Materialists about human persons say that we are, and must be, wholly material beings. Substance dualists say that we are, and must be, wholly immaterial. In this article, I take issue with the ‘and must be’ bits. Both materialists and substance dualists would do well to reject modal extensions of their views and instead opt for contingent doctrines, or doctrines that are silent about those modal extensions. Or so I argue.

Arguments for substance dualism—the theory that we are at least partly nonmaterial beings—abound. Many such arguments begin with our capacity to engage in conscious thought and end with dualism. Such are familiar. But there is another route to dualism. It begins with our moral value and ends with dualism. In this article, we develop and assess the prospects for this new style of argument. We show that, though one version of the argument does not succeed, there may yet be a deep problem for standard physical accounts of our nature.

Some philosophers say that you do not think in the primary or nonderivative sense. Rather, they say some item distinct from you (perhaps one of your parts or something of which you are a part) does your thinking for you; you inherit your mental life from that item. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake. We do not inherit our thoughts in this way.