Olson on Human Animal

2023-2 Metaphysics of the Self Segment 2 (E. Olson, ch.1 and 6 of Human Animal)

 

9. According to Olson, what would happen to us if we were to find ourselves in a persistent vegetative state? And what would happen to us in the cerebrum transplant case? How would the proponent of the Psychological Approach respond to the two cases? 

A persistent vegetative state is a situation where my brain is damaged and thereby my higher mental functions are irretrievably lost without losing functions such as respiration, circulation, digestion, and metabolism. Olson claims that humans in such situations are a “human animal,” in that they are as same as ordinary humans and just lack a mind (i.e., all cognitive functions).

The cerebrum transplant case is like the persistent vegetative state case. It is a situation where my cerebrum is removed from my head and implanted into another head. The resulting person would be as psychologically same as me (memory, intention, and personality), but physically very different from me. In my remaining body is also a human animal.

Olson points out that we are, in one central respect, a human animal; the matter is whether our life-sustaining functions still work, and whether our biological life still subsists. Therefore, Olson claims that what it takes for us to persist through time is biological continuity. According to this criterion, humans in the cerebrum transplant case and the persistent vegetative state case are still maintain their identity.

On the contrary, the proponents of Psychological Approach will respond that the human animals in both cases do not maintain their personal identity and original person has just died. Especially, they will argue that in the cerebrum transplant case, the resulting person who is transplanted my cerebrum is me because that person satisfies the psychological criterion.

 

10. State Olson’s Biological Criterion of Personal identity. What do you take to be the biggest difficulty for this criterion?

According to the Biological Approach, personal identity is as fundamentally same as the identity of human living organisms, which have a lot of functions (metabolism, teleology, organized complexity) to sustain their life. Therefore, the biological criterion of personal identity is that a past or future being is me just in case it has my biological life, i.e., it has a continuity of vital functions to sustain living organisms.

One of the challenges concerning this criterion is that it leads to counterintuitive conclusions when applied to cases of brain transplantation. Take, for example, a scenario where A’s cerebrum is transplanted into B’s body (B was in a persistent vegetative state). Who is the person that wakes up after the transplantation surgery? Intuitively, we may conclude that it will be A. On the contrary, Olson would claim that the person who wakes up is B, which contradicts our common intuitions.