Wild rhesus monkeys have been found to attend to causal anomalies, suggesting that they make inferences about possible and impossible physical transformations in the absence of direct relevant experience.

We tend to put our notion of the soul, the self, the “I” in a different category than other objects we think about. This is not only a common attitude in the general population, but it is also reflected in many examples of philosophical discourse. Philosophers differ, however, in their opinions of how and why the self attains its special status. The two traditional extreme points of view, which...