brains, neuroscience, and animalism: on the implications of thinking brains

12
BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM: ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF THINKING BRAINS Carl Gillett ABSTRACT: The neuroscience revolution has led many scientists to posit “expansive” or “thinking” brains that instantiate rich psychological properties. As a result, some scientists now even claim you are identical to such a brain. However, Eric Olson has offered new arguments that thinking brains cannot exist due to their intuitively “abominable” implications. After situating the commitment to thinking brains in the wider scientific discussions in which they are posited, I then critically assess Olson’s arguments against such entities. Although highlighting an important insight, I show that Olson’s objections to the existence of thinking brains fail and that a wider discussion engaging our new empirical findings is actually required in order to resolve the deeper issues. The wider intellectual landscape is marked by resurgent debates over “human nature,” and it is also alive with what is now disparagingly termed “neuromania” in explorations of the neurosciences and their findings (Rose and Abi-Rached 2013). Linked to these developments are the increasing cases in which we find neuroscientists, and others, defending what I term the “Expansive Brain view”—namely, the position that we are identical to what I term “expansive” or “thinking” brains that can or do instantiate “rich psycho- logical properties,” such as remembering breakfast or fearing skin cancer, etc. 1 Interestingly, philosophical debates about what we are have been almost completely insulated from the waves of findings from the neurosciences and cannot be accused of falling into neuromania—far from it. Virtually no Carl Gillett is Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. His research areas are the philosophy of mind/psychology, the philosophy of science, and metaphysics. His book Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. 1 See Gazzaniga 2005, 31 and Panksepp and Biven 2012, for a couple of examples. Vidal (2009) offers a review of such claims of “brainhood.” I use the term ‘expansive’ brain to refer to brains which are taken to instantiate an expanded range of properties, including rich psychology. The Southern Journal of Philosophy Volume 52, Spindel Supplement 2014 The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 52, Spindel Supplement (2014), 41–52. ISSN 0038-4283, online ISSN 2041-6962. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12071 41

Upload: carl

Post on 29-Mar-2017

218 views

Category:

Documents


5 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM: ON THEIMPLICATIONS OF THINKING BRAINS

Carl Gillett

ABSTRACT: The neuroscience revolution has led many scientists to posit “expansive” or“thinking” brains that instantiate rich psychological properties. As a result, somescientists now even claim you are identical to such a brain. However, Eric Olson hasoffered new arguments that thinking brains cannot exist due to their intuitively“abominable” implications. After situating the commitment to thinking brains in thewider scientific discussions in which they are posited, I then critically assess Olson’sarguments against such entities. Although highlighting an important insight, I showthat Olson’s objections to the existence of thinking brains fail and that a widerdiscussion engaging our new empirical findings is actually required in order to resolvethe deeper issues.

The wider intellectual landscape is marked by resurgent debates over “humannature,” and it is also alive with what is now disparagingly termed“neuromania” in explorations of the neurosciences and their findings (Roseand Abi-Rached 2013). Linked to these developments are the increasing casesin which we find neuroscientists, and others, defending what I term the“Expansive Brain view”—namely, the position that we are identical to what Iterm “expansive” or “thinking” brains that can or do instantiate “rich psycho-logical properties,” such as remembering breakfast or fearing skin cancer, etc.1

Interestingly, philosophical debates about what we are have been almostcompletely insulated from the waves of findings from the neurosciences andcannot be accused of falling into neuromania—far from it. Virtually no

Carl Gillett is Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. His research areas arethe philosophy of mind/psychology, the philosophy of science, and metaphysics. His bookReduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

1 See Gazzaniga 2005, 31 and Panksepp and Biven 2012, for a couple of examples. Vidal(2009) offers a review of such claims of “brainhood.” I use the term ‘expansive’ brain to refer tobrains which are taken to instantiate an expanded range of properties, including rich psychology.

The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 52, Spindel Supplement2014

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 52, Spindel Supplement (2014), 41–52.ISSN 0038-4283, online ISSN 2041-6962. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12071

41

Page 2: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

philosophers hold the view that what you are is a brain.2 And of the fewcomments on such views in philosophical debates, we find Mark Johnston(2007) curtly dismissing them as “absurd” and Eric Olson (forthcoming)terming them a “desperate ploy.”3 This situation may result from the meth-odology in the philosophical discussions that are still largely based on themethod of cases. Two views consequently dominate in philosophy. On oneside, there are animalist accounts, which take us to be identical to Homo sapiensorganisms, and, on the other side, there are neo-Lockean views that in theirmost popular form take us to be psychological individuals that are constitutedby, but not identical to, animals.4

Despite his strong stance on the inadequacies of brain views, Olson’s paperhighlights how he has recently developed a number of new arguments aboutwhy we should reject thinking/expansive brains.5 Given the recent focus ofthe neurosciences, and the wider interest in the “Expansive Brain” view, inmy comments I want to critically assess Olson’s arguments about thinkingbrains, which I lay out in Part 1, by placing them within the wider context ofempirical work, and views of what we are, coming out of the neurosciences.6

1. ANIMALIST ARGUMENTS AGAINST THINKING BRAINS:OLSON’S NEW OBJECTIONS

Animalists, like Peter Hacker, have long argued that by accepting thinkingbrains neuroscientists are committing a “mereological fallacy” because theirpractices conflict with everyday practices of ascribing rich psychological

2 Campbell and McMahan (2010), Olson’s primary target in his paper, is one of the rareexceptions in defending a brain view.

3 Olson (2007) does have a chapter engaging brain views but also notes that virtually nophilosophers hold such views. However, Olson does not venture beyond philosophy to thedisciplines where writers have defended the brain view.

4 Prominent defenders of Animalism include Snowdon (1990), Van Inwagen (1990), andOlson (1997), whilst the most prominent recent neo-Lockean views are the Psychology-Plus-Constitution views of Sydney Shoemaker (2009; 2011) and Lynne Baker (2000) which take usto be psychological individuals that are constituted by animals.

5 The arguments against thinking brains were prominent in the paper (Olson, manuscript)that I was given to comment on at the Spindel Conference, but these passages have subse-quently been removed by Olson from the published version of the paper (Olson 2014a). Itherefore quote the relevant passages below in Part 1 and the reader can find the samearguments published in Olson 2014b which I note below.

6 Let me note a few assumptions I make throughout my discussion. Whenever I talk of“thinking,” or “mental” properties, I mean rich psychological properties. I also assume thecausal theory of properties (Shoemaker 1980) and hence take a property or relation instance tobe instantiated in an individual when the instance contributes powers to that individual.Whenever I discuss an individual thinking, or having the property of remembering, and so on,I mean an individual instantiating a rich psychological property understood in these ways.

42 CARL GILLETT

Page 3: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

properties.7 However, the deeper assumptions of such critiques have beentellingly criticized.8 It is therefore a happy development for animalists thatOlson offers three different reasons to reject expansive, or what he terms“thinking,” brains.

Olson’s first objection is what I will call the “Metaphysical ImpossibilityArgument.”9 It focuses on the fact that within the space occupied by yourbody it is implausible there are two sets of the same rich psychologicalproperties instantiated by distinct individuals. Thus, since Homo sapiens brainsand animals are not identical, if brains have rich psychological properties,then the organism of which they are a part will not have rich psychologicalproperties. But Olson further argues that:

. . . if a normal human organism has no mental properties, that can only be becauseit is impossible for any living organism to have mental properties. (No one would saysome organisms can be conscious—giraffes, say—but not human organisms.) Noorganism could ever think or be conscious, and no thinking or conscious being couldever be an organism (except in the derivative sense in which an immaterial substancecan “be” an organism). (Olson, manuscript, 13)

The first “abominable” implication is that if we accept there are expansivebrains, then we must accept that it is metaphysically impossible for animals tohave rich psychological properties.

Olson also offers what I term the “Separation Argument.”10 For Olson tellsus that if there are expansive brains, then organisms will not have mentalproperties. But, Olson continues, if there are expansive brains then:

. . . since all living things (living in the biological sense) are organisms, it follows thatit is impossible for any living thing to have mental properties. Mind and life—life inthe biological sense—are metaphysically incompatible. (Olson, manuscript, 4)

The second “abominable” implication is thus that if expansive brains exist,then no living individual has mental properties, and we have a separationbetween, as Olson puts it, “mind and life.”

Lastly, Olson follows up with an argument about substances I will term the“Duality of Substances Argument.”11 Olson tells us that thinking brains entail:

Mind and life—life in the biological sense—are metaphysically incompatible. This isa sort of substance dualism: it means that what appears to be a single conscious,living being is in reality two beings, one conscious but nonliving and one living but

7 Bennett and Hacker 2003.8 See the papers by Dennett and Searle in Bennett et al. 2009 and also Churchland 2005.9 This argument is also found in Olson 2014b, 34–35.10 This argument is also found in Olson 2014b, 34.11 This argument is also found in Olson 2014b, 35 and 45.

BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM 43

Page 4: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

unconscious. It is not quite Cartesian dualism—the view that thinking or consciousbeings are wholly immaterial and material things are incapable of thought orconsciousness. It allows that thinking beings might be material things. It denies onlythat they can be alive. It is a dualism not of mind and matter, but of mind and life.. . . (Olson, manuscript, 13)

Thus the Duality of Substances Argument concludes that if expansive brainsexist, then we would have an “abominable” duality of distinct thinking andliving substances.

Olson’s arguments against thinking brains are novel, bold, and interesting.One immediate question we need to raise about these arguments is why theintuitively “abominable” implications of thinking brains is supposed to be agood reason to reject their existence? However, let me put this question to oneside until after we have better articulated why researchers in wider debateshave begun to posit expansive brains.

2. EXPANSIVE BRAINS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND THEDIRE IMPLICATIONS FOR ANIMALISM

It is striking that in philosophy, as Olson (2007) notes, there have been almostno defenders of brain theories of what we are, and the few that do exist haveused the method of cases. So we have a couple of big questions: Are theneuroscientific or philosophical debates closer to the truth about what we are?And how do we resolve their differences? Those are indeed very big issues,but I contend that at least some help is at hand.

In his seminal 2007 book, Olson himself persuasively presses the point thatwe take each other to be the individual in the chair that has rich psychologicalproperties and hence accept what I term the “Thinker Thesis”:

You are identical to the individual in your chair that instantiates the rich psycho-logical properties of remembering breakfast, fearing skin cancer, etc.

And the Thinker Thesis is important, since almost all parties to the philo-sophical debates, and I think still wider discussions, endorse the ThinkerThesis which says nothing about whether we have a rich psychologicalelement to our nature accidentally or essentially.12 Consequently, once werecognize our acceptance of the Thinker Thesis, if we determine whichkind of individual in your chair instantiates rich psychological properties,then we plausibly find out what you are. Debates about personal ontology, in

12 Eliminative materialists, like Churchland (1981), or writers who deny we are individuals,like Metzinger (2003, 2010), are exceptions, but otherwise there is striking convergence on theThinker Thesis.

44 CARL GILLETT

Page 5: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

philosophy and more broadly, thus come down to the issue of what I term“psychological ontology,” which concerns the individual instantiating richpsychological properties.

This is timely, for in cognitive and affective neuroscience, as well as acrossother areas of the neurosciences and cognitive science, you now find accountsof rich psychological properties. Episodic memory (Tulving 2002) provides anice example, but so too does work on a range of other rich psychologicalproperties such as, for instance, Jaak Panksepp’s work on various core emo-tions.13 Furthermore, such hypotheses routinely take rich psychological prop-erties to have characteristic productive roles. Thus, rich psychologicalproperties are taken to be produced by stimulations of the sensory organs andto produce stimulations of the muscles as well as other physiological effects,along with being produced by, and producing, various other rich psychologi-cal properties of the same individual.14 The important points about suchneuroscientific hypotheses for my illustrative purposes here are, first, simplythat scientific work now posits rich psychological properties, and, second, thatthese hypotheses in the neurosciences take rich psychological properties tohave such characteristic productive roles.

The latter point is especially significant given a feature of compositionallevels in the sciences. For, as philosophers of science have noted, composi-tional levels of individuals within the same compositional hierarchy are pro-ductively closed; thus, individuals only productively interact with otherindividuals at the same levels.15 Parts and wholes within a compositionalhierarchy therefore do not productively interact. Consequently, we canprovide a reason why brains are taken to instantiate rich psychological prop-erties in the sciences, rather than organisms.

Sensory organs like eyes, as well as muscles, are each parts of animals andhence do not productively interact with them, though they do interact pro-ductively with the brain. We can also outline reasons why brain areas and/orneuronal populations do not instantiate such rich psychological properties.The sciences thus posit rich psychological properties with characteristic pro-ductive roles played below the level of the organism but above the level of brain

13 See Panksepp 1998 and Panksepp and Biven 2012 for surveys of Panksepp’s work on thecore emotions. For wider surveys, see Purves 2007 or Gazzaniga et al. 2008 for textbooktreatments of our accounts of various rich psychological properties.

14 Rich psychological properties are thus taken to be distinctive in obeying the “Many toHave Any” rule—that is, like many kinds of biological properties, an individual must have manyrich psychological properties to have any. Consequently, though some researchers do ascriberich psychological properties to brain areas or neural populations, the Many to Have Any rulesuggests such writers are only charitably taken to ascribe simpler psychological properties thatrealize rich psychological properties, rather than rich psychological properties themselves.

15 Wimsatt 2007 and Craver and Bechtel 2007.

BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM 45

Page 6: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

areas and/or neural populations, at what we might term the organ level. Wecan more formally, though roughly, frame this type of reasoning in what Iterm the “Crude Argument from Scientific Roles” as follows:

(1) Rich psychological properties, like remembering breakfast, believingsnow is white, etc., are individuated, in part, by (a) being produced,under certain conditions, by stimulations of the sensory organs, such aseyes, (b) producing, and/or being produced by, under certain condi-tions and often in combination with other rich psychological proper-ties, other rich psychological properties in the same individual, and(c) producing, under certain conditions and often in combination withother rich psychological properties of the same individual, certainkinds of muscle stimulation or other physiological effects; and weshould take a unique individual in our chair that satisfies (a), (b), and (c)to instantiate rich psychological properties (Scientific View of Produc-tive Roles).

(2) The brain is the only individual located in your chair that satisfies(a) by being productively affected by stimulations of the visualorgans, satisfies (b) by having complex constituents whose productiveinteractions can implement the productive interactions betweenmany rich psychological properties, with their distinctive roles, andthat thus has constituents whose properties can realize manyrich psychological properties in it, and also satisfies (c) by havingproperties that produce muscle stimulations and other physiologicaleffects.

From (1) and (2):

(3) We should take the brain located in your chair to be the individual thatinstantiates rich psychological properties like remembering breakfast,believing snow is white, etc.

This type of argument highlights why working neuroscientists are notblithely falling into a mereological fallacy, pace Bennett and Hacker.Instead, working scientists are committed to a rich, explanatorily successfulset of hypotheses about rich psychological properties supported by multiplelines of evidence. And, one of the implications of this explanatory frame-work, as the Crude Argument highlights, is that brains instantiate rich psy-chological properties, rather than the animals of which these brains areparts.

The results of the neuroscience revolution thus plausibly supports a novelposition about the foundations of neuroscience, apparently endorsed by

46 CARL GILLETT

Page 7: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

neuroscientists like Tulving, Panksepp, Gazzaniga, and others, that I term“Expansive materialism” given its expansion of our view of the propertiesof brains to include rich psychological properties. Expansive materialismcontrasts with the “Eliminative materialism” of the Churchlands (1981;1986), because it contends that the mature sciences posit rich psychologicalproperties, like episodically remembering. But Expansive materialism alsocontrasts with what we may term the “Separatist materialism” associated withFodor (1975), since such rich psychological properties are taken to be instan-tiated in brains and not in some level of individuals above the brain. Thehighest neurobiological level is the rich psychological level for Expansivematerialism.

More importantly for our purposes here, however, the Expansive materi-alist view of the neurosciences, and the successful explanatory hypothesesupon which it is based, have direct implications for the issue of what we are.We can quickly highlight this point by adding a premise to the CrudeArgument from Scientific Roles. Above, I noted that we take the ThinkerThesis to be true. So we accept that:

(4) You are identical to the individual in your chair that instantiates therich psychological properties of remembering breakfast, believingsnow is white, etc. (Thinker Thesis)

But from (4), in combination with the conclusion of the Crude Argument in(3), we can further conclude that:

(5) We should take you to be identical to the brain located in your chairthat instantiates rich psychological properties like remembering break-fast, believing snow is white, etc.

The subconclusion of the Crude Argument gets us to thinking/expansivebrains and, via the Thinker Thesis, the extended reasoning swiftly takes us tothe truth of the Expansive Brain view. We can thus also see why neurosci-entists like Gazzaniga and Panksepp are increasingly endorsing this novelposition.

Obviously in such a short space my goal has not been to establish the truthof Expansive materialism, let alone the Expansive Brain view. Instead, myaim here has been to highlight how the findings of the neuroscience revolu-tion have turned each of these positions into live options, since this newsituation has a number of important implications. Most pertinent to ourconcerns here, we can begin to see why working scientists have begun to pressthe Expansive Brain view and that there are good empirical reasons tosupport this position. Furthermore, we can thus appreciate why we do notneed the method of cases to endorse thinking brains and the Expansive Brain

BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM 47

Page 8: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

view, or, looking still more widely, to engage the issue of what we are, thussupporting Wilkes (1988).16

Perhaps most importantly, we can also see why thinking brains and thewider findings of the neuroscience revolution are directly relevant to animal-ism. If you accept that only one individual in your chair instantiates richpsychological properties, and also accept the Thinker Thesis and thenonidentity of brains and animals, then the existence of thinking brainsentails the falsity of animalism. All animalists should thus follow Olson inbeing very concerned about whether thinking brains exist. However, ourwork suggests that animalists, including Olson, also consequently need tofocus in a new direction by engaging the question of psychological ontologyand our empirical findings about it. In the next section, I will support thelatter point in the course of critically engaging Olson’s objections.

3. THE SYMMETRICAL SEPARATION THESIS AND THE NEW,ONGOING DEBATES ILLUMINATED

Having a better grip on why we might accept thinking brains without deploy-ing the method of cases, let us return to Olson’s new arguments that weshould not accept such entities. To start, consider again the Duality ofSubstances Argument. There are many senses of ‘substance’, but the one thatappears to be at play here is that of an entity that bears properties and existsover time. Furthermore, the relevant substance is itself composed, so let uscall this a “dependent substance.” To assess whether it is problematic that theexistence of expansive brains entails we have two kinds of dependent sub-stance at distinct levels, consider the interlevel mechanistic explanationsfound across the sciences.

Such explanations posit compositional relations between levels of individu-als with qualitatively distinct powers, properties, and processes. Every level ofcomposed individuals in the sciences is plausibly a level of dependent sub-stances, and we thus have dependent substances in chemistry, biochemistry,cytology, physiology, etc. It is thus no surprise, and apparently no problem,that the existence of expansive brains also entails we have distinct dependentsubstances studied by neurobiology and primatology. Furthermore, we getsuch a duality of dependent substances even if we only have brains and not

16 The Argument from Scientific Roles also highlights why Expansive Brain theoristsfocused on empirical evidence will not be persuaded by at least one of Olson’s (2007) earlierobjections to such views. This objection claimed brain theories must endorse a false claim inwhat Olson calls “Thinking Subject Minimalism.” But the Argument from Scientific Roles doesnot deploy this thesis in supporting the Expansive Brain view, and the position in no wayrequires Thinking Subject Minimalism, so this consequently undercuts Olson’s objection.

48 CARL GILLETT

Page 9: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

thinking/expansive brains. For we still have organs which are distinct fromorganisms and hence have a duality of dependent substances. Olson’s Dualityof Substances Argument thus fails to highlight a damaging implication ofthinking brains and simply illustrates a common feature of scientific expla-nations and the levels they illuminate.

Turning to the Argument from Metaphysical Impossibility, let me simplynote that there are general concerns about establishing metaphysical,rather than nomological (im)possibility claims about scientific kinds or theirrelations. And there are more specific concerns about this particular case.17

Given these worries, I put the explicit Metaphysical Impossibility Argumentto one side.

However, if we consider the Separation Argument as making claims simplyabout nomological possibilities concerning the rich psychology of terrestrialvertebrate organisms and their brains, then I suggest we find that Olson’sargument highlights an interesting, and important, conclusion. Making therelevant qualifications, the Separation Argument establishes the conclusionthat if terrestrial vertebrate brains instantiating rich psychology exist, thenthere is a separation between vertebrate terrestrial organisms and richpsychology—a separation between complex terrestrial organisms andcomplex mentality. Interestingly, this looks like a conclusion that proponentsof Expansive materialism will happily agree to given the structural commit-ments of their own views outlined in Part 2. But then we face the question Ideferred at the end of Part 1: are the intuitively “abominable” implications ofthinking brains good reasons to reject their existence?

In answering this question, I contend that it is important to apply Olson’sstyle of reasoning more widely. Thus we need to mark that if we acceptthinking Homo sapiens animals, then similar premises lead to the conclusion thatHomo sapiens brains are unthinking and lack rich psychology. So, if there arethinking Homo sapiens organisms, then we have a separation between complexbrains and complex psychology—human brains do not think!

When played out more fully for both kinds of relevant individual, Olson’sline of reasoning about the separation of thinking, brains, and animals thusplausibly illuminates the truth of what I term the “Symmetrical SeparationThesis”:

17 To take just one example of such concerns, there is the issue of rich psychology interrestrial life-forms versus any possible life-form. On Earth, rich psychology is found exclusivelyin vertebrates that have a common body-plan involving a brain. Even if, for argument’s sake, weassume that it is impossible for rich psychology to be had by the brains of terrestrial life-forms,one may be dubious about whether this shows it is metaphysically impossible for something otherthan an animal to have rich psychology, because one may be dubious about our understandingof the possibilities of very different body-plans, and their rich psychologies, from those found interrestrial life.

BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM 49

Page 10: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

If there exist either Homo sapiens brains or Homo sapiens organisms that instantiateproperties of remembering, fearing, etc., then there is a separation between eitherHomo sapiens brains or Homo sapiens organisms and rich psychological properties likeremembering, fearing, etc.

I endorse the truth of the Thesis, and I contend it is an important insightabout the clashing structural implications of important explanatory frame-works in different areas of the sciences and our everyday lives.

However, once we appreciate the truth of the full SymmetricalSeparation Thesis, rather than just one element of it, then it is farfrom clear what we should conclude from judgments of “abominability”about the implications of either thinking brains or thinking animals. We cannow see that different groups each take thinking brains, and thinkinganimals, to respectively have their own “abominable” implications.Many working neuroscientists will find it an “abominable” implicationof thinking animals that brains cannot remember, fear etc., whilstWittgensteinian and other philosophers, biological anthropologists, prima-tologists, and some ordinary people will indeed find it an “abominable”implication of thinking brains that vertebrate animals cannot remember,fear, etc.

What we can thus see is that highlighting judgments about the“abominability” of the implications of the opposing positions does not resolvethe debates over whether thinking brains or thinking animals exist. Conse-quently, although it points us to an important structural insight, Olson’sSeparation Argument plausibly fails to establish there are no thinking brains.Rather than judgments of intuitive “abominability,” what we plausibly needin order to assess whether thinking brains exist, or to resolve what we are, isa wider discussion of the question of psychological ontology drawing uponrelevant empirical findings. That project, so far as I know, has not beenpursued by the proponents of main accounts of what we are. Given thecontinuing expansion of the neurosciences and the explanatory power of theirhypotheses, my brief remarks here suggest that in the future we can lookforward to exciting new debates focused upon the existence of thinkingbrains, the question of psychological ontology, and the implications of bothfor what we are.

REFERENCES

Baker, L. 2000. Persons and bodies: A constitution view. New York: Cambridge University Press.Bennett, M. R., D. Dennett, P. Hacker, and J. Searle 2009. Neuroscience and philosophy. New

York: Columbia University Press.Bennett, M., and P. Hacker 2003. Philosophical foundations of neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.

50 CARL GILLETT

Page 11: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

Campbell, T., and J. McMahan 2010. Animalism and the varieties of conjoined twinning.Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 31: 285–301.

Churchland, P. M. 1981. Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes. Journalof Philosophy 78: 67–90.

———. 2005. Cleansing science: Critical notice of Bennett and Hacker. Inquiry 48:464–77.

Churchland, P. S. 1986. Neurophilosophy: Toward a unified science of the mind/brain. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Craver, C., and B. Bechtel 2007. Top-down causation without top-down causes. Biologyand Philosophy 22: 547–63.

Fodor. 1975. The language of thought. New York: Crowell.Gazzaniga, M. 2005. The ethical brain. New York: Dana Press.Gazzaniga, M., R. Ivry, and G. Mangun 2008. Cognitive neuroscience: The biology of the mind,

3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Johnston, M. 2007. “Human beings” revisited: My body is not an animal. Oxford Studies

I Metaphysics 3: 33–74.Metzinger, T. 2003. Being no one: The self model of subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.———. 2010. The no self alternative. In Oxford Handbook of the Self, ed. S. Gallagher,

279–96. New York: Oxford University Press.Olson, E. 1997. The human animal: Personal identity without psychology. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.———. 2007. What are we? A study in personal ontology. New York: Oxford University Press.———. Manuscript. The metaphysical implications of conjoined twinning.———. 2014a. The metaphysical implications of conjoined twinning. Southern Journal of

Philosophy Spindel Supplement 52: 24–40.———. 2014b. The nature of people. In Cambridge Companion to Life and Death, ed. S. Luper,

30–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.———. Forthcoming. Animalism and the remnant person problem. In Metaphysics of the

self, ed. J. Goncalves. Lisbon: Instituto de Filsofia da Linguagem, University of Lisbon.Panksepp, J. 1998. Affective neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press.Panksepp, J., and L. Biven 2012. The archaeology of mind. New York: Norton.Purves, D. 2007. Principles of cognitive neuroscience, 1st ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer

Associates.Rose, N., and J. Abi-Rached 2013. Neuro: The new brain sciences and the management of the mind.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.Shoemaker, S. 1980. Causality and properties. In Time and cause, ed. P. van Inwagen,

109–35. Dordrecht: Reidel.———. 2009. Physical Realization. New York: Oxford University Press.———. 2011. On what we are. In The Oxford handbook to the self, ed. S. Gallagher, 352–71.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.Snowdon, P. F. 1990. Persons, animals, and ourselves. In The person and the human mind, ed.

C. Gill, 83–107. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Tulving, E. 2002. Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology 53:

1–25.van Inwagen, P. 1990. Material beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

BRAINS, NEUROSCIENCE, AND ANIMALISM 51

Page 12: Brains, Neuroscience, and Animalism: On the Implications of Thinking Brains

Vidal, F. 2009. Brainhood, anthropological figure of modernity. History of the Human Sciences22: 5–36.

Wilkes, K. 1988. Real people: Personal identity without thought experiments. Oxford: ClarendonPress.

Wimsatt, W. 2007. Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

52 CARL GILLETT