Helena de Bres
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If asked directly, most people would deny that they consider twins a metaphysical unit, but their behavior often suggests they’re inclined in that direction. A standard assumption of modern Western culture is that each person is physically discrete, cleanly distinguished from all other people by their location, solo, within an unbroken continuum of skin. Conjoined twins share a single body, so this line of thought implies they’re a single person. The ancient Greek picture of persons as essentially disembodied minds housed in unruly bodies was adopted wholesale by Christianity, continued to be popular through the early modern period and the Enlightenment, and persisted in a fractured and ambivalent way through many of the intellectual movements of the twentieth century. For those of us who aren’t conjoined twins, and who don’t sign up for the Wari view that personhood tracks exchanges of physical substances, embodied personhood seems to mean metaphysical isolation.

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How to Be Multiple

The Philosophy of Twins

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