-
42The Dualist Project and the Remote-Control ObjectionRoczniki Filozoficzne 69 (1): 89-101. 2021.Substance dualism says that all thinking beings are immaterial. This sits awkwardly with the fact that thinking requires an intact brain. Many dualists say that bodily activity is causally necessary for thinking. But if a material thing can cause thinking, why can’t it think? No argument for dualism, however convincing, answers this question, leaving dualists with more to explain than their opponents.
-
662Against Person EssentialismMind 129 (515): 715-735. 2020.It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with d…Read more
-
11Warum wir Tiere sindIn Alfred North Whitehead (ed.), La Science Et le Monde Moderne, De Gruyter. pp. 11-22. 2006.
-
176Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, MICHAEL TYE. Cambridge, MA, and London, UKPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2): 500-503. 2006.There is much to admire in this book. It is written in a pleasingly straightforward style, and offers insight on a wide range of important issues.
-
13A Compound of Two SubstancesIn Kevin Corcoran (ed.), Soul, body, and survival: essays on the metaphysics of human persons, Cornell University Press. 2001.
-
100What Does it Mean to Say That We Are Animals?Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (11-12): 84-107. 2015.The view that we are animals -- animalism -- is often misunderstood. It is typically stated in unhelpful or misleading ways. Debates over animalism are often unclear about what question it purports to answer, and what the alternative answers are. The paper tries to state clearly what animalism says and does not say. This enables us to distinguish different versions of animalism.
-
78Swinburne’s Brain TransplantsPhilosophia Christi 20 (1): 21-29. 2018.Richard Swinburne argues that if my cerebral hemispheres were each transplanted into a different head, what would happen to me is not determined by my material parts, and I must therefore have an immaterial part. The paper argues that this argument relies on modal claims that Swinburne has not established. And the means he proposes for establishing such claims cannot succeed.
-
48Interview by Simon CushingJournal of Cognition and Neuroethics (Philosophical Profiles). 2016.Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Eric Olson on 1 July 2016.
-
172Narrative and persistenceCanadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (3): 419-434. 2019.ABSTRACTMany philosophers say that the nature of personal identity has to do with narratives: the stories we tell about ourselves. While different narrativists address different questions of personal identity, some propose narrativist accounts of personal identity over time. The paper argues that such accounts have troubling consequences about the beginning and end of our lives, lead to inconsistencies, and involve backwards causation. The problems can be solved, but only by modifying the accoun…Read more
-
12Lowe's Defence of ConstitutionalismPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (210): 92-95. 2003.Constitutionalism says that qualitatively different objects can be made of the same matter at once. Critics claim that we should expect such objects to be qualitatively indistinguishable. E.J. Lowe thinks this complaint is based on the false assumption that differences in the way things are at a time must always be grounded in how things are at that time, and that we can answer it by pointing out that different kinds of coinciding objects are subject to different composition principles. I argue …Read more
-
36Material Coincidence and the Indiscernibility ProblemPhilosophical Quarterly 51 (204): 337-355. 2001.It is often said that the same particles can simultaneously make up two or more material objects that differ in kind and in their mental, biological and other qualitative properties. Others wonder how objects made of the same parts in the same arrangement and surroundings could differ in these ways. I clarify this worry and show that attempts to dismiss or solve it miss its point. At most one can argue that it is a problem we can live with.
-
298Was I Ever a Fetus?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 95-110. 1997.The Standard View of personal identity says that someone who exists now can exist at another time only if there is continuity of her mental contents or capacities. But no person is psychologically continuous with a fetus, for a fetus, at least early in its career. has no mental features at all. So the Standard View entails that no person was ever a fetus---contrary to the popular assumption that an unthinking fetus is a potential person. It is also mysterious what does ordinarily happen to a hum…Read more
-
13Identity, Personal Identity, and the Self, by John Perry (review)European Journal of Philosophy 14 (3): 434-437. 2006.
-
1Human Persons, Human Organisms: Why Psychology is Not Relevant to Personal IdentityDissertation, Syracuse University. 1993.Beginning with Locke, most philosophers writing on personal identity have claimed that some sort of psychological continuity is necessary for a person to persist from one time to another. I argue that this "psychological approach" to personal identity faces ontological difficulties that many of its proponents have not appreciated. In its place I advocate a "biological approach" to personal identity: you and I are human organisms, and our persistence, like that of other organisms, consists in nar…Read more
-
365Was I ever a fetus?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 95-110. 1997.The Standard View of personal identity says that someone who exists now can exist at another time only if there is continuity of her mental contents or capacities. But no person is psychologically continuous with a fetus, for a fetus, at least early in its career, has no mental features at all. So the Standard View entails that no person was ever a fetus--contrary to the popular assumption that an unthinking fetus is a potential person. It is also mysterious what does ordinarily happen to a huma…Read more
-
385Why I have no handsTheoria 61 (2): 182-197. 1995.Trust me: my chair isn't big enough for two. You may doubt that every rational, conscious being is a person; perhaps there are beings that mistakenly believe themselves to be people. If so, read ‘rational, conscious being’ or the like for 'person'.
-
56The Paradox of IncreaseThe Monist 89 (3): 390-417. 2006.The paradox of increase in an ancient argument purporting to show that nothing can grow by acquiring new parts. If it is sound, similar reasoning leads to the more general conclusion that nothing can ever change its parts. After discussing the implicationsof this principle, the paper lays out the paradox in a way that reveals the premises that figure in it. It emerges that the paradox has no easy solution, and can be resisted only by taking on one of five serious metaphysical commitments.
-
59Identity, Quantification, and NumberIn T. Tahko (ed.), Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 66-82. 2012.E. J. Lowe and others argue that there can be 'uncountable' things admitting of no numerical description. This implies that there can be something without there being at least one such thing, and that things can be identical without being one or nonidentical without being two. The clearest putative example of uncountable things is portions of homogeneous stuff or 'gunk'. The paper argues that there is a number of portions of gunk if there is any gunk at all, and that the possibility of uncountab…Read more
-
70The Nature of PeopleIn Steven Luper (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Life and Death, Cambridge University Press. pp. 30-46. 2014.
-
320Dion’s FootJournal of Philosophy 94 (5): 260-265. 1997.Suppose a certain man, Dion, has his foot amputated, and lives to tell the tale. That tale involves a well-known metaphysical puzzle, for most of us assume that there was, before the operation, an object made up of all of Dion’s parts except those that overlapped with his foot-- ”all of Dion except for his foot”, we might say, or Dion’s “foot-complement”. Call that object Theon. (Anyone who doubts that there is such a thing as Dion’s undetached foot-complement may imagine that ‘Theon’ is a name …Read more
-
3Animalism and the Remnant-Person ProblemIn João Fonseca & Jorge Gonçalves (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on the Self, Peter Lang. pp. 21-40. 2015.
-
584The Bodily Criterion of Personal IdentityIn Fraser MacBride (ed.), Identity and Modality, Clarendon Press. pp. 242. 2006.One of the main problems of personal identity is supposed to be how we relate to our bodies. A few philosophers endorse what is called a 'bodily criterion of personal identity': they say that we are our bodies, or at any rate that our identity over time consists in the identity of our bodies. Many more deny this--typically on the grounds that we can imagine ourselves coming apart from our bodies. But both sides agree that the bodily criterion is an important view which anyone thinking about pers…Read more
-
163Personal identity and the radiation argumentAnalysis 61 (1): 38-44. 2001.Sydney Shoemaker has argued that, because we can imagine a people who take themselves to survive a 'brain-state-transfer' procedure, cerebrum transplant, or the like, we ought to conclude that we could survive such a thing. I claim that the argument faces two objections, and can be defended only by depriving it any real interest
-
383What are we?Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (5-6): 37-55. 2007.This paper is about the neglected question of what sort of things we are metaphysically speaking. It is different from the mind-body problem and from familiar questions of personal identity. After explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, the paper tries to show how difficult it is to give a satisfying answer
-
70Lowe's defence of constitutionalismPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (210). 2003.Constitutionalism says that qualitatively different objects can be made of the same matter at once. Critics claim that we should expect such objects to be qualitatively indistinguishable. E.J. Lowe thinks this complaint is based on the false assumption that differences in the way things are at a time must always be grounded in how things are at that time, and that we can answer it by pointing out that different kinds of coinciding objects are subject to different composition principles. I argue …Read more
-
191The Person and the CorpseIn Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman & Jens Johansson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death, Oup Usa. pp. 80. 2013.
-
137Immanent Causation and Life After DeathIn G. Gasser (ed.), Personal Identity and Resurrection, Ashgate. pp. 51-66. 2010.The paper concerns the metaphysical possibility of life after death. It argues that the existence of a psychological duplicate is insufficient for resurrection, even if psychological continuity suffices for personal identity. That is because our persistence requires immanent causation. There are at most three ways of having life after death: if we are immaterial souls; if we are snatched bodily from our deathbeds; or if there is immanent causation ‘at a distance’ as Zimmerman proposes--but this …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |