2 th - century theories of personal identity and reading this You are never truly alone: wherever you go, a watchful animal goes with you (Olson 2003, 329) Perhaps we can accept the cohabitation theorist’s claim that two individuals share their thoughts in an extraordinary scenario like the fission case (sect 6) It is much more unattractive to say that this holds even in all normal cases Secondly, there is a problem of too many persons: since the animal has the same mental features as I do, it too seems to qualify as a person For instance, it seems to satisfy Locke’s account of personhood (sect 3): that is, it seems to be “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.” Whether or not we accept the details of Locke’s account, there can hardly be non-persons psychologically indiscernible from persons, just as there cannot be non-roses botanically indiscernible from roses While the “too many persons” problem (like the other two problems) afflicts animalism’s rivals in general, it is (unlike the other two problems) particularly embarrassing for advocates of the psychological-continuity view For not only is it unappealing to say that there are two persons in my chair right now; in addition, if the animal is a person, then the psychological-continuity view is simply wrong to say – as it does in most versions – that all persons persist by virtue of psychological continuity As we have just seen, the animal in my chair does not And if billions of persons persist by virtue of something other than psychological continuity, why not all persons? Thirdly, even if it can be shown that the animal is not a person after all, an epistemic problem remains For whenever I think, “I am a person, not an animal,” the animal thinks, “I am a person, not an animal” – and apparently its epistemic position does not differ in any way from mine: It will have the same grounds for thinking that it is a person and not an animal as you have for believing that you are Yet it is mistaken If you were the animal and not the person, you would still think you were the person So for all you know, you are the one making the mistake Even if you are a person and not an animal, it is hard to see how you could ever have any reason to believe that you are (Olson 2007, 36) It is not entirely clear exactly what the main point is supposed to be here On one interpretation, it is that I have a reason to believe that I am a person, but could not have such a reason if I were not identical to the animal; hence, I am identical to the animal On another interpretation, the point is that I cannot have any reason to believe that I am not the animal This is of course unwelcome news for an opponent of animalism: she could not have any reason for her belief that she is not an animal However, this purely epistemic claim does not, all by itself, imply that she is an animal: it does not follow that animalism is true On yet another 139