being both Red Rum and

7 Amongst such philosophers are Michael Ayers, David Mackie, and Fred Feldman.8 It strikes me that the cryogenic project seems odd to people because the technology of

resuscitation is hardly one about which we are confident. It is not immediately felt that freezingis necessarily equivalent to ceasing to exist.


obviously dead, since it is about to be burnt. In the way we speak, then, weclearly seem to regard being dead as something a previously alive entity canbe. We might say, “I saw Red Rum but only after he died,” and “I helped tomove Red Rum after he died.” These examples, many more of which couldbe given, seem to involve a commitment to the falsity of the Terminationthesis.

(ii) Although the thesis being discussed is a thesis about animals anddeath, it is relevant to consider an obvious phenomenon about humangrieving. I have in mind the way humans seem to regard the dead bodiesof those they have loved as being the loved one themselves. Thus, parentswho lose children to violent deaths want desperately to keep the child frombeing buried or cremated so that they can still see their child. The emotion hereseems to rest on the conviction that the dead entity is their child whom theyare still seeing and cannot come to terms with no longer seeing.9 Now itmight be said that it begs the question to cite this as evidence about ourattitude toward animals and death. In response, we can say two things.First, it is very hard to think we can allow that persons, or ourselves, remainin existence when dead (and not, as it were, existing in another domain),whereas we do not think the same about animals. I think it is undeniablethat people do have such feelings in this kind of situation. Although strongemotions can skew our language and our thought, it is not clear that it doesso here. Second, the same attachment to seeing the animal although it isdead can be observed in people whose pets have died. It is an attitude thatapplies to our engagement with animals.

(iii) A difficulty for the Termination Thesis is that it does not seem to fitour thinking in analogous cases. I have in mind the way we think aboutplants. We draw the living/dead distinction with plants. Thus we wouldcount a particular rose as dead and another one as alive, but we seem toshow no inclination to hold that the rose no longer exists once dead. Weeven have, and talk of, pressed roses. We would talk of where the rose inquestion had grown, when it had been picked, how it is still pretty, etc.Now, surely, it is remarkably odd if that is our attitude toward plants butnot toward animals.

(iv) It does not seem that the predicate ‘x is dead’ behaves like a predicatethat implies that the thing to which it applies does not exist. In the first place,‘x is alive’ and ‘x is dead’ do not seem to be what we call attributive adjectives.

9 This attitude came across very strongly in the TV reporting at the time of the extremelymoving burials of the children killed in the school siege at Beslan. It is, also, surely obvious thatmany people have the same attitude to ordinary animals. Thus, pet lovers are reluctant to burythem because they desire to still see them (even though they are dead).

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Rather, we can scrutinize an object and either affirm that it is alive or that itis dead (or, of course, neither). Whether it is alive or dead is not relative to atype. Further, we seem quite prepared to co-ascribe both being dead and lotsof other properties that seem to imply existence. We can say, “That animal isdead and I shall eat it/throw it in the river/photograph it.” If I am doingthese things to it presumably it exists. We can also say, “Please make sure thespecimen is dead before bringing it to us.” Here, again, we seem to regard anexistent movable object as dead. There is, it appears, no general entailmentfrom ‘x is dead’ to ‘x does not exist’.

(v) There are logical complexities with the use of ‘dead’. We might saythat Elizabeth I has been dead for 400 years. Now this seems to mean it istrue to say that Elizabeth I is dead (now). We do not, though, want to saythat Elizabeth I exists now, since surely nothing remains of her. So, ‘x isdead’ does not imply that ‘x does not exist’, but neither does it imply that‘x does exist’. In this it is like the predicate ‘x is famous’, which present-tensedly applies to some things which do exist (for example, some famoussportsmen) and also applies to some things which do not exist (say, somelong-dead politician).

To these arguments some will wish to add the following objection to theTermination Thesis. If an animal ceases to exist when it dies, then there issurely something that was there before death which does not cease to exist,namely the body of the animal. Since it was there before occupying the samespace as the animal, the Termination Thesis’ doctrine is committed to thepossibility of co-incidence. There is, however, no such possibility. That is notan argument upon which I am relying. One reply, devised by Olson, is thatthere is no such entity as the body of the animal which exists both beforedeath and afterward. So there is no commitment to the possibility ofco-incidence. This response would need overturning if the objection pre-sented is to stick. However, my general attitude is that it is a mistake to appealin arguments about animalism to very general metaphysical claims, such asthe impossibility of co-incidence. The reason is that there is massive contro-versy about such metaphysical claims, and it cannot be said that the argu-ments offered in support of them are conclusive. As a general policy it seemsbetter to me to eschew reliance on such claims.

I have so far tried to make a case for thinking that an entity can exist andbe dead. It seems, also, that the entity which is dead is the thing that was alive.Further, we also classify it as being a certain sort of entity, say a type ofanimal.

Can, though, something be said for the other point of view? There iscertainly a case to be made, and I shall outline it as best I can, but shall alsocomment on the strength of the reasons as I outline them.


(vi) It needs registering immediately that the proposition that an animalceases to exist at death seems to many people a fairly obviously true one. Theywould describe it as an intuitively plausible one. It seemed to me, for a longtime, to have that status. We should not ignore this fact, but in my own casethis appearance of truth was weakened by noticing (or so I think) that thereare many other things I also find equally obvious and which seem to imply theopposite view. (The above arguments articulate some of these claims.) Forme, this weakens the idea that the Termination Thesis is intuitively moreattractive than its denial.

(vii) If an animal remains in existence when it dies, then it seems to followthat death is a rather considerable change in an object. This, however, seemsa comic and hence unacceptable consequence. Consider what our reactionwould be to someone who said, “I am afraid my uncle has rather changedsince you last saw him; he’s dead.” Such a remark is so incongruous as to behumorous. This remark certainly is incongruous, but it is not clear that thatis because it is contradictory. It seems equally plausible to assign its incon-gruity to the first part of the remark being in the circumstances a ratherextreme understatement.10 Anyone who based the statement that someonehas changed on the knowledge that he or she was dead could be accused offailing to say something which would so relevant that it should have beensaid.

(viii) A line of argument that has seemed plausible to many rests on twopremises. They are: (1) our concepts of animals, such as a dog or a cat,represent a subject matter for laws and explanatory generalizations. (2) Ifwe allow that after death we still have the same animal, then there will beno (or very few) laws centered on such entities, because the onset of deathfundamentally alters the nature of the entity. In many respects all deadanimals are pretty much alike and not much different from things that havealways been inanimate. The conclusion is that it is in some way builtinto the point of such animal concepts that they can only apply to livingentities.

Now, premise (2) seems correct. The question is whether premise (1) iscorrect in a strong enough sense to generate the intended conclusion. Thealternative view is that our animal categories do, and are supposed to,provide subjects for generalizations and laws, along many dimensions, ana-tomical, developmental, behavioral, physical, etc., but such generalizationsare understood as being restricted to living cases. Is there anything in thisidea of an implicit restriction that is somehow alien to our employment of

10 There are jokes the other way too. Think of the absurdity of the following dialogue. “Weare burying Uncle Fred tomorrow.” “Oh, how odd, I thought he was dead.”

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those categories? It can also be added that it is not quite true to say that allgeneralizations fail once death intervenes. Thus, the anatomy of deadanimals of a certain kind will resemble that of living cases especially if careis taken to preserve them. In fact, investigation of such cases is a source ofinformation about animal kinds, and in the description of such cases thereis no scruple about calling the investigated specimens animals of the rel-evant kind.

(ix) The rejection of the Termination Thesis faces or raises a problem. Ifan animal does not cease to exist at death, then when does it cease to exist?In the case of many animals, assuming they are there after death, theirhistory is one of gradual decay and disintegration. At what stage in thisprocess does the animal cease to exist? This is a significant question, butthere are two points to make in response. The first is that the TerminationThesis itself faces a similar question, though on a different time scale. Whenexactly does the life of an animal end? That notion, of life ceasing, is notcompletely precise. It is not therefore as if we have a completely preciseproposal versus another totally imprecise one. Second, if we are thinking interms of the existence of objects after the animal has died, even if it is notcounted as the animal, there is a question to be faced and somehow solvedas to what its conditions for existence are. Thus if we accept the Termina-tion Thesis, then after the animal’s death there will be an entity thought ofas a corpse or a body. Since there is such an entity we can ask even sup-porters of the Termination Thesis view when it ceases to exist. Presumably,there has to be some suitable answer. If so, it can be taken over as theanswer that someone denying the Termination Thesis can offer about theanimal itself.

These assessments conclude the initial and major part of my examinationof the Termination Thesis, arguing that on balance the considerations favorrejecting it. There is, however, a way of keeping the debate going which needsoutlining and assessing. There seems to me to be no easy way to deny thelinguistic data which is cited in arguments (i) to (v). It is hard not to concludethat it is true to say given the way we use the word ‘animal’, animals can existeven though they are dead. The comment might be made, though, that themetaphysical thesis represented by the Termination Thesis is not a straight-forwardly linguistic claim, suitable for refutation in virtue of claims about theuse of ‘animal’. It is, rather, a claim that there is significant category of entityto which the Termination Thesis applies. It is likely to be added that the word‘animal’ has a use in which it stands for that category, but it may also be, andperhaps this is what the linguistic data reveals, that ‘animal’ can also stand fora related category of entity to which the Termination Thesis does not apply.Now, conventional metaphysicians might have assumed that such a complex


linguistic state of affairs would not exist. They might, however, be prepared tocountenance this as a possibility in order to defend the metaphysical insightthey seem to themselves to have.

In support of this proposal we can give examples where languagebehaves in the way proposed. For example, a visitor to Madam Tussaud’smight well ask where David Beckham is. It is surely not the case that thisuse implies or indicates that the wax object there actually is, as we might say,the real David Beckham. In fact we clearly use language flexibly, and werely on the audience to latch on to the reference (or significance) of what weare trying to talk about by using a term which does not strictly apply, butwhich has a basic meaning that enables the audience to link it to theintended object or feature. In the Beckham example, the audience naturallyregards the word ‘Beckham’ as picking out the model of Beckham. Theidea, then, is that this is what is happening when we talk of a dead animalas ‘an animal’.

The contrast between the terms we use and the metaphysical categorieswe thereby express is, given the possibility of what we might call this sort ofcreative use of language, a genuine one. The metaphysical question is notsettled in a simple way by the language we use. However, it seems to methat the Termination Thesis remains unattractive in two main respects.First, the problems for it do not rest solely on our tendency to talk of “ananimal” being there post-mortem, but also on other aspects of our talk. Forexample, we give evidence, in our predicative practice, of thinking that theliving entity is the same thing as the dead thing. I might say, for example,“this (dead) butterfly was caught four days ago.” Second, there seems to beno strong evidence in favor of recognizing a type of entity that ceases toexist at its death. A third point is that one should postulate such an ambi-guity (or usage) as is being advocated with the term ‘animal’ only if there isstrong evidence for it, which, as far as I can see, does not exist. Finally,although metaphysics cannot be read straight off of language, metaphysicstends to start with language. Thus, people argue for the possibility of coin-cidence because we say such things as “the statue has been destroyed butthe lump remains.” Reflection on such a remark grounds the postulation ofcoincidence. But the type of proposal being made above could be appliedhere. It might be suggested that ‘has been destroyed’ has an extendedsignificance here and so coincidence is not an implication of what issaid. Once the looseness of relation between language and metaphysicsis granted, the task of the defending metaphysical claims becomesharder. This indicates that we should be rather cautious about invokinglinguistic flexibility. On balance, then, the Termination Thesis seemsincorrect.

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Where does this conclusion get us? First, although the Thesis seems incor-rect to me, I do not think it matters a great deal for the assessment ofanimalism whether it is or not. If animals can survive after death, thenanimalism implies that so can we, but that implication hardly runs counter toanything we might feel we know about ourselves. I have pursued the issue,rather, because it strikes me as interesting in itself.

We might say that the arguments presented in this section support theidea of existence (but not life) after death!11 If true, that cannot, as I havejust suggested, generate a problem for animalism. It does, however, gener-ate a problem for some well-known attempts to analyze the persistenceconditions of animals in terms of life. For example, Wiggins (2001) takes ashis basic notion in the account of animal identity that of principles of activ-ity that animals instantiate. He does not make it entirely clear what ismeant by activity, but it is natural to understand it as features that involvelife. If animals can exist without life, it cannot be right to suppose thatprinciples to do with aspects of life are the sole things needed to elucidateanimal persistence. The same problem arises for Olson’s (2002) account ofanimal persistence. Its central conceptual tool is the idea of what is essentialto sustain life. Again, that is on the wrong tracks if there is existence afterdeath.

Third, although it may be that animals can exist without being alive, thatdoes not mean in saying what an animal is we should not mention life. Onthe contrary, it is obvious that an animal is caused to exist by living things,and, as we might say, the processes of animal creation have gone wrong ifthe product is not alive in its earliest stages. We might even say thatany animal produced by these processes must be alive during its earlieststages. In saying what animals are, the idea of life has to be introduced,but that does not commit us to regarding life as necessary for continuedexistence.

4. CONCLUSION

Reflections on the significance of animalism lead us to recognize the impor-tance in adjudicating debates about it of tracing animals in imagined sce-narios. We do not need a theory of animal persistence to trust at least someof our judgments of this sort. However, there has been a tendency to proposetheories of animal persistence that assume life is a necessary condition foranimal persistence. I have suggested both that animalists are not committed

11 I would like to think Arthur Schipper for this amusing way of speaking and for otherpoints about this topic.


to this, per se, and, moreover, that it is probably a mistake. Sadly I have, hereand now, no better theory (or proto-theory) to put in the place of the onesI am rejecting.12

REFERENCES

Blatti, S. 2012. A new argument for animalism. Analysis 72: 685–90.Olson, E. 2002. The human animal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Wiggins, D. 2001. Sameness and Substance Renewed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12 I would like to thank the participants in the Spindel Conference for very helpful com-ments on my talk there, which I have not been able to properly engage with, and also for thestimulating general discussions of animals and animalism. In particular, I wish to thank StephanBlatti, both for the invitation to attend, for his excellent organization and for the many pointshe made, and also John Dupré, Carl Gillett, Steve Luper, and Eric Olson.

184 PAUL SNOWDON

Documents

Animalism and the Lives of Human Animals