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Metaphysics and Biology a Critique of David Wiggins' Account of Personal ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Metaphysics and biology a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40062/ Version: Full Version Citation: Ferner, Adam M. (2014) Metaphysics and biology a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email M E T A P H Y S I C S A N D B I O L O G Y A CRITIQUE OF DAVID WIGGINS’ ACCOUNT OF PERSONAL IDENTITY ADAM M. FERNER BIRKBECK COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. FEBRUARY 2014 1 ABSTRACT Over his philosophical career, David Wiggins has produced a body of work that, though varied and wide-ranging, stands as a coherent and carefully integrated whole. Its parts cannot be studied in isolation, and a central aim of this thesis is to examine how three vital elements of his systematic metaphysics interconnect: his conceptualist-realism, his sortal theory ‘D’, and his account of personal identity – his human being theory. Yet critics murder to dissect, and Wiggins’ project is often unfairly decomposed into its parts. Thus, this study aims both to introduce his thoughts without neglecting the relations between them, and to rectify the various misinterpretations of them by – among others – Paul Snowdon, Eric Olson and Lynne Rudder Baker. In clarifying and exploring these connections another sunken, yet central, vein is revealed. It is argued that Wiggins’ metaphysics bears on, and is borne upon, by various discussions in the philosophy of biology. This is a connection that he himself adverts to, but which commentators have rarely investigated. Attending to it, one finds in his analyses of natural substances a novel form of biological anti-reductionism, which stands as a productive alternative to emergentism. Closer attention to his construal of substances – specifically organisms – also reveals a worry. At the core of Wiggins’ account of personal identity is the consilience he sees between the concept of a person and the concept of a natural substance (a human being). It is argued below that organ transplantation disturbs the Aristotelian distinction between natural substance and biological artefact, and thus tests the heart-string of his human being theory. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have accrued a great many debts over the seven years it has taken me to write this thesis. Most prominent, of course, is the debt I owe to David Wiggins. It would be hard to find surer foundations for one’s research than the ones he has laid, and his texts have inspired, provoked and enriched my thoughts in exactly the right measure. Moreover, he has proved a generous correspondent, and my studies have benefitted incalculably from his letters, and our conversations. For all of these things I thank him. Thanks are due too, to those members of the Birkbeck faculty who have assumed supervisory roles at various points during my studies: Sarah Patterson, Ian Rumfitt, Keith Hossack and Susan James. Robert Northcott has, over the last couple of years, helped me navigate the backwaters of philosophy of biology. Paul Snowdon deserves special mention both as a sympathetic extra-mural supervisor, and as the BA tutor who ignited my interest in Wiggins. Most of all, I have been fortunate that Jen Hornsby (who first interviewed me for a place at Birkbeck) has been the one to guide me through these last stages of my PhD; she has done so with characteristic insight and wit – and my work has been immeasurably improved by her suggestions. Simmi Pahwa has aided me throughout with administrative matters. I have been helped as well by the humour and forbearance of my fellow students. I owe especial thanks to those who have read and commented on various sections of the dissertation: to Jordan Bartol, Rob Bassett, and Rob Craven. In particular, Charlotte Knowles has helped me understand the genuine links between Wiggins’ work and the phenomenological tradition, and Karl Egerton has proved an excellent consultant on matters relating to meta-metaphysics. Christoph Schuringa and Elianna Fetterolf have been there almost from the start, and if the genealogical analysis in chapter 2 is successful it is no doubt in large part due to their tutelage in Foucault. I am also extremely grateful to Alex Douglas, who has not only commented on my work, but early on encouraged me to develop the discussions of ontological dependence which became the backbone of the third chapter. His advice has been invaluable, and his support deeply appreciated. Among the residents of the grad room I would also like to thank Nathan Hauthaler, Josh Habgood-Coote, Jonathan Nassim, Steph Marston, Koshka Duff, Neil Wilcox, Chris Sykes and Tom Quinn, for their conversation, and their biscuits. Further afield, Nick Jones, Charles T. Wolfe and Gregory Radick have, at various points, helped me precisify my ideas about Wiggins and about organisms. Thanks are also due to Anthony O’Hear and James Garvey, at The Royal Institute of Philosophy, for providing me with gainful employment, by which I could fund my studies. Beyond the world of philosophy, debts were incurred on a larger scale to Florence Bullough, Luke Massey, Vivienne Watson and Mya Kalaya, who unwittingly took upon themselves the task of preserving my sanity: to a large extent they seem to have succeeded. I am grateful also to my parents, Celia and Robin, for unwavering moral (and financial) support. I would like to thank my sister, Harriet, for her guidance with (non- Aristotelian) psychology and pearl milk teas, and my brother, David, for his advice (some decade ago) to pursue philosophy (rather than film studies), and for use of his PS3. Lastly, but most importantly, thanks are due to Esther McManus, who has sustained me, and reassured and suffered me more than any person should reasonably be expected to: thank you. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 1. ‘D’ 17 §1.1. Methodological preliminaries: descriptivism and conceptualist-realism 19 1.1.a. Conceptualist-realism 21 §1.2. Wiggins’ D thesis 26 1.2.a. Is D a metaphysical or psychological thesis? 26 1.2.b. The reciprocal elucidation of identity and individuation 33 1.2.c. Sortal identity and relative identity 40 1.2.d. Principles of individuation 43 §1.3. Artefacts and natural objects 48 1.3.a. The semantics of natural kind words 49 1.3.b. Artefact words and puzzles 51 1.3.c. Wiggins’ view of the existence of artefacts 54 1.3.d. Wiggins’ view of the substancehood of artefacts 58 1.3.e. Wiggins’ view of substance 63 §1.4. Conclusion 70 2. THE HUMAN BEING THEORY 72 §2.1. Neo-Lockean and animalist readings 75 2.1.a. Quasi-memory 79 2.1.b. Against an ‘animalist’ reading 80 §2.2. Arguments from conceptual consilience 83 2.2.a. The Strawsonian argument: a preliminary link 83 2.2.b. The semantic argument and the Animal Attribute View 89 2.2.c. An argument from interpretation and indexicality 92 2.2.d. Intermediary conclusion 95 §2.3. Testing the conceptual connection 98 2.3.a. A genealogy of the notion of a person 98 2.3.a.i. Preliminaries 100 2.3.a.ii. ‘Person’ as a mask 102 2.3.a.iii. ‘Person’ as a legal fact 105 2.3.a.iv. ‘Person’ as a moral fact, and a metaphysical entity 108 2.3.b. A critique of Wiggins’ semantic analysis 110 §2.4. Conclusion 118 3. THE BIOLOGY OF PERSONS 119 §3.1. Investigation the human being principle 121 §3.2. Are organisms real? 126 3.2.a. ‘Reductionism’ and ‘anti-reductionism’ 127 3.2.b. An emergentist reading? 132 3.2.c. Reasons for doubt 136 §3.3. Descriptivism and pluralism 140 3.3.a. Ambitious descriptivism? 140 3.3.b. A pluralistic picture 143 3.3.c. Implications of Wiggins’ pluralism 145 §3.4. A neo-Aristotelian organism concept 147 3.4.a. Organic unities 147 4 3.4.b. Aristotelian organisms 150 3.4.b.i. Teleology 153 3.4.b.ii. Ontological dependence 156 §3.5. Conclusion 161 4. BRAIN TRANSPLANTATION 163 §4.1. Changing perspectives 164 §4.2. Transplantation and mechanism 175 4.2.a. Methodological concerns 175 4.2.b. A suppressed assumption 178 §4.3. A history of the brain transplantation story 183 4.3.a. Locke’s mechanistic/corpuscularian picture 183 4.3.b. The problem of resurrection 185 4.3.c. A connection 190 §4.4. Wiggins’ approach to brain transplantation 192 4.4.a. A shift in metaphysical focus: ‘human persons as artefacts?’ 192 4.4.b. Final worries 195 CONCLUSION 200 BIBLIOGRAPHY 203 5 INTRODUCTION In an autobiographical aside in Identity, Truth and Value, David Wiggins tells us that his earliest intellectual impulse was not towards philosophy, but to painting.1 And on more than one occasion while writing this thesis I have wondered – perhaps somewhat wistfully – whether his thoughts would have been better captured in that less restrictive medium. For whatever his written work is – beautifully crafted, subtle, ingenious – nobody would ever say it is easy to read. Wiggins himself laments the fact that his texts can be found obscure;2 and a cursory glance at the numerous reviews of his books, Sameness and Substance and Sameness and Substance Renewed, suggests the view is widely held.3 His prose is elegant, but it is a baroque elegance: dense, and rich, with intricate and finely wrought digressions, and sentences that are, as Adrian Moore remarks, almost beyond parody in length.4 There is an added – and not unimportant – difficulty for younger scholars approaching his work, following as it does a trajectory marked out more than forty years ago in his Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity;5 the trends in Anglophone philosophy have changed, and each new rendering of his theory is laden with references to older debates, while simultaneously incorporating responses to more recent ones.6 Yet the difficulties found in Wiggins’ work are also indicators of its strength; the precision that makes him so hard to pin down7 is a symptom of the meticulous care that has gone into the construction of his theory.
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