•  241
    Ontology after Carnap (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2016.
    Analytic philosophy is once again in a methodological frame of mind. Nowhere is this more evident than in metaphysics, whose practitioners and historians are actively reflecting on the nature of ontological questions, the status of their answers, and the relevance of contributions both from other areas within philosophy and beyond. Such reflections are hardly new: the debate between Willard van Orman Quine and Rudolf Carnap about how to understand and resolve ontological questions is widely seen…Read more
  •  6
    Editor's note
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (2). 2012.
  •  70
    Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy (review) (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (3). 2009.
    This is a review of Sara Heinämaa, Vili Lähteenmäki, Pauliina Remes (ed.), Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy (Dordrecht: Springer 2007).
  •  338
    Death's Distinctive Harm
    American Philosophical Quarterly 49 (4): 317-30. 2012.
    Despite widespread support for the claim that death can harm the one who dies, debate continues over how to rescue this harm thesis (HT) from Epicurus’s challenge. Disagreements focus on two of the three issues that any defense of HT must resolve: the subject of death’s harm and the timing of its injury. About the nature of death’s harm, however, a consensus has emerged around the view that death harms a subject (when it does) by depriving her of the goods life would’ve afforded had she continue…Read more
  •  164
    This is a review of Raymond Martin and John Barresi's The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (Columbia University Press, 2006).
  •  11
    Editor's note
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (1). 2012.
  •  195
    Animalism, dicephalus, and borderline cases
    Philosophical Psychology 20 (5): 595-608. 2007.
    The rare condition known as dicephalus occurs when (prior to implantation) a zygote fails to divide completely, resulting in twins who are conjoined below the neck. Human dicephalic twins look like a two-headed person, with each brain supporting a distinct mental life. Jeff McMahan has recently argued that, because they instance two of us but only one animal, dicephalic twins provide a counterexample to the animalist's claim that each of us is identical with a human animal. To the contrary, I ar…Read more
  •  628
    Mortal Harm and the Antemortem Experience of Death
    Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (9): 640-42. 2014.
    In his recent book, Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics (Routeledge 2012), James Stacey Taylor challenges two ideas whose provenance may be traced all the way back to Aristotle. The first of these is the thought that death (typically) harms the one who dies (mortal harm thesis). The second is the idea that one can be harmed (and wronged) by events that occur after one’s death (posthumous harm thesis). Taylor devotes two-thirds of the book to arguing against both theses and the remainder to wor…Read more
  •  340
    Disjunctivism
    In A. C. Grayling, A. Pyle & N. Goulder (eds.), Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy, Continuum. 2006.
    A theory is disjunctive insofar as it distinguishes genuine from non-genuine cases of some phenomenon P on the grounds that no salient feature of cases of one type is common to cases of the other type. Genuine and non-genuine cases of P are, in this sense, fundamentally different. Those who advocate disjunctivist theories have (for the most part) been concerned with perception and perceptual knowledge. This entry outlines two such theories: the disjunctivist theory of experience (cf. Brewer, Hin…Read more
  •  1294
    Material Constitution
    In Robert Barnard & Neil Manson (eds.), Continuum Companion to Metaphysics, Continuum Publishing. pp. 149-69. 2012.
    This paper reviews four leading strategies for addressing the problem of material constitution, along with some of the prominent objections faced by each approach. Sections include (1) "The Orthodox View: Coincident Objects," (2) "Dominant Kinds," (3) "Nihilism," (4) "Revising the Logic of Identity," and (5) "Future Research." Also included is an annotated bibliography.
  •  3
    Editor's Note
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (4). 2012.
  •  391
    A new argument for animalism
    Analysis 72 (4): 685-690. 2012.
    The view known as animalism asserts that we are human animals—that each of us is an instance of the Homo sapiens species. The standard argument for this view is known as the thinking animal argument . But this argument has recently come under attack. So, here, a new argument for animalism is introduced. The animal ancestors argument illustrates how the case for animalism can be seen to piggyback on the credibility of evolutionary theory. Two objections are then considered and answered
  •  54
    No Impediment to Solidity as Impediment
    Metaphysica 7 (1): 35-41. 2006.
    ABSTRACT: Quassim Cassam (1997) accepts the standard account of solidity, according to which, if S feels x as solid, then S feels x as an imediment to his movement. Recently, Martin Fricke and Paul Snowdon (2003) have presented a battery of counter-examples designed to show that S may feel x as solid and as exerting a pressure that supports or facilitates his movement. In this note, I defend the standard account against Fricke and Snowdon’s attack. Integral to this defense is a distinction betwe…Read more
  •  98
    Editor's Introduction
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 48 (1): 1-2. 2010.
    Editor's introduction to first issue of The Southern Journal of Philosophy under the imprint of Wiley-Blackwell (48.1).
  •  2762
    Animalism
    In A. C. Grayling, A. Pyle & N. Goulder (eds.), Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy, Thoemmes Continuum. 2006.
    This entry sketches the theory of personal identity that has come to be known as animalism. Animalism’s hallmark claim is that each of us is identical with a human animal. Moreover, animalists typically claim that we could not exist except as animals, and that the (biological) conditions of our persistence derive from our status as animals. Prominent advocates of this view include Michael Ayers, Eric Olson, Paul Snowdon, Peter van Inwagen, and David Wiggins.
  •  6
    Editor's note
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3). 2012.
  •  281
    Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, and Identity (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2016.
    What are we? What is the nature of the human person? Animalism has a straightforward answer to these long-standing philosophical questions: we are animals. After being ignored for a long time in philosophical discussions of our nature, this idea has recently gained considerable support in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Containing mainly new papers as well as two highly important articles that were recently published elsewhere, this volume's contributors include both emerging voices in the d…Read more
  •  388
    Animalism
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014.
    Among the questions to be raised under the heading of “personal identity” are these: “What are we?” (fundamental nature question) and “Under what conditions do we persist through time?” (persistence question). Against the dominant neo-Lockean approach to these questions, the view known as animalism answers that each of us is an organism of the species Homo sapiens and that the conditions of our persistence are those of animals. Beyond describing the content and historical background of animalism…Read more
  •  23
    Ontology after Carnap
    with Sandra Lapointe
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 71 (1): 166-169. 2016.
  •  21
    Editor's Introduction
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (S1): 1-5. 2014.
  •  3
    After motivating the general problem of personal identity and considering several possible accounts, this entry reviews a variety of arguments for and against the animalist criterion of personal identity