Persons and Substances

SCOTT CAMPBELL

PERSONS AND SUBSTANCES

(Received 1 September 2000)

ABSTRACT. I have argued elsewhere that the psychological criterion of personalidentity entails that a person is not an object, but a series of psychologicalevents. As this is somewhat counter-intuitive, I consider whether the psycholo-gical theorist can argue that a person, while not a substance, exists in a waythat is akin to the way that substances exist. I develop ten criteria that such aquasi-substance should meet, and I argue that a reasonable case can be madeto show that the psychological theorists conception of a person meets thesecriteria.

1. THE SERIES CONCEPTION OF A PERSON

Those who accept the neo-Lockean psychological criterion ortheory of personal identity such as Derek Parfit (1986), SydneyShoemaker (1984) and John Perry (1976) have mainly beenconcerned with the issue of personal identity over time, that is, thequestion of what makes A at t1 the same person as B at t2, and havesaid little about the equally important issues of what a person is, andwhat relation holds between a person and a human.

I have argued elsewhere that the psychological (P) theoristmust accept a series or process conception of a person.1 On thisconception, a person is not identical not even contingently to ahuman body, or a brain, or any physical object.2 A person is rathera series of psychological states and events (or properties or modesat times). These states and events are physical states and events, andin this regard a person is physical, but a person is not a physicalobject, any more than a laser printing process is itself a laser printer.A person is not, therefore, identical to a human body, but is a humanbody only in the loose sense that he or she is, as I put it, instantiatedin a human body. What this means is that the series of events andstates that a person is are events and states that occur in a humanbody.

Philosophical Studies 104: 253267, 2001. 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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We can draw an analogy here with a computer and the operationsit performs. The operations are instantiated on the computer, butwe can distinguish between the operations and the object that is thecomputer.3

2. SUBSTANCES AND QUASI-SUBSTANCES

Ordinarily, it could be argued, we take it that a person is an objector substance of some sort, and as a series of events is not an object,4the series conception of a person is therefore counter-intuitive.Moreover, Paul Snowdon has presented arguments which seem totell against the series conception of a person. What I will do in thispaper is argue that these difficulties can be defused. I will show thaton the series conception of a person, a person exists in a way thatis akin to the way a substance or object exists. I call any entity thatexists in this way a quasi-substance (or q-substance). The onlydifference between a quasi-substance and a substance will be that asubstance is a material object, whereas a q-substance is not.5

The question of what a q-substance is will not be a very clearmatter, but then it is not all that clear what a substance itself is. Inthis work I shall attempt to make clearer the notion of a q-substance,and show that a person, on the series theorists conception, is suchan entity.6

3. SNOWDONS OBJECTION TO THE P THEORY

Consider the following objection from Snowdon to the Lockeanconception of a person:

It is hard to believe that person as explained by Locke is an abiding sort; if itis not, then it does not mark out a basic sort of thing, the distinctive persistenceconditions of which we can trace. One reason this is hard to believe is that, asdefined, it appears very similar to lots of across-species functional classifica-tions which do not mark out abiding sorts, e.g. is a teacher, can play chessat grandmaster level, is a prodigious calculator. (1990, p. 90)

According to Snowdon, a teacher, considered purely as a teacher,is not an abiding sort of thing which exists in its own right, withits own distinctive conditions. Being a teacher, Snowdon points out,

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is rather a property or mode that a thing can have for a period. AsSnowdon says

if you concentrate on the functions alluded to in the definition, then there seemsno difficulty in supposing that a creature at one time capable of carrying them outshould itself lose that capacity. (1990, p. 90)

So if the P theory entails that being a person is like being ateacher, then a person will not be any sort of abiding thing withits own persistence conditions, and so will not be anything like asubstance.

4. DOES THE P THEORY ENTAIL THAT A PERSONIS LIKE A TEACHER?

Let us then take it that for an entity x, of sort K, to be a q-substance,it must meet at least the following conditions.

(1) x should have its own distinctive persistence conditions(ie. there should be distinctive persistence conditions forentities of sort K).

(2) xs identity must not be tied to the existence of anythingelse.

(3) K must be a concept that applies to x at every moment ofxs existence; x cannot cease to be a K without going outof existence.

Consider (2) first. As far as teachers go, the P theorist will agreethat the identity of a teacher is tied to the identity of something else.However, she will hold that this something else is the person, notthe human being. This can be shown as follows. Given that theP theory allows that a person can swap bodies (say, with a brainreading/writing device),7 then teachers can as well. For example,if it is possible to body-swap Mrs. McGillicuddy the teacher withKrankov the chess grandmaster, then the teacher and the grand-master have swapped bodies. So the teachers identity is tied to theperson, not the human body.

More importantly, though, this sort of case shows that (given theP theorists position) the persons identity is not tied to the humanbody, nor to anything else. Hence, (2) is satisfied by the P theory.

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What about (3)? Teachers obviously do not satisfy it: when Mrs.McGillicuddy retires from being a teacher, she still exists. Whatabout persons, though? Suppose Mrs. McGillicuddy has her brainrewired so that it instantiates another person. In this case, the Ptheorist holds that the person, Mrs. McGillicuddy the thing thatwas the teacher has gone out of existence, even though the bodyin question still exists. Once a person stops being a person, the thingthat was a person necessarily goes out of existence, according to theP theorist. She does not take the human body to be the thing that isthe person. The human body is only the person in a loose sense, asthe instantiator of the person. Thus, the P theory person satisfies(3).

As for (1), the P theorist will say that on her conception a persondoes have distinctive persistence conditions. The criteria for thepersistence of a person are relations of psychological connectednessand/or continuity, along with a non-branching condition.

5. UNIFYING CONDITIONS

Fulfilling conditions (1) to (3) will not be enough, though, to makeit plausible that a P theory person is a q-substance. We should alsoadd at least the following conditions:

(4) There must be some connections between the elements ofx that unify these elements into a whole, that is, into asingle entity.

(5) The boundaries between this entity and other entitiesmust be boundaries that exist in the world, regardless ofwhatever concepts anyone has.

(6) The connections between the elements of x must bereal, that is, they must exist in the world, regardless ofwhatever concepts anyone has.

(7) There must be a principled way of deciding whether xcontinues to exist or not; it cannot just depend on anarbitrary decision.

(4) is not entirely clear. After all, determining what counts as awhole or a single entity is part of what we are trying to determinehere. But (5), (6) and (7) can be taken as further specifications of


(4). However, these conditions are not that clear either, especially(5). What counts as real boundary, as opposed to a boundary that isinvented by someone?

We can at least give some examples to demonstrate what ismeant by (5) and (6). For example, if someone proposes that yconsists of a dog, a mountain in another country, and the moon,then y clearly is not a q-substance. There are no real connec-tions between the elements of y, nothing, that is, that binds themtogether into a unified entity. Strictly speaking, these elements arecausally connected, but only in the incredibly minuscule way that allphysical objects within a certain space-time region are connected.There are no robust connections between them. Moving the dog100 miles does not cause any significant correlative changes inthe mountain or the moon. The boundaries between y and otherthings, then, are not mind-independent boundaries that exist in theworld. They exist only in the mind of the person who has decidedwhere the boundaries of y lie. The boundaries between physicalobjects, on the other hand, exist in the world, regardless of whetheranyone has the concept of a physical object or not.8

Does a P theory person satisfy conditions (4) to (7)? It satisfies(5) and (6), as the connections between the elements of a person(ie. its temporal stages) are causal connections, and these are realconnections, and such connections do not hold between the elementsof a person and other things. But then, the temporal stages of aball rolling down a hill are causally connected, and are distinctfrom other things, but such a series of events cannot seriously beconsidered to be an entity in any way analogous to a substance.

What is really important, it seems, is (4), the demand that theelements of a purported q-substance are unified into a single entity.The balls rolling down a hill does not seem to have any sort ofunifying relation between its elements that would allow us to seri-ously consider it to be a single entity that exists in a way that isakin to the way a substance exists. The same is true of other typicalinstances of series of events, such as the playing of a piano, andWorld War II, They are not q-substances. So why should we supposethat a series of psychological events and states is a unified entity thatis substance-like? What does it have that unifies its elements into a

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real entity that the balls rolling does not have? (We will also needto consider (7), which I do below.)

6. SOFTWARE OPERATIONS AND Q-SUBSTANCES

In 6 to 9 I present an argument that supports the P theorists claimthat a person, on the P theory conception, satisfies (4) to (7), in theprocess explaining why only particular sorts of series of events canbe q-substances.

Suppose we have a calculator program called Calc. At t1 we runCalc, and we call this running X. At t2 we run a different programfor a while, on the same computer. At t3 we run Calc again, andwe call this second running of Calc Y. We then suppose that thereexists an entity J, that has X and Y as stages.9

Is J a q-substance? It seems not. J does not satisfy (7), as there isno principled way to decide whether another running of Calc countsas a part of J or not. What, though, if we said that all runnings ofCalc count as a part of J, and added a non-branching condition? Thisis still not enough, though, because there are no causal connectionsbetween the various runnings of Calc, and so condition (6) is notmet.

But suppose now that we are running a program, Birdsong,which is a program for learning about bird songs. This softwarestarts off making some basic discriminations between bird songs.As it does so, it stores the information it gains, and is able to modifyitself as it learns, so that it gets better at discriminating between birdsongs. This stored data and these modifications are used again thenext time Birdsong is run.

Suppose we take it that there is an entity L that consists of all therunnings of Birdsong that use the Birdsong program as it continu-ally modifies itself, and the stored data. L seems to be much moresubstance-like than J. There are real, causal connections between thesuccessive stages of L, and so (6) is satisfied. And (7), as unclear asit is, perhaps looks closer to being satisfied. There seems to be real,non-arbitrary criteria which determine whether another running ofBirdsong counts as another stage of L or not. For example, if wehad run L for a few months, but then lost the stored information andthe modified program, and we had to run the original, unmodifiedprogram again, then this would not be L.


7. IS SOFTY THE SOFTWARE-PERSON A Q-SUBSTANCE?

Suppose we run a sophisticated computer program called YourFriendly Software Buddy (YFSB), which creates a softwareperson. Because of randomizing elements in YFSB, and its sensi-tivity to its environment, every user of YFSB gets a very individualsoftware person. Suppose that we call the software person that wehave started running, Softy. Softy will develop memories, beliefsand intentions, or at least computer simulations of them.

Softy is, strictly speaking, not the computer we run Softy on,because we could run Softy on a different computer, and alsobecause the computer still exists even when we run a word processoron it, rather than Softy. We can only say that the computer is Softy ina loose sense, in that the computer is what runs or instantiates Softy(and we can only say this when it is running Softy). Nor is Softy thesame as the YFSB program, because other people run this programand get completely different software people.

Softy satisfies (6) because Softy has memories, intentions andbeliefs which connect earlier and later stages of Softy, even whenthere are temporal gaps between these stages. More importantly,though, the P theorist can submit that the fact that Softy hasmemories, beliefs and intentions that are causally interrelated iswhat makes it true that Softy satisfies (4), (5) and (7).

Softys distinctive persistence conditions are given in terms ofsuch states as memories, beliefs and intentions. These are states thatexist in the world. This is true regardless of whether anyone hasthese concepts or not.10 And the facts about under what circum-stances Softy exists and does not exist come down to facts about theconnections between Softys psychological states. These are alsofacts that are in the world. They are not set by anyone decidingarbitrarily when Softy starts and finishes. So (7) is satisfied. Thesame is true of the boundaries between Softy and other things. Softyis separated from other things by the lack of causal connectionsbetween him and these things. So (5) is satisfied.

But perhaps satisfying (5) and (7) (and (6)) is not that important.Even the rolling down the hill of a ball seems to satisfy (5), (6) and(7), if we affected to take this as an entity in itself. There are factsabout when a ball starts rolling down a hill, and facts about whenit stops rolling down a hill, and facts which make it true that other

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events are not part of this entity. And these are facts that are in theworld, independent of any concepts that anyone has.

8. PERSISTING STATES AND CAUSAL INTERWEAVING

In this regard, (4) (there must be some connections between theelements of x that unify these elements into a whole, that is, intoa single entity) becomes important. With the rolling of the ball,each event in the series is directly causally connected only to itsimmediate successor. The situation with Softy, though, is signifi-cantly different. Softy has states that last through time. For example,an intention that Softy forms at t1 can directly cause Softy tomake a decision at, say, t6. A belief that Softy gains at t2 candirectly cause Softy to think something at, say, t7. And so on. Thepersistence of these states provides causal connections between non-neighbouring stages of Softy, stages that may be widely separatedin time. These interweaving causal links bind Softy up into awhole. In this regard, Softy is utterly unlike the rolling of the balldown the hill. The rolling of the ball has no such persisting stateswhich will provide these sorts of links between its non-neighbouringstages.

An objector may claim here that a persisting state is really justa causally connected series of momentary events. Thus, at the basiclevel Softy will be no different to the rolling of the ball. In bothcases, there exists only a series of momentary events, each of whichis directly causally connected only to its immediate successor.

In reply to this, the P theorist can claim that we should not belooking at such a level. At this sort of fundamental level, thereexist no physical objects either, only particles. So we should allowthat Softy can have psychological states that persist through time.We can then say that Softys persisting states provide myriad inter-connections between his different stages at different times, whichgives this series of stages an enormously greater unity than occurswith the rolling down the hill of the ball.

(This is, in effect, what Parfits overlapping chains of strongconnectedness condition demands the persistence of states, atleast for a while. I claim that my considerations here provide theP theorist with a deeper explanation of why this is essential.)


Earlier elements in the Softy series can reach out across time,through persisting as a state, to causally affect later events. Thisis not true in the same way of the ball rolling down the hill. Theearlier events in this series, although they may be indirectly causallyresponsible for later events, do not reach out across time in thesame way to affect later events, because this series has no persistingstates like memories and intentions.

These links across time make it much more plausible to say thatSofty is a q-substance than J or L. If we got to know Softy over theyears, then I think that the claim that Softy is an entity in his ownright would seem a perfectly natural one. If we ceased to run Softy,and destroyed Softys modified program and stored data, then mostpeople would probably think that Softy had gone out of existence.11They would think that a distinct entity did exist, and now exists nomore. In thinking this, however, they would not be thinking in termsof an object like the computer. The computer that Softy ran on wouldstill exist, but Softy would not.

None of this is to say that Softy really is (or is not) a person.Many people would probably think that Softy is not a person, on thegrounds that computers cannot be conscious. Whether or not this isso, it is a different matter than denying that Softy is a person on thegrounds that Softy is only a series of events, rather than a substance.So whether or not Softy really is a person is not relevant to the issueof whether he is a q-substance.

If Softy is a q-substance, then P theory persons will be as well,because they also have such interconnected states, and thus they willhave the requisite unity over time to make them into a q-substance.

This explanation, then, goes some way towards showing that acertain type of series of events can constitute a q-substance. It alsoprovides an explanation of why other types of series of events donot count as q-substances. Only those series that contain forward-looking and backward-looking states like memories and intentionscan be bound into a whole by these states.

(This also perhaps provides a deeper explanation of why so manypeople have thought that psychological states like memory andintention are central to personal identity. It will also explain whymomentary person stages are not persons.)

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Does the P theory therefore entail that an organism that has nointentions cannot be a person, or any sort of subject? Yes. Consideran entity which has absolutely no intentions whatsoever, not eventhe simplest ones such as to eat, or to move, or to make any decisionat all, or to think about what just happened (and suppose that thisthing has never had, and never will have, and never could have had,any such intentions). The P theorist will claim that it is completelyimplausible to suppose that any person or subject exists here.

9. SHOEMAKERS FUNCTIONALISM AND HIS RELATIVELYAUTONOMOUS SELF-PERPETUATORS

Shoemaker has made some claims, on the basis of his functionalisttheory of mind, that may sound similar to this P theory position that Ihave sketched. He claims that psychological events are tied togetherinto a whole by their self-supporting nature, that is, by the fact thatpsychological events could not exist without there existing otherappropriate psychological events that they are causally connectedto, and that the person is this self-supporting whole (see, e.g., 1984).

This is not, however, the same as the P theory position that Ihave presented here. The P theory position that I have sketcheddoes not depend on psychological events only being psycholog-ical events because of their place in a causal network. I claim thatthis is an advantage of the P theory I present, for it allows that aseries of psychological events could constitute a q-substance even iffunctionalism is false, and even if psychological events could standalone.

Shoemaker has more recently made the claim that we shoulddistinguish between those entities, like persons, that are relativelyautonomous self-perpetuators and those that are not (1997). Whatcharacterizes the former is that its states at a time are causally deter-mined in part by its states at an earlier time. (Shoemaker calls thisimmanent causation, as opposed to transeunt causation, whichinvolves the action of one thing upon another.)

I do not think that Shoemaker spells this out enough, though.On his distinction, the rolling of the ball down the hill seems toqualify as a relatively autonomous self-perpetuator, but it is not aq-substance, or an entity of any sort in itself.


10. SHOEMAKERS SECOND SENSE OF SUBSTANCE

In connection with his claim about self-perpetuators, Shoemakeralso claims that a person can be considered to be a substance inan important sense. He says thatthere is a strand in the traditional conception of substance [which holds that][s]ubstances are ontologically independent in ways in which other entities arenot. What metaphysicians call modes and affections, and what all of us callstates, are entities whose existence is logically parasitic . . . or adjectival, on theentities of which they are modes, affections, or states; their existence just consistsin certain things being modified, affected or qualified in certain ways. Entities onwhich other entities are dependent in these ways, and which are not themselvesdependent in such ways on other entities, are individual substances. (1997, p. 287)

Shoemaker says that this is the subject of properties sense ofsubstance, rather than the parcel of stuff sense (1997, p. 284).

I take it that Shoemakers point here is similar in spirit to theclaim about q-substances that I am making on behalf of the P theory.We both allow that the P theory conception of a person will be muchmore plausible if (inter alia) it is the case that it is an ontologicallyindependent entity, whose identity is not tied to anything else, andwhich is itself a bearer of properties, properties whose identity istied to this entity, rather than to something else.

I suggest, then, that we add the following to our list of q-substance conditions:

(8) x must be capable of having states, events, modes and/orproperties.

(9) These states etc. can only exist if a K exists.(10) The identity of these states etc. is logically tied to x.

11. CAN A PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE SURVIVE FISSION?

(8) is obviously necessary, as persons have psychological states. Itake it that the P theorist should claim that what it is for a personto have a psychological state or event s1 at t1 is for there to exist aseries of psychological events and states, one of which is s1, whichoccurs at t1.12

What about (9) and (10)? Shoemaker seems to assume that iffunctionalism is true, then conditions such as (9) and (10) would be

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met. This is because on his functionalist view, psychological statescan only exist if they are embedded in the sort of causal networkthat constitutes a person. If so, this shows that (9) is satisfied. Buthaving distinguished (9) from (10), a distinction not always madeby functionalists, it is not so clear that functionalism makes it truethat a P theory person satisfies (10).13 The fact that a particularpsychological event e could not occur without there being a personwho has it does not entail that only this particular person could havehad e, which is what must be the case if (10) is to be satisfied by theseries conception of a person. And it may seem that certain fissioncases will show that this is not so.

Suppose A fissions into B and C at t1. A is neither B nor C insuch a case. Suppose that B and C are slightly qualitatively different.Suppose that (before t1) As belief that Mabel once lent Abel fivedollars was stored only in As left hemisphere, and that consequentlya belief with the same content is held by B, but not C. It seemsplausible to say that Bs belief which we can call q is the self-same belief that A had, which we can call p. The reason why thisseems plausible is because the brain state that p is identical to seemsto be the self-same brain state that q is identical to.

If this is so, then we have a case where a belief has outlived theperson who originally had it. Thus, its identity cannot be tied tothe person, and so a person will not satisfy (10), given the seriesconception.

The fatal flaw with this objection, though, is that it appliesequally well to the physical theories of personal identity. Take theview that a person is a brain. On this view, after the fission at t1,person A no longer exists, because A is not identical to B or C.But if, as the objector to the series view claimed, As belief p stillexists, then the brain theorists conception of a person will also failto satisfy (10). In that case, (10) can hardly be necessary for x to bea q-substance, if (10) is not necessary for x to be a substance, whichthe brain theorist will take a brain to be. Thus, the series conceptioncannot be any worse off than any other theory in regards to (10).


12. CAN A PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE SURVIVE TELEPORTATION?

I will argue that a plausible case can be made out to show that theseries conception of a person does, in fact, satisfy (10). Supposethat person A is teleported at t1. The person who steps out of thereceiving end of the teleporter we can call (following Parfit) Replica.According to the P theory, Replica is the same person as A. Moreimportantly, according to the P theory, if, just before t1, A had abelief p that Mabel once lent Abel five dollars, then Replica alsohas the self-same belief p. That is, Replicas belief is numericallyidentical to As belief; it is not just that the two beliefs have thesame content. And if A before t1 had an intention to start learningthe violin next week, then Replica, being A, also has that self-same,numerically identical intention.

So according to the P theory, any persisting psychological statethat A has just before t1 will also be had by Replica. Yet, the Ptheorist will point out, Replicas brain is a numerically distinct brainfrom the brain that A had before t1. Thus, the P theory entails thatthe identity of a psychological state is not tied to the brain (or anypart of the brain), because it can outlive the brain (and any part of thebrain), and it can swap from brain to brain. It is tied to the person.

So it is not the case that in the fission example above, As beliefp survives as Bs belief q, even though the same brain state that Ahad continues to exist in B. The persistence of this brain state is notreason enough in itself to suppose that the same psychological statehas continued to exist. One must also take into account whether thesame person exists or not. As the same person does not exist, thesame belief does not either.

The P theorist can therefore hold that the teleportation argumentprovides good support for the claim that the P theory satisfies (10).

13. CONCLUSION

I have argued that the series conception of a person, which I claimthe P theorist should accept, satisfies conditions (1) to (10), and thusis a q-substance. (I also argue that if the fission argument works,then neither the P theory nor the physical theory will satisfy (10),and that (10) therefore cannot be necessary for anything to be a q-

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substance.) Hence, I claim that a plausible case has been made out toshow that on this P theory conception a person exists in a way that isakin to the way that an object or substance exists. Such a q-substanceis not a parcel of stuff, but it is an independently existing entity,and a bearer of properties, whose identity are tied to this entity. TheP theorist can argue that it is the latter that is demanded by our intu-itions, not the former. These intuitions do not demand that a personis also a parcel of stuff. At least, if the physical theorist wants toclaim that they do, then the physical theorist will have to presentan argument to show that this is so. The arguments that physicaltheorists have presented so far in the literature do not show this; themost that they show is that a person is a substance in the sense ofbeing an independently existing entity and a bearer of properties,and a q-substance is such an entity.

Thus, I have shown in this paper that the P theory can with-stand what might have seemed to be a strong objection to it, andconsequently the plausibility of the P theory is greatly increased.

NOTES

1The Psychological Theory and the Human-Person Relation, forthcoming.

2 It might seem that the series view is the view that David Lewis holds, but thisis not so. Lewis agrees that a person is a unified series of stages, but he holds thatthese are bodily stages, rather than psychological events. In fact, Lewis holds thata person who exists at t1 is identical to a body at t1. He also holds, though, thatidentity is relative to times, and that a person can be identical to one body at t1,and another body at t2 (1971). I do not accept this view of identity, but I cannotargue that here.3 I am distinguishing the software operations from the program, ie. the set ofstored instructions. (My analogy, by the way, is intended to be a very abstractone; it does not assume, for example, any computational model of the mind.)4 If four-dimensionalism is true of objects, then the force of this difficulty isperhaps reduced. However, most four-dimensionalists will still draw a distinctionbetween those series of events that are objects, and those, like a laser printingprocess, that are not.5 In fact, it could be argued that a substance need not be a physical object. If so,what I take to be q-substances will be genuine substances. But I will assume inthis paper that a substance must be a material object.6 Another conception of a person that some P theorists might accept is that aperson is a physical object, but a separate object from the body, just as somephilosophers take a statue to be an object, but an object distinct from the lump of


clay. Unlike the series view, this view allows a person to be an object. However,I have argued (op. cit.) that this conception of a person is untenable.7 The non-P theorist will deny that persons can swap bodies, but that is besidethe point. The issue we are concerned with is whether the P theory allows a personto be a q-substance, so the P theorist is not begging the question here.8 Some philosophers would not agree with such claims about mind-independent boundaries, but I cannot discuss this issue here.9 We need to keep in mind the distinction between J, a series of software opera-tions, and Calc, a program (ie. a set of stored instructions).10 Some philosophers might disagree with this, but I accept that it is true.11 Softy is not the program (YFSB) and the stored data, not even the program asit has self-modified over the years. He is the running of the program.12 Some might object here that we take it that we have states in the way that anobject has states, and the series view cannot do justice to this intuition. I agreethat the series view is counter-intuitive in this respect. I have argued elsewhere(op. cit.) that the P theorist must show that this deficit is outweighed by the otheradvantages of the P theory.13 And, having distinguished (9) from (10), it seems to me that (9) is irrelevantand unreasonable. Many types of substances have modes and properties thatcan also be had by different types of substances, so we should not demand thatq-substances need to satisfy (9).

REFERENCES

Lewis, D. (1971): Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies, Journal ofPhilosophy 68, 1326.

Parfit, D. (1986): Reasons and Persons, 2nd edn., Oxford: Clarendon Press.Perry, J. (1976): The Importance of Being Identical, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), The

Identities of Persons, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 6790.Shoemaker, S. (1984): Personal Identity: A Materialists Account, in S. Shoe-

maker and R. Swinburne (eds.), Personal Identity, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 69132.

Shoemaker, S. (1997): Self and Substance, in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosoph-ical Perspectives 11: Mind, Causation and World, Boston/Oxford: Blackwell,pp. 288289.

Snowdon, P. (1990): Persons, Animals and Ourselves, in C. Gill (ed.), ThePerson and The Human Mind, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 83107.

Department of PhilosophyUniversity of NottinghamUniversity ParkNottingham NG7 2RD U.K.E-mail: [email protected]

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Persons and Substances