Harold Noonan

‘What is so bad about permanent coincidence without identity?’ (Mackie 2008: 163). This is the very question at the heart of the debate between pluralists and monists about constitution (Baker 1997, Fine 2003, Gibbard 1975, Johnston 1992, Lewis 1986, Thomson 1983). My answer to Mackie’s question is that it contradicts a supervenience principle we all believe we know to be true. I approach this by considering three possibilities and the supervenience principles with which they conflict. One is somewhat politically controversial; the others are described by Wittgenstein (1967) and Dummett (1979). I focus on the possibility described by Dummett and the supervenience principle with which it conflicts. Our reaction to that possibility shows that we believe that supervenience principle to be true. But I argue that (as is obvious), it is inconsistent with permanent coincidence without identity. That is what is so bad about permanent coincidence without identity.

In his ‘The Countefactual Argument Against Abortion’ (2023) Ryan Kulesa argues that it is prima facie wrong to kill a ‘counterfactual person’. Some early foetuses, though still lacking consciousness, are counterfactual persons. Hence, it is prima facie wrong to kill (abort) these foetuses. Kulesa’s aim is to reconcile apparently conflicting intuitions about abortion and related acts, e.g., the failure to rescue frozen foetuses in abortion rescue cases, which philosophers writing about abortion find it hard to reconcile. I argue that he does not succeed because his argument does not establish that the mere fact that an entity is a counterfactual person is a sufficient condition of the prima face wrongness of killing it. More generally, Kulesa does not establish that the concept of counterfactual personhood is of utility in the debates he is concerned with at all.

As commonly understood, Cian Dorr influentially argues that non-cognitivism must be rejected because it classifies instances of rational inference as wishful thinking. This is wrong. Dorr’s argument, as just described, with its appeal to the notion of wishful thinking, does not refute any version of non-cognitivism. But there is no need to read his paper as putting this argument forward. Rather, his paper can plausibly be understood as putting forward an argument against non-cognitivism which needs no appeal to the notion of wishful thinking. This argument relies on a principle implicit in the paper which gives a necessary condition of rational inference. I call this ‘the No-Difference Principle’. So understood this argument refutes versions of non-cognitivism which do not incorporate minimalism about belief. Enoch and Lenman argue that this is not so. Their arguments are mistaken because they are unable to explain the case of manifestly rational reasoning Dorr actually gives. But non-cognitivism combined with minimalism about belief is untouched by any argument in, or extractable from, Dorr’s paper.

How can we acquire knowledge of metaphysical modality? How can someone come to know that he could have been elsewhere right now, or an accountant rather than a philosophy teacher, but could not have been a turnip? Jago proposes an account of a route to knowledge of the way things could have been and must be. He argues that we can move to knowledge of metaphysical modality from knowledge about essence. Curtis rejects Jago’s explanation. It cannot, he argues, explain our knowledge of de re necessity. We agree. But there is more to be said. To give an account of our knowledge of metaphysical necessity is part of the task Jago set himself. But another part is to give an account of the knowledge of the (non-actual) possibilities accorded to particular objects. And prior to both what is needed, and something Jago attempts to supply, is an account of how ordinary knowers can come to have knowledge of an individual’s essential properties. We argue that Jago’s accounts of both these additional matters are also unsatisfactory. This is important because the thought that our knowledge of metaphysical modality has its source in our knowledge of essence is currently an attractive one and Jago has set out very clearly what must be done to justify the thought. The flaws in his proposal thus indicate the work needed if the attractive thought is to be accepted.

This new book offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to Frege's remarkable philosophical work, examining the main areas of his writings and demonstrating the connections between them. Frege's main contribution to philosophy spans philosophical logic, the theory of meaning, mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. The book clearly explains and assesses Frege's work in these areas, systematically examining his major concepts, and revealing the links between them. The emphasis is on Frege's highly influential work in philosophical logic and the theory of meaning, including the features of his logic, his conceptions of object, concept and function, and his seminal distinction between sense and reference. _Frege_ will be invaluable for students of the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy.

Personites are shorter-lived, person-like things that extend across part of a person’s life. Their existence follows from the standard perdurance view of persons. Johnston argues that it has bizarre moral consequences. For example, it renders morally problematic spending time learning a difficult language in anticipation of going abroad. The crucial thought is that if persons have moral status so do personites. Johnston argues for this claim. Kaiserman responds, on behalf of stage theory, that this only works on a perdurantist account. This is a conservative response to the problem. It seeks to show that retaining the ontology of perdurantism one can resolve the difficulty by a semantic change. I show that the personite problem can be reworked as an argument against stage theorists. The stage theorist can respond by rejecting an assumption of the reasoning. But if it is acceptable for him to do so the perdurantist can reject this assumption too, which is enough by itself to block Johnston’s argument. Thus, for all it helps with the personite problem, stage theorists might as well be perdurantists.

Sider's vagueness argument for perdurantism (2001: 126ff.) has long been seen as one of the most powerful, or perhaps the most powerful, in the perdurantist's arsenal. In its absence, the case against endurantism is significantly weakened. Despite its age, there is still no generally agreed view on its worth. I shall show that this argument fails. It is an extension of a modification Sider gives of David Lewis's argument for unrestricted mereological composition. I shall first set out Lewis's argument for unrestricted mereological composition, Sider's modification, and the problem with it. I will then turn to Sider's extension of the argument into an argument for perdurantism and show that it suffers from the same problem. As I shall explain, though Sider's modification of Lewis's argument for unrestricted mereological composition fails, this is not a crushing blow for proponents of that thesis, since Lewis's original argument is still available, which is valid and plausibly sound. But there is no available retreat for the perdurantist to a Lewisian form of Sider's argument for perdurantism.

Personites are shorter-lived person-like things temporarily coincident with persons. According to the four-dimensional view, they exist. Mark Johnston argues that acknowledging their existence renders activities which we ought to regard as wholly unproblematic morally questionable. So we face a dilemma: either we must reject the capacious personite-including ontology or reject central intuitions of our ordinary moral thinking. Many people disagree. But how to respond to Johnston’s dilemma has proven challenging. Montminy and Russo are among those who disagree. Their radical and important contention is that, with just a proper understanding of what the ascription of temporary and temporal properties amounts to on the four-dimensional view, the appearance of a problem vanishes. I disagree. Adopting the conception of temporary and temporal property ascription which is correct according to the four-dimensional account is no help. What M&R actually do is to deviate from the standard Lewisean account of how ordinary discourse about temporal and temporary properties should be translated into the four-dimensional framework, and it just this deviation which enables them to say that personites are not morally problematic. But the deviation is unwarranted and ad hoc. Johnston’s problem is not so easily dismissed.

Pummer argues against the thesis: Desert. When people culpably do very wrong or bad acts, they deserve punishment in the following sense: at least other things being equal, they ought to be made worse off, simply in virtue of the fact that they culpably did wrong – even if they have repented, are now virtuous, and punishing them would benefit no one. This has strong intuitive appeal and is arguably central to many people’s views of punishment. If Pummer’s arguments succeed, they matter. He argues that what, in certain cases, defenders of Desert must say is the morally right allocation of punishment is intuitively morally unacceptable. He explains that it is only Desert in conjunction with other theses which entails this. But he argues that these are acceptable. I reject this. One additional thesis is Pummer’s ‘Numbers Matter’. This can be rejected by defenders of Desert. Pummer’s case against Desert fails.

Many philosophers today accept the broadly Aristotelian view that one can explain de re necessary properties by invoking essence. These ‘Neo-Aristotelian essentialists’ hold that a property F is an essential property of x iff specifying F gives a correct answer to the Aristotelian ‘what is x?’ question. We are sceptical. According to neo-Aristotelian essentialists, essential properties are not themselves de re modal properties, but they are supposed to explain why things have their de re modal properties. Neo-Aristotelian essentialists accept the following principle (ENL): If x is essentially F, then x is necessarily F. We ask: Why? We first clarify the neo-Aristotelian notion of essence via the Aristotelian “what is x?” question. So far as we can see, the only way to do this is by appeal to the notion of a substance sortal. We then consider the notion of a substance sortal itself, and argue that there is nothing in that notion that even so much as suggests that ENL is true.

Who am I? What is a person? What does it take for a person to persist from one time to another? What is the relation between the mind and the body? These are just some of the questions that constitute the problem of personal identity, one of the oldest and most fundamental of philosophical questions. Personal Identity, Third Edition is a clear and comprehensive introduction to these questions and more. Harold Noonan places the problem of personal identity in the context of more general puzzles about identity, discussing the major historical theories and more recent debates. The book also includes essential historical and philosophical background to the problem of personal identity as found in the arguments of Locke, Reid and Hume among others. The third edition of Personal Identity has been thoroughly reviewed in light of advances in the latest literature and research. This includes significant revision to the important problems of the simple and complex distinction and its relation to reductionism; temporal parts; and the distinction between perdurance and endurance theorists. Noonan also includes an up to date examination of personal identity and memory and personal identity and animalism, particularly the work of Shoemaker, Parfit, Olson and hybrid theorists. Including helpful chapter summaries and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Personal Identity, Third Edition is essential reading for all students of philosophy of mind and metaphysics, as well as students interested in ethics.

What am I? And what is my relationship to the thing I call ‘my body’? Thus each of us can pose for himself the philosophical problems of the nature of the self and the relationship between a person and his body. One answer to the question about the relationship between a person and the thing he calls ‘his body’ is that they are two things composed of the same matter at the same time (like a clay statue and the piece of clay which presently constitutes it). This is the ‘constitution view’. In this paper we give a novel overview of the literature on personal identity, the constitution view, and surrounding topics.

Can identity itself be vague? Can there be vague objects? Does a positive answer to either question entail a positive answer to the other? In this paper we answer these questions as follows: No, No, and Yes. First, we discuss Evans’s famous 1978 argument and argue that the main lesson that it imparts is that identity itself cannot be vague. We defend the argument from objections and endorse this conclusion. We acknowledge, however, that the argument does not by itself establish either that there cannot be vague objects or that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate for ontic reasons. And we further acknowledge that it does not by itself establish that there cannot be identity statements that are indeterminate in virtue of the existence of vague objects. We then go on to argue that, despite this, one who believes in vague objects cannot endorse Evans’s argument. To establish this we offer supplementary arguments that show that if vague objects exist then identity is vague, and that if identity is vague then vague objects exist. Finally we draw attention to an argument parallel to that of Evans’s, but safer, which can be employed against the putative ontic indeterminacy in identity of vague objects which can be differentiated by identity-free properties.