Sobre a natureza de pessoas e suas condições de persistência: uma abordagem neolockeana a partir de uma ontologia fisicalista

Abstract

The theme of this work is the nature of persons and their respective persistence conditions. Our main objective is to defend a neolockean proposal from a physicalist ontology, in which mental properties are identical to physical or metaphysically dependent in relation to them. In this context, a lockean theory is fundamentally characterized by the assumption that people are distinct substances from human animals. Such a view, therefore, is directly opposed to animalism, a theory which sustains precisely that people are identical with human animals. Having this opposition in view, the course of the work lies largely in a debate between these two theories, composed mainly of three stages: (1) Presentation and critique of the original lockean theory; (2) Presentation and criticism of animalism; (3) Discussion of the alternatives for a physicalist lockeanism and defense of one possible version. In this process, other important themes related to this subject will also be discussed, such as the causal theory of properties, the relation between properties and substances, the problems of dualistic and fictionalist theories about persons and, especially, the relation between their nature and the practical life.