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491The Epicurean View of DeathThe Journal of Ethics 17 (1-2): 65-78. 2013.The Epicurean view is that there is nothing bad about death, and we are wrong to loathe it. This paper distinguishes several different such views, and shows that while some of them really would undermine our loathing of death, others would not. It then argues that any version that did so could be at best vacuously true: If there is nothing bad about death, that can only be because there is nothing bad about anything
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151Relativism and persistencePhilosophical Studies 88 (2): 141-162. 1997.Philosophers often talk as if what it takes for a person to persist through time were up to us, as individuals or as a linguistic community, to decide. In most ordinary situations it might be fully determinate whether someone has survived or perished: barring some unforeseen catastrophe, it is clear enough that you will still exist ten minutes from now, for example. But there is no shortage of actual and imaginary situations where it is not so clear whether one survives. Here reasonable people m…Read more
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379What does functionalism tell us about personal identity?Noûs 36 (4): 682-698. 2002.Sydney Shoemaker argues that the functionalist theory of mind entails a psychological-continuity view of personal identity, as well as providing a defense of that view against a crucial objection. I show that his view has surprising consequences, e.g. that no organism could have mental properties and that a thing's mental properties fail to supervene even weakly on its microstructure and surroundings. I then argue that the view founders on "fission" cases and rules out our being material things.…Read more
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87Identity, personal identity, and the self, by John PerryEuropean Journal of Philosophy 14 (3). 2006.
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238The Paradox of IncreaseThe 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
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34Consciousness and persons: Unity and identity, Michael Tye. Cambridge, ma, and London, uk.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2). 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.
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137The Metaphysical Implications of Conjoined TwinningSouthern 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
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |