A. P. Taylor

This paper derives a complete ethical framework directly from the structural properties of physical reality, without importing external values, authority, or rights. Reality is constrained and produces non-equivalent outcomes: some actions enable systems to persist and function, while others cause irreversible degradation. Any system capable of action must therefore select among these outcomes. Arbitrary selection treats non-equivalent outcomes as equivalent, creating a structural self-contradiction for the acting system itself. Justification is thus required, and the only non-arbitrary grounding available within a constrained system is necessity. The traditional is/ought gap arises only if one presupposes that an agent can stand outside the causal structure of reality. This presupposition lacks grounding in physics, biology, or neuroscience: agency is an emergent property of embedded systems, not a separable observer. Once agent separability is rejected, the gap does not arise and requires no bridging. Ethics therefore emerges not as an imposed system of values, but as the structural requirement for non-arbitrary action within reality itself. The derivation proceeds as a single, unbroken chain from observable physical constraints to the conditions of justified action. No value premises are introduced. The chain either holds or it does not.

This book is about the development of social history, and the complex relationship between social history and social theory. It offers an introduction to many of the most important social theorists, as well as current debates within historiography. As social history has continued to expand, historians have made greater use of the theoretical insights of social scientists. The book draws on specific detailed studies in order to present a reconceptualisation of the relationship between history and theory. The authors make the case for theoretically-informed history using a variety of primary and secondary texts. This is a jointly-authored book, and the writing was equally shared between the two authors.

This composition text focuses on argument and persuasion using examples, exercises, readings, and writing assignments. The text guides students through developing a thesis, finding and organizing evidence, and writing and revising several different types of argumentative papers. The second edition de-emphasizes the language of formal logic, and all the readings, examples, and exercises have been updated. Additional coverage has been given to refutation. Widely used in both advanced composition and second semester freshman courses

We argue that the secular cannot offer a materialist response to “The Problem of Too Many Thinkers” that makes autonomy possible. The materialist can accommodate what truths about respecting personal freedom and autonomy only by accepting a counterintuitive sparse ontology. Immaterial accounts of the person look good by comparison. However, those immaterialist theories that don’t posit a divinely created soul suffer from certain metaphysical puzzles avoided by those who do claim divine creation. A soul that requires divine creation strongly suggests that such immaterial beings were made for a purpose. Such purposeful creation makes theistic ethics seem far more plausible.

We argue that animalism is the only materialist account of personal identity that can account for the autonomy that we typically think of ourselves as possessing. All the rival materialist theories suffer from a moral version of the problem of too many thinkers when they posit a human person that overlaps a numerically distinct human animal. The different persistence conditions of overlapping thinkers will lead them to have interests that conflict, which in many cases prevents them both from autonomously forming and acting on the same intentions. These problems are exacerbated by problems of self-reference plaguing the overlapping thinkers. We contend that the impossibility of simultaneous autonomous action by animals and persons provides a reason to favor animalism over Neo-Lockeanism, Four-Dimensionalism, Constitution theory, and brain-size views of the person. We anticipate and reject arguments that the autonomy of the person and the animal can be shown to be compatible by relying upon either the Parfitian thesis that identity isn’t what matters or claiming that animals acquire the interests of the person they constitute.

Split brains that result in two simultaneous streams of consciousness cut off from each other are wrongly held to be grounds for doubting the existence of the divinely created soul. The mistake is based on two related errors: first, a failure to appreciate the soul's dependence upon neurological functioning; second, a fallacious belief that if the soul is simple, i.e. without parts, then there must be a unity to its thought, all of its thoughts being potentially accessible to reflection or even unreflective causal interactions. But a soul theorist can allow neurological events to keep some conscious thoughts unavailable to others

I argue that four-dimensionalism and the desire satisfaction account of well-being are incompatible. For every person whose desires are satisfied, there will be many shorter-lived individuals (‘person-stages’ or ‘subpersons’) who share the person’s desires but who do not exist long enough to see those desires satisfied; not only this, but in many cases their desires are frustrated so that the desires of the beings in whom they are embedded as proper temporal parts may be fulfilled. I call this the frustrating problem for four-dimensionalism. In the first half of the paper I lay the groundwork for understanding the frustrating problem, and then in the second half, I will examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem on behalf of the four-dimensionalist, (i) the Parfit (1984) inspired claim that identity is not what matters, (ii) the personal pronoun revisionism of Noonan (2010), (iii) the indirect concern account of Hudson (2001), (iv) the sensible stages account of Lewis (1986), (v) a multiple-concepts account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) a No Desire View according to which subpersons have no mental states and thus no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions will help the four-dimensionalist; she does better to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the defender of the desire satisfaction theory does better to reject four-dimensionalism.