Corpses, Embryos, Animal

Abstract

Will I be my corpse someday? This is a controversial philosophical question. If I’m a material being, that question is an important part of the metaphysics of material beings. Animalism claims that I’m a human animal. I have started as a fetus. Eric Olson argued that this is incompatible with the psychological-continuity approach to personal identity. From this it follows that we should accept the biological approach; the persistence condition for me is a Life. William Carter suggested that this approach has the same problem with the corpses as the psychologicalcontinuity approach has with fetuses. I’m going to show that Carter is not right, but we should slightly specify a biological approach: the persistence condition for me is my Life.