Think Twice, It’s All Right: Animalism, Disunity and the Self / trans. from English V. A. Sermaksheva

According to animalism, each of us is numerically identical to a human animal. Disunity cases – cases in which a human animal lacks some form of mental unity – are often thought to pose a problem for animalism. Tim Bayne has recently offered some novel arguments against animalism based on one particular disunity case, namely Cerberus: a single animal with two heads, each housing its own stream of consciousness. I show that Bayne’s arguments are flawed, and that animalism is capable of handling the case.

Incarnation: The Avatar Model

This chapter presents a model of the Incarnation developed on the basis of the Na’vi avatars of the science fiction movie Avatar. The model does not address the metaphysics of the Incarnation; rather, its main concern is with the consciousness of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son. “One-sphere models,” in which the Son while incarnate has a single sphere of consciousness, are examined and found to be unsatisfactory. The avatar model is a “two-sphere model,” in which there exist distinct spheres of consciousness for the divine nature and the human nature, similar to the “two minds” view proposed by Thomas Morris. It is argued that this does not amount to Nestorianism. The possibility of a single person with multiple spheres of consciousness is defended by comparison with the psychological “split-brain” and “multiple personality” phenomena; this way of understanding those phenomena is defended against a contrary view expounded by Tim Bayne.

Worship and threshold obligations

In this reply to Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa, I defend the possibility of a maximal-excellence account of the grounding of the obligation to worship God. I do not offer my own account of the obligation to worship God; rather I argue that the major criticism (that is raised against maximal-excellence accounts) fails. Thus maximal-excellence can ground an obligation to worship God.