What
is the relationship between me and my body? According to Immaterialism, a person is most fundamentally an immaterial substance
(such as a soul or mind) and thus human persons are not identical with their
bodies. According to Animalism, a
human is most fundamentally an organism, and thus human persons are material
beings and identical with their bodies. Ruder-Baker’s calls her alternative ‘the constitution view’, and can be seen
as combining aspects of both. Like animalism, human persons are indeed material
beings; however, like immaterialism, human persons are not identical with their
bodies. According to this position, I am most fundamentally a human person,
that is a being with a first-person perspective. Such a human person may be
constituted by a human body, but my continued existence depends on the
persistence of that first-person perspective and not the persistence of that
human body.

In Chapter 2, Rudder-Baker provides a clear
account of the notion of constitution-without-identity that lies at the heart
of such an alternative. Consider the relationship between a statue and the
marble piece it is made out of. The statue is constituted by the marble, but it
is not identical with it. Both the statue and the piece may have the properties
of ‘ weighing X kilos’ and ‘being worth X amount’. However, the statue has the
former property derivatively, whilst the latter non-derivatively; the piece has
the latter property derivatively, whilst the former non-derivatively. So, in
going to a gallery, what one stands before is fundamentally a statue
constituted by a piece of marble. When certain kinds of things stand in certain
kinds of relations, such as a piece of marble in a relation to an artworld, a
new kind comes into existence that cannot be reduced to the relata on their
own.

Likewise, human persons form a distinct
ontological kind from human animals. Take the properties ‘being blonde’ and
‘being employed’. I have the former property derivatively, whilst the latter
non-derivatively; my body has the former non-derivatively, whilst the latter
derivatively. The constitutive view sees me as constituted by, but not
identical to, my body: being a person is fundamental to the kind of individual
I am, so that eliminating the person is the elimination of an individual.

Although this is not how the book is
structured, it seems possible to divide the book into a defence of three
separate claims. The first is a broad, nonreductive view of the material world,
involving a denial that what something most fundamentally is depends on what it
is made of through an account of constitution-without-identity (mainly in
chapters 2 and 7) The second is an application of this notion of
constitution-without-identity to the particular case of the relationship
between persons and bodies (mainly in chapters 4, 5 and 8). The third is the
claim that what is central to persons is that they necessarily have self-conscious,
first-person perspectives, and these first-person perspectives provide the
persistence conditions of persons over time (mainly in chapters 3 and 6).

Even though the book
sells all of these as a kind of package deal, it would be possible to accept
one of these claims without the others. So, someone unpersuaded by the
metaphysical discussion could profitably learn from the discussion of the
centrality of the first-person perspective, but maintain that such discussion
has no ontological implications. Or, one could allow for the ontological
distinctness of persons, but deny the first-person account provided. As the
focus on constitution implied in the title, it is the metaphysical issues that
are developed most persuasively in the book. (One theme insufficiently
developed is the claim that we must
take the category of ‘persons’ seriously: we are told in Chapter 9 that it is
an advantage of the constitution view over other positions that it does this,
but no knock-down argument to the effect that this must be the case is provided
– even if general reasons are implicit in the discussion).

If coherent, what emerges is an attractive
view that combines a commitment to materialism with a strong sense of the
importance of persons as being fundamental to the kind of thing that I am. On
occasions, Rudder-Baker implies that the attractiveness of the emerging
position should be seen as an argument in favour of adopting it, although she
admits that intuitions here differ, and some people (proponents of animalism,
for example) prefer an account that sees us as ‘essentially animal’.
Rudder-Baker herself notes the weakness of such an argument, conceding that she
does ‘not know how to adjudicate intuitions at this level’. Luckily for me, I
find my own intuitions to be very much in sympathy with her own in this regard,
and thus find the overall result compelling, if incomplete.

As usual, Rudder-Baker
provides an extremely clear and subtle defence of a provocative position that
goes against much mainstream theorising. The account is technical on occasions,
but traces out the broader implications of the arguments and should be
accessible to, and amply reward, the careful reader.

© 2001 Jeremy Wanderer

Jeremy Wanderer is a lecturer in
philosophy at the University of Cape Town.

Categories: Philosophical