When people attempt to belittle us with radical reductionism, we might try responding with: "Sure, Archaeologists and Paleontologists are just ditch-diggers; Brain surgeons and heart surgeons are just people who love to cut and saw people; Accountants merely do grade school math for a living; Attorneys lie and do crimes professionally; Diplomats are weak-spined pusillanimous cowards who try to avert wars instead of bravely fighting them; Nurses are such despicable lepers and pariahs that they actually care for the weak and injured; and Saints are just losers who can't get dates ... and yes, Headhunters are only spammers." Sure....  I guess that Recruiter Job Emails could be spam, at least to some people, but right now my complaint rate is 1 complaint in the last 67,000 emails.  So, it appears to be a minority opinion.  But, a diamond is "just a piece of carbon".

So, here's a great essay by former Princeton University Philosophy Department Head Mark Johnston, writing about similar issues in Saul Kripke's "Naming and Necessity":

 http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness97/papers/j...