Dear all, Ali Boyle (Trinity Hall) will be giving a paper entitled “Conjoined Twinning and Biological Individuation" (abstract below) at the Serious Metaphysics Group this coming Wednesday.
As usual, the seminar will run from 4:30 to 6pm in the Board Room at the Philosophy Faculty. Hope to see you there, Carlo Conjoined Twinning and Biological Individuation Abstract: In dicephalus twinning, it appears that two heads share a body; in cephalopagus, it appears that two bodies share a head. How many human animals are present in these cases? One answer is that there are two in both cases: conjoined twins are precisely that - conjoined twins. Another is that the number of human animals is the same as the apparent number of bodies - so, there is one in dicephalus and two in cephalopagus. Drawing on the literature on biological individuation, I argue that both answers are incorrect: there is a single human animal in both cases. This has a number of consequences for the debate about what we are. If animalism is true, then some individuals of our kind are profoundly psychologically divided. But cephalopagus does not drive a wedge between animalism and its rivals - and animalists can reply to a vicious species of the 'too many thinkers' problem to which they are thought to be uniquely vulnerable. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
