• Constitution
    In What are we?, Oxford University Press. 2007.
    This chapter is about the view that we are material things constituted by organisms; this view is advocated by Baker, Shoemaker, and others. Each of us is made of the same matter as an organism, but our persistence conditions or essential properties preclude our being organisms ourselves. This goes together with the general view that qualitatively different objects can be made of the same matter at once: constitutionalism. Constitutionalism is supported by arguments involving the persistence of …Read more
  • Animals
    In What are we?, Oxford University Press. 2007.
    This chapter examines animalism, the view that we are biological organisms. It is based on the claim that human organisms think just as we do. This implies that if I am not an organism, I am one of at least two thinkers of my thoughts, making it hard to see how I could know that I am the nonanimal thinker: the thinking-animal problem. Some proposed solutions are critically examined, notably Shoemaker's claim that human organisms cannot think and Noonan's account of how we might know that we are …Read more
  •  42
    The Dualist Project and the Remote-Control Objection
    Roczniki 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.
  •  672
    Against Person Essentialism
    Mind 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
  •  11
    Warum wir Tiere sind
    In Alfred North Whitehead (ed.), La Science Et le Monde Moderne, De Gruyter. pp. 11-22. 2006.
  •  60
    Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, MICHAEL TYE. Cambridge, MA, and London, UK
    Philosophy 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.
  •  36
    Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (review)
    Mind 110 (438): 427-430. 2001.
  •  101
    What 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.
  •  18
    X*-imperfect identity
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106 (2): 247-264. 2006.
  •  78
    Swinburne’s Brain Transplants
    Philosophia 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.
  •  48
    Interview by Simon Cushing
    Journal of Cognition and Neuroethics (Philosophical Profiles). 2016.
    Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Eric Olson on 1 July 2016.
  •  173
    Narrative and persistence
    Canadian 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
  •  12
    Lowe's Defence of Constitutionalism
    Philosophical 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
  •  36
    Material Coincidence and the Indiscernibility Problem
    Philosophical 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.
  •  307
    Was 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
  •  14
    Identity, Personal Identity, and the Self, by John Perry (review)
    European Journal of Philosophy 14 (3): 434-437. 2006.
  •  1
    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
  •  239
    The Paradox of Increase
    The Monist 89 (3): 390-417. 2006.
    It seems evident that things sometimes get bigger by acquiring new parts. But there is an ancient argument purporting to show that this is impossible: the paradox of increase or growing argument.i Here is a sketch of the paradox. Suppose we have an object, A, and we want to make it bigger by adding a part, B. That is, we want to bring it about that A first lacks and then has B as a part. Imagine, then, that we conjoin B to A in some appropriate way. Never mind what A and B are, or what this conj…Read more
  •  34
    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.
  •  146
    The Metaphysical Implications of Conjoined Twinning
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (S1): 24-40. 2014.
    Conjoined twinning is said to show that the number of human people—the number of us—can differ from the number of human organisms, and hence that we are not organisms. The paper shows that these arguments either assume the point at issue, rely on dubious and undefended assumptions, or add nothing to more familiar arguments for the same conclusion
  •  231
    The Remnant-Person Problem
    In Stephan Blatti Paul F. Snowdon (ed.), Essays on Animalism, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Animalism is the view that you and I are animals. That is, we are animals in the straightforward sense of having the property of being an animal, or in that each of us is identical to an animal-not merely in the derivative sense of having animal bodies, or of being "constituted by" animals. And by 'animal' I mean an organism of the animal kingdom." Sensible though it may appear, animalism is highly contentious. The most common objection is that it conflicts with widespread and deep beliefs about…Read more
  •  72
    Thinking animals and the constitution view
    Field Guide to Philosophy of Mind. 2001.
    The article discusses Lynne Rudder Baker's view in Persons and Bodies and how it relates to animalism.
  •  995
    Personal identity
    In Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2002.
    Personal identity deals with questions about ourselves qua people (or persons). Many of these questions are familiar ones that occur to everyone at some time: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? Discussions of personal identity go right back to the origins of Western philosophy, and most major figures have had something to say about it. (There is also a rich literature on personal identity in Eastern philosophy, which I am not competent to discuss. Collins 1982 is a g…Read more
  •  873
    Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave
    In Keith Augustine & Michael Martin (eds.), The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 409-423. 2015.
    This paper—written for nonspecialist readers—asks whether life after death is in any sense possible given the apparent fact that after we die our remains decay to the point where only randomly scattered atoms remain. The paper argues that this is possible only if our remains are not in fact dispersed in this way, and discusses how that might be the case. 1. Life After Death -- 2. Total Destruction -- 3. The Soul -- 4. Body-Snatching -- 5. Radical Resurrection -- 6. Irreversibility -- 7. Atomic R…Read more
  •  355
    The Zombies Among Us
    Noûs 52 (1): 216-226. 2016.
    Philosophers disagree about whether there could be “zombies”: beings physically identical to normal human people but lacking consciousness. Establishing their possibility would refute physicalism. But it is seldom noted that the popular “constitution view” of human people implies that our bodies actually are zombies. This would contradict several widely held views in the philosophy of mind.
  •  143
    Human atoms
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (3): 396-406. 1998.
    In this paper I shall explore a novel alternative to these familiar views. In his recent book Sub ects of Ex erience, E. J. Lowe argues, as many others have done before, that you and I are not animals. It follows from this, he says, that we must be simple substances without parts. That may sound like Cartesian dualism. But Lowe is no Cartesian. He argues from premises that many present-day materialists accept. And he claims that our being mereologically simple is consistent with our having such …Read more
  •  248
    Temporal parts and timeless parthood
    Noûs 40 (4). 2006.
    What is a temporal part? Most accounts explain it in terms of timeless parthood: a thing's having a part without temporal qualification. Some find this hard to understand, and thus find the view that persisting things have temporal parts--fourdimensionalism--unintelligible. T. Sider offers to help by defining temporal parthood in terms of a thing's having a part at a time. I argue that no such account can capture the notion of a temporal part that figures in orthodox four-dimensionalism: tempora…Read more