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116Technological Fictions and Personal Identity: On Ricoeur, Schechtman and Analytic Thought ExperimentsJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 47 (2): 117-132. 2016.Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman express grave doubts about the acceptability and informativeness of the thought-experiments employed by analytic philosophers (notably Derek Parfit) in the debate about personal identity, and for what appear to be related reasons. I consider their reasoning and argue that their reasons fail to justify their doubts. I go on to argue that, from this discussion of possible problems concerning select thought-experiments, something positive can be learned about perso…Read more
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862Morals, Metaphysics and the Method of CasesSouth African Journal of Philosophy 29 (4): 332-342. 2010.In this paper I discuss a set of problems concerning the method of cases as it is used in applied ethics and in the metaphysical debate about personal identity. These problems stem from research in social psychology concerning our access to the data with which the method operates. I argue that the issues facing ethics are more worrying than those facing metaphysics.
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1003Causal copersonality: in defence of the psychological continuity theorySouth African Journal of Philosophy 30 (2): 244-255. 2011.The view that an account of personal identity can be provided in terms of psychological continuity has come under fire from an interesting new angle in recent years. Critics from a variety of rival positions have argued that it cannot adequately explain what makes psychological states co-personal (i.e. the states of a single person). The suggestion is that there will inevitably be examples of states that it wrongly ascribes using only the causal connections available to it. In this paper, I desc…Read more
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1198Martha Nussbaum and the Foundations of Ethics: Identity, Morality and Thought-ExperimentsSouth African Journal of Philosophy 28 (3): 261-270. 2009.Martha Nussbaum has argued in support of the view (supposedly that of Aristotle) that we can, through thought-experiments involving personal identity, find an objective foundation for moral thought without having to appeal to any authority independent of morality. I compare the thought-experiment from Plato’s Philebus that she presents as an example to other thought-experiments involving identity in the literature and argue that this reveals a tension between the sources of authority which Nussb…Read more
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115Should we tolerate people who split?Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 1-17. 1992.Thought-experiments in which one person divides into two have been important in the literature on personal identity. I consider three influential arguments which aim to undermine the force of these thought-experiments – arguments from David Wiggins, Patricia Kitcher and Kathleen Wilkes. I argue that all three fail, leaving us to face the consequences of splitting, whatever those may be.
Bellville, Western Cape, South Africa
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Action |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |