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This chapter discusses the disjunctive conception of experience and pays particular attention to those philosophers who are attracted by it. Originally suggested by J. M. Hinton, the disjunctive conception has received sympathetic attention in the writings of Paul Snowdon and John McDowell. Both Snowdon and McDowell agree with the experientialist in maintaining that it is true both of a subject who sees an F and of a subject who hallucinates an F that it looks to the subject as if an F is there, although they propose a different view. In the version provided by Snowdon, the original claim is to be understood in such a way that it is made true either by there being something before you which looks to you to be an F or by its merely being for you as if there is something before you which looks to you to be an F.

This chapter discusses the suggestion that a psychological approach must be mistaken, because, in fact, the correct account of personal identity is given by the biological approach, according to which we are human beings whose identity over time requires no kind of psychological continuity or connectedness whatsoever. A number of authors support this suggestion, including Paul Snowdon (1991), Peter van Inwagen (1990), and Eric Olson (1997, 2002). This also presumes that humans, i.e. members of the species Homo sapiens, are animals of a certain kind. It does not rule out the possibility of persons that are not human beings or animals, but it insists that we are all human animals, possessing the persistence conditions of human animals. This biological approach is often rejected with the notion that it conflicts with human intuition, as can be seen in the transplant case.

This chapter raises three objections to animalism. First, if it isn’t an account of what we essentially are then the “too many persons” argument is ineffectual, since “animal” could be a phase sortal. If it is an account of what we essentially are then this needs independent argument, not provided by the “too many persons” argument. Second, the “too many persons” argument threatens animalism, once we distinguish an animal and the brain that is its organ of mentation. Third, animalism has a problem with “remnant” persons, e.g. the person who comes into existence when my head is severed from my destroyed body and lives for a little time, as in a gruesome variant on the guillotine. It looks as if the animalist must say that a person comes into being merely as a non-causal upshot of the destruction of non-neural tissue. Various replies on behalf of animalism are considered and rejected.