Abstract
The position that we are essentially thinking beings and not living entities is thought to commit its advocates to maintaining that the organism and person are distinct but spatially coincident entities. A problem for this position is that if the person can think, then it would seem that the organism can also since it shares a brain and every other atom with the person. Jeff McMahan and Ingmar Persson independently proposed that the problems presented by spatially coincident thinkers could be avoided by treating the person as a proper part of the organism. The organism would then only think in a derivative and unproblematic way as a result of having a thinking being as a part. However, their “solution” merely results in moving around the metaphysical bulge in the carpet. The problem of too many thinkers will reemerge. Instead of the spatial coincidence of the organism and person, there will be the problem of the spatial coincidence of the person and whatever bit of anatomy that constitutes or in some other way coincides with the person conceived as a small part of the organism.
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