Dualism in Ontology of Persons and the Thinking Animal Argument

Abstract

The thinking animal argument is one of the central arguments in favor of animal­ism – a view in the ontology of persons which claims that we are human ani­mals. This argument has had a great influence on the debates in the ontology of persons, but the discussion has primarily focused on metaphysical naturalism, according to which all the facts of the world depend on physical facts. How the thinking animal argument influences different kinds of dualism in personality ontology remains unclear in contemporary literature. In the first part of the arti­cle, the author briefly considers naturalistic strategies of rejecting the thinking animal argument. This is followed by an explication of the logical space of dual­ism in the personal ontology. For this purpose, the author uses distinctions from fundamental metaphysics. After that, the author analyses how different kinds of dualism reject the thinking animal argument. The author concludes that the thinking animal argument does not contain the heuristic potential for any type of dualism in personality ontology: firstly, the argument does not create ad­ditional difficulties for dualism, and secondly, it does not reveal the hidden as­sumptions of dualism.