Physicalism and neo-Lockeanism about persons

Abstract

The central objection to neo-Lockeanism about persons (NLP) is the too many thinkers problem: NLP ends up with an absurd multiplication of thinkers. Sydney Shoemaker attempts to solve this problem by arguing that the person and the animal do not share all of the same physical properties. This, according to him, leads to the idea that mental properties are realized in the person’s physical properties only. The project of this paper is to reject Shoemaker’s physicalist solution to the too many thinkers problem. I first argue that his physicalism fails to explain why two physically indistinguishable objects differ in their persistence conditions and physical properties. I then argue that Shoemaker illicitly treats the case of the person and the case of the animal differently, first in regard to cerebral function and its relation to mental properties, and second in regard to brainstem function and its relation to biological properties. This shows that Shoemaker’s solution actually undermines his entire argument.