•  385
    Personal Identity and Ethics
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    What justifies our holding a person morally responsible for some past action? Why am I justified in having a special prudential concern for some future persons and not others? Why do many of us think that maximizing the good within a single life is perfectly acceptable, but maximizing the good across lives is wrong? In these and other normative questions, it looks like any answer we come up with will have to make an essential reference to personal identity. So, for instance, it seems we are just…Read more
  •  127
    Moral responsibility and the self
    In Shaun Gallagher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Self, Oxford University Press. pp. 487--521. 2011.
    This paper discusses two features of the "morally responsible self." The first has to do with the preconditions of personal identity assumed to inhere in a morally responsible self. The paper argues that it is not a requirement of moral responsibility that the self held responsible for some action is one and the same individual as the self that performed it. the second feature involves what's known as the "deep self" theory of responsibility. The paper discusses the history of the theory, as…Read more
  •  92
    Embryos, Souls, and the Fourth Dimension
    Social Theory and Practice 31 (1): 51-75. 2005.
    This paper defends the permissibility of stem cell research against a theological objector who objects to it by appealing to "souls."
  •  238
    Selves and Moral Units
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 80 (4): 391-419. 1999.
    Derek Parfit claims that, at certain times and places, the metaphysical units he labels *'selves" may be thought of as the morally significant units (I.e., the objects of moral concern) for such things as resource distribution, moral responsibility, commitments, etc. But his concept of the self is problematic in important respects, and it remains unclear just why and how this entity should count as a moral unit in the first place. In developing a view I call *'Moderate Reductionism," I attempt t…Read more
  •  811
    The Stony Metaphysical Heart of Animalism
    In Stephan Blatti & Paul Snowdon (eds.), Animalism, Oxford University Press. pp. 303-328. 2016.
    Animalism—the view that the identity across time of individuals like us consists in the persistence of our animal organisms—does poorly at accounting for our identity-related practical concerns. The reason is straightforward: whereas our practical concerns seem to track the identity of psychological creatures—persons—animalism focuses on the identity of human organisms who are not essentially persons. This lack of fit between our practical concerns and animalism has been taken to reduce animal…Read more