Consciousness and Personal Identityseen first and foremost not as conscious subjects but as living organisms, as human animals. In
this view, consciousness is neither necessary nor sufficient for our identity through time.
An individual in a persistent vegetative state, though no longer conscious, is still the same
living organism. Likewise, a fetus is the same living organism as the child and adult that it will
eventually become. But while the animalist view nicely explains our intuitions in the sorts of
beginning and end of life cases just considered, it gives us a counterintuitive result in the sorts
of body swap cases we considered in the previous section. Consider the individual with Tess’s
consciousness and Anna’s body. Though we are inclined to classify that individual as Tess, the
animalist cannot do so. Confronted with the question, “which living organism is it?” the animal-
ist’s answer is clearly Anna.
Olson addresses this sort of challenge to the animalist view in the context of a transplant
case involving Prince, a rich and tyrannical ruler, and Cobbler, a poor but healthy working-class
man. When Prince’s body is severely damaged in a yachting accident, the royal servants kidnap
Cobbler, and the royal medical staff then proceeds with a complicated transplant procedure. After
destroying Cobbler’s cerebrum, they remove Prince’s cerebrum and transplant it into Cobbler’s
body, having attached it to Cobbler’s brainstem. As Olson describes the resulting scenario:
Two human beings resulted from this. One of them, called “Brainy,” had Cobbler’s
arms, legs, trunk, and other parts, but Prince’s cerebrum. Brainy looked just like
Cobbler, but he had Prince’s personality and character, and was able to remember as
much of Prince’s past as Prince could; and he knew nothing about Cobbler’s past. The
other offshoot, “Brainless,” had all of Prince’s parts except for his missing cerebrum.
Although Brainless could wake and sleep, cough and sneeze, and even make reflex
movements with his arms and legs, his eyes could only stare vacantly at the ceiling.
He was in roughly the sort of persistent vegetative state that sometimes results from
massive cerebral damage.
(Olson 1997: 43)Confronted with this sort of case, most people have what Olson calls the transplant intuition,
namely, that Brainy is Prince.^6 This intuition seems to cause trouble for the animalist, however,
since the animalist view identifies Brainy with Cobbler. On this view, a cerebrum transplant
is no different from a kidney transplant. Just as getting Prince’s kidney doesn’t affect Cobbler’s
identity, neither does getting Prince’s cerebrum. Since the brainstem was never removed from
Cobbler’s body, the same living organism continues to exist.
In responding to this sort of case, Olson does not deny the force of the transplant intuition;
indeed, he notes that he himself feels its pull: “It seems to me too, at first glance, that Prince
survives the operation as Brainy” (Olson 1997: 44). As we know, however, first appearances are
often deceiving, and Olson argues that such is the case here. To his mind, we have good theo-
retical reasons to think that both Prince and Cobbler are living organisms, and that no single
living organism can be identified first as Prince and then as Brainy. He thus offers the following
diagnosis of the situation: The transplant intuition derives most of its force from certain under-
lying principles about practical matters. But while the transplant intuition is incompatible with
animalism, the underlying practical principles are not. In particular, it may be rational for people
to treat Brainy as Prince and for Brainy to be held responsible for Prince’s actions. The defense
of animalism thus depends on showing that practical matters involving moral responsibility, per-
sonal concern, and so on can come apart from facts about numerical identity.^7
To many philosophers, however, giving up the transplant intuition seems like too hard a pill to
swallow. Is there any other way to accommodate the intuition that we were once fetuses – or at least,