It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with dementia.

From the time of Locke, discussions of personal identity have often ignored the question of our basic metaphysical nature: whether we human people are biological organisms, spatial or temporal parts of organisms, bundles of perceptions, or what have you. The result of this neglect has been centuries of wild proposals and clashing intuitions. What Are We? is the first general study of this important question. It beings by explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, such as (...) questions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. It then examines in some depth the main possible accounts of our metaphysical nature, detailing both their theoretical virtues and the often grave difficulties they face. The book does not endorse any particular account of what we are, but argues that the matter turns on more general issues in the ontology of material things. If composition is universal--if any material things whatever make up something bigger--then we are temporal parts of organisms. If things never compose anything bigger, so that there are only mereological simples, then we too are simples--perhaps the immaterial substances of Descartes--or else we do not exist at all (a view Olson takes very seriously). The intermediate view that some things compose bigger things and others do not leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that we are organisms. So we can discover what we are by working out when composition occurs. (shrink)

The Standard View of personal identity says that someone who exists now can exist at another time only if there is continuity of her mental contents or capacities. But no person is psychologically continuous with a fetus, for a fetus, at least early in its career. has no mental features at all. So the Standard View entails that no person was ever a fetus---contrary to the popular assumption that an unthinking fetus is a potential person. It is also mysterious what (...) does ordinarily happen to a human fetus, if it does not come to be a person. Although an extremely complex variant of the Standard View may allow one to persist without psychological continuity before one becomes a person but not afterwards, a far simpler solution is to accept a radically non-psychological account of our identity. (shrink)

This work presents a dialogue between classical and contemporary Indian and postmodern thinkers. Juxtaposing the diverse perspectives of Indian philosophers and philosophies, including Buddhism, Sankara, and Radhakrishnan, and western postmodern thinkers such as Lacan and Derrida, Olson addresses topics such as desire, suffering, the self, and identity.

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.

A very clear and powerfully argued defence of a most important and surprisingly neglected view."--Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford. "If Dr. Olson is right, we are living animals and what goes on in our minds is wholly irrelevant to questions about our persistence through time....[Should] transform philosophical thinking about personal identity."--Peter van Inwagen, University of Notre Dame.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022.

This chapter explains Franz Brentano's metaethical theory and how it purports to deal with such difficulties. Brentano explains correctness in emotions by analogy with correctness in judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with self-evidence (Evidenz). Self-evident judgements are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on "inner perception" or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically. Brentano's metaethical theory concerns first and foremost the (...) psychology of valuing and of moral judgement. Brentano is clearly a cognitivist about evaluative and moral judgement; such judgements are judgements about the correctness of feelings, and judgements are cognitive acts. However, one aspect of his position that seems congenial to contemporary expressivism. This has to do with expressivist treatments of disagreement. Brentano's views seem akin to the kind of foundationalist intuitionism that is traditionally associated with non-naturalism. (shrink)

Transhumanists want to free us from the constraints imposed by our humanity by means of “uploading”: extracting information from the brain, transferring it to a computer, and using it to create a purely electronic person there. That is supposed to move us from our human bodies to computers. This presupposes that a human being could literally move to a computer by a mere transfer of information. The chapter questions this assumption, then asks whether the procedure might be just as good, (...) as far as our interests go, even if it could not move us to a computer. (shrink)

The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force was assembled by the American Psychological Association (APA) to guide policy on the role of psychologists in interrogations at foreign detention centers for the purpose of U.S. national security. The task force met briefly in 2005, and its report was quickly accepted by the APA Board of Directors and deemed consistent with the APA Ethics Code by the APA Ethics Committee. This rapid acceptance was unusual for a number of reasons but (...) primarily because of the APA's long-standing tradition of taking great care in developing ethical policies that protected anyone who might be impacted by the work of psychologists. Many psychological and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as reputable journalists, believed the risk of harm associated with psychologist participation in interrogations at these detention centers was not adequately addressed by the report. The present critique analyzes the assumptions of the PENS report and its interpretations of the APA Ethics Code. We demonstrate that it presents only one (and not particularly representative) side of a complex set of ethical issues. We conclude with a discussion of more appropriate psychological contributions to national security and world peace that better respect and preserve human rights. (shrink)

The first English translation with commentary of three classic Taoist texts on immortality • Translates The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic, The Immortals, and The Three Treasures of Immortality • Defines the Taoist concept of immortality and examines the lives and practices of Taoists who achieved this state • Reveals the steps needed to achieve immortality in our modern society Taoist mystics claim that it is possible to achieve immortality: “Within each of us dwells the medicine to cure the affliction (...) of mortality.” Now Western readers can access the wisdom of Taoist masters on the subject of immortality through the first English translations of three classic Taoist treatises: The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic; The Immortals, from the Pao P’u Tzu by Ko Hung of the Sung Dynasty; and The Three Treasures of Immortality, from the Dragon Gate Sect. The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic teaches that one can attain immortality through the cultivation of the three treasures of Taoism: ching (sexual and physical energy), qi (breath and vital energy), and shen (spirit and mental energy). Chinese history is sprinkled with accounts of individuals who applied the lessons of the Jade Emperor and lived up to 200 years. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of Taoism, martial arts, and Chinese history and culture, Stuart Alve Olson accompanies his translations with informative commentary that explains the historical context of the texts as well as demonstrates the practical applications of their teachings in contemporary life. (shrink)

Are there moral facts? According to moral nihilism, the answer is no. Some moral nihilists are moral error theorists, who think that moral judgements purport to refer to moral facts, but since there are no moral facts, moral judgements are uniformly false or untrue. Terence Cuneo has recently raised an original and potentially very serious objection to moral error theory. According to Cuneo’s ‘normative theory of speech’, normative facts, some of which are moral facts, are crucially involved in explanations of (...) how it is that we are able to perform illocutionary speech acts, such as asserting, promising, and commanding. Many versions of moral error theory reject not only moral facts, but also normative facts of the kind Cuneo takes to be among the prerequisites of our abilities to perform illocutionary speech acts. If Cuneo’s argument is successful, then, moral error theory has the unsettling implication that we do not speak, and possibly that we cannot speak. I shall argue, however, that the argument ultimately fails, chiefly because its core premise fails to establish that illocutionary speech acts are normative in the first place. (shrink)

Issues of life and death such as abortion, assisted suicide, capital punishment, and others are among the most contentious in many societies. Whose rights are protected? How do these rights and protections change over time and who makes those decisions? Based on the author's award-winning and hugely popular undergraduate course at The University of Texas, this book explores these questions and the fundamentally sociological processes that underlie the quest for morality and justice in human societies. The author's goal is not (...) to advocate any particular moral "high ground," but to shed light on the social movements and social processes that are at the root of these seemingly personal moral questions"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The book is an examination of the problem of the self and the role of error in its identity.

Based on the author's award-winning and hugely popular undergraduate course at the University of Texas, this book explores these questions and the fundamentally sociological processes which underlie the quest for morality and justice in ...

A single question -- An exclusionary movement is born -- Legal reform to eliminate defectives -- Redrawing the boundaries of protected life -- Crystallizing events and ethical principles -- A bolt from the blue: abortion is legalized -- Man's law or god's will -- Inches from life -- Should the baby live? -- Limits to tolerable suffering -- Alleviating suffering and protecting life -- God, duty, and life worth living -- Assisted dying -- Removing the protective boundaries of life -- (...) A campaign to stop the executions -- The pendulum swings, the debate continues -- Justifying torture -- Lessons learned. (shrink)

According to T. M. Scanlon's 'buck-passing' analysis of value, x is good means that x has properties that provide reasons to take up positive attitudes vis-à-vis x. Some authors have claimed that this idea can be traced back to Franz Brentano, who said in 1889 that the judgement that x is good is the judgement that a positive attitude to x is correct ('richtig'). The most discussed problem in the recent literature on buckpassing is known as the 'wrong kind of (...) reason' problem (the WKR problem): it seems quite possible that there is sometimes reason to favour an object although that object is not good and possibly very evil. The problem is to delineate exactly what distinguishes reasons of the right kind from reasons of the wrong kind. In this paper we offer a Brentano-style solution. We also note that one version of the WKR problem was put forward by G. E. Moore in his review of the English translation of Brentano's Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Before getting to how our Brentano-style approach might offer a way out for Brentano and the buck-passers, we briefly consider and reject an interesting attempt to solve the WKR problem recently proposed by John Skorupski. (shrink)

Clear-eyed and foundational, Roger Olson's The Essentials of Christian Thought outlines the most basic, necessary principles of a Christian outlook on the world---principles without which no thinking can properly be viewed as Christian.