This article examines the women-led natural deathcare movment in the early 21st century U.S., focusing upon the movement’s non-coincidental epistemological and gender-political similarities to the natural childbirth movement. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon the author’s intensive interviews with pioneers and leaders of the U.S. natural deathcare movement, as well as from the author’s own participation in the movement, this article argues that the political similarities between the countercultural natural childbirth and natural deathcare movements reveal a common cultural provocation—one (...) that spans the natal transition and the fatal transition. (shrink)

This article examines the political controversy in the United States surrounding a new process for the disposition of human remains, alkaline hydrolysis. AH technologies use a heated solution of water and strong alkali to dissolve tissues, yielding an effluent that can be disposed through municipal sewer systems, and brittle bone matter that can be dried, crushed, and returned to the decedent’s family. Though AH is legal in eight US states, opposition to the technology remains strong. Opponents express concerns about public (...) health and safety and about the dignity of our mortal remains. Proponents focus on AH’s environmental benefits over cremation and earth burial, aligning the technology with the “green burial” movement. Drawing from historical sources, Science, Technology, and Society literature, interviews with funeral professionals, industry literature, and various media sources, this article examines four prominent conceptions of the dead human body as they are deployed by various funeral stakeholders seeking to exercise authority over the dead human body, to influence the trajectory of AH technology in the United States, and to chart a course for US deathcare culture in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Adopting a waste-directed study of the dead human body, and various practices of body preparation and body disposition in funerary contexts, I argue that necro-waste is a ubiquitous but largely unknown presence. To know necro-waste is to examine the ways in which the dead human body is embedded in particular personal, social, historical, political, and environmental contexts. This study focuses on funerary practices in the US and Canada, where embalming has been routinely practiced. Viewing dead human bodies as materials processed (...) by a robust funerary-industrial complex, I describe the processes by which the human body becomes separated into funeral products and funeral waste. I explain how funeral products themselves may be treated as waste, and I discuss varying attitudes toward the meaning and status of the human corpse. A waste-directed study of the human corpse is compatible with the symbolic dignity universally attributed to the dead human body. Yet, if the practices through which people honor the d.. (shrink)

Traditionally, the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists has centered on the value of knowledge and its justification. A value pluralist, virtue-theoretic approach to epistemology allows us to accept what I shall call the insight of externalism while still acknowledging the importance of internalists’ insistence on the value of reflection. Intellectual virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a study of a host of epistemic values, including understanding, wisdom, and what I call articulate reflection. Each of these epistemic values (...) is a good internal to inquiry. Thus, an inquiry-based conception of virtue is particularly well suited to help us account for a wide variety of epistemic goods, without reducing the value of those many goods to their contribution to the value of knowledge. Moreover, an inquiry-based conception of virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a general study of value, the scope of which is not restricted to epistemic value. (shrink)

We articulate John Dewey’s “independent factors” approach to moral philosophy and then adapt and extend this approach to address contemporary debate concerning the nature and sources of epistemic normativity. We identify three factors (agent reliability, synchronic rationality, and diachronic rationality) as each making a permanent contribution to epistemic value. Critical of debates that stem from the reductionistic ambitions of epistemological systems that privilege of one or another of these three factors, we advocate an axiological pluralism that acknowledges each factor as (...) an independent “spring” of epistemic value within responsible inquiry. (shrink)

In this, his second book, Robert Talisse “attempts to make explicit the pragmatist roots and motivations of the concept of democracy” developed in his 2005 book, Democracy after Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics . Inspired by the work of the classical American pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, Talisse defends a substantive, epistemic conception of democracy, which he calls “epistemic perfectionism.” Pragmatists, political philosophers, and social epistemologists alike will discover in this book a provocative synthesis of their respective inquiries, which Talisse wields (...) in the service of democratic theory.According to Talisse, it is unfortunate that John Dewey’s philosophy has dominated pragmatist discussions of democracy, for Dewey’s theory is “fundamentally misguided and ultimately incoherent when taken as a social ideal for contemporary democratic societies” . Talisse objects to Dewey’s democratic theory because it is premised upon a “comprehensive moral doctrine” that reasonable persons may reject. But he also objects to Deweyan democratic practice, which aims “to coerce people” to live according to the Deweyan democrat’s reasonably rejectable “philosophical commitments” . Talisse argues that a Peircean conception of democracy is superior because it countenances “the fact of reasonable pluralism,” by which Talisse means, “the full and proper exercise of human reason, even. (shrink)

The use of the term "applied ethics" to denote a particular field of moral inquiry (distinct from but related to both normative ethics and meta-ethics) is a relatively new phenomenon. The individuation of applied ethics as a special division of moral investigation gathered momentum in the 1970s and 1980s, largely as a response to early twentieth- century moral philosophy's overwhelming concentration on moral semantics and its apparent inattention to practical moral problems that arose in the wake of significant social and (...) technological transformations. The field of applied ethics is now a well established, professional domain sustained by institutional research centers, professional academic appointments, and devoted journals. As the field of applied ethics grew and developed, its contributors predominantly advocated consequentialist and deontological approaches to the problems they address; but lately a significant number of moral philosophers have begun to bring the resources of virtue ethics to bear upon the ever-evolving subject matters of applied ethics. (shrink)

This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology and queer theory and tackle questions such as: how can we define queer death studies as a research field? How can queer death studies problematize and rethink the life-death binary? Which notions and hermeneutic tools could be borrowed from other disciplines in order to better (...) define queer death studies? The present article includes the following contributions: – MacCormack P., What does queer death studies mean?; – Radomska M., On queering death studies; – Lykke N., Death as vibrancy; – Hillerup Hansen I., What concreteness will do to resolve the uncertain; – Olson P., Queer objectivity as a response to denials of death; – Manganas N., The queer lack of a chthonic instinct. (shrink)

Our thesis is that reasoning plays a greater—or at least a different—role in understanding oral discourse such as lectures and speeches than it does in understanding comparatively long written discourse. For example, both reading and listening involve framing hypotheses about the direction the discourse is headed. But since a reader can skip around to check and revise hypotheses, the reader’s stake in initially getting it right is not as great as the listener’s, who runs the risk of getting hopelessly lost. (...) We also consider how representing the content of discourse and dealing with its pragmatic logic differs in reading and listening. (shrink)

This book consists of fifteen new essays and an introduction by Zimmerman. Most of the authors are Christian philosophers in the ‘analytic’ tradition, and the book is of particular interest to readers of that sort; but there is nothing here that will interest only Christians. As the title suggests, all the essays have at least something to do with persons as such, and most deal with metaphysical issues. Beyond that they are pretty disparate. Seven papers are on substance dualism or (...) idealism, which get a more sympathetic hearing than current fashion would dictate. Lynn Rudder Baker, Hud Hudson, and Peter van Inwagen discuss materialist accounts of human people that they have developed elsewhere. There are papers on specifically Christian doctrines--immortality, divine incarnation, the trinity, and original sin--and one on the value of human people by Philip Quinn. For better or worse, there is almost no discussion of the existence of God. Even so, no one can accuse the authors of avoiding the big questions and retreating to narrow, technical issues. There is as much at stake in these essays as there is in any work of Plato or Kant. (shrink)

Recent discussion of Scanlon's account of value, which analyses the value of X in terms of agents' reasons for having certain pro-attitudes or contra-attitudes towards X, has generated the problem (WKR problem): this is the problem, for the buck-passing view, of being able to acknowledge that there may be good reasons for attributing final value to X that have nothing to do with the final value that X actually possesses. I briefly review some of the existing solutions offered to the (...) WKR problem, including those by Philip Stratton-Lake and Jonas Olson, and offer a new, better one, which accommodates all the relevant cases presented in the literature. (shrink)

This paper is about the neglected question of what sort of things we are metaphysically speaking. It is different from the mind-body problem and from familiar questions of personal identity. After explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, the paper tries to show how difficult it is to give a satisfying answer.

Philip Pettit offers a new insight into moral psychology. He shows that attachments such as love, and certain virtues such as honesty, require their characteristic behaviours not only as things actually are, but also in cases where things are different from how they actually are. He explores the implications of this idea for key moral issues.

Personal identity deals with questions about ourselves qua people (or persons). Many of these questions are familiar ones that occur to everyone at some time: What am I? When did I begin? What will happen to me when I die? Discussions of personal identity go right back to the origins of Western philosophy, and most major figures have had something to say about it. (There is also a rich literature on personal identity in Eastern philosophy, which I am not competent (...) to discuss. Collins 1982 is a good source.). (shrink)

My aim in this essay is largely defensive. I aim to discuss some problems for moral error theory and to offer plausible solutions. A full positive defense of moral error theory would require substantial investigations of rival metaethical views, but that is beyond the scope of this essay. I will, however, try to motivate moral error theory and to clarify its commitments. Moral error theorists typically accept two claims – one conceptual and one ontological – about moral facts. The conceptual (...) claim is that moral facts are or entail facts about categorical reasons (and correspondingly that moral claims are or entail claims about categorical reasons); the ontological claim is that there are no categorical reasons – and consequently no moral facts – in reality. I accept this version of moral error theory and I try to unpack what it amounts to in Section 2.1 In the course of doing so I consider two preliminary objections: that moral error theory is (probably) false because its implications are intuitively unacceptable (what I call the Moorean objection) and that the general motivation for moral error theory is self-undermining in that it rests on a hidden appeal to norms. The above characterization seems to entail the standard formulation of moral error theory, according to which first-order moral claims are uniformly false. Critics have argued that the standard formulation is incoherent since – by the law of excluded middle – the negation of a false claim is true. Hence if ‘Torture is wrong’ is false, ‘Torture is not wrong’ is true. Contrary to what moral error theorists contend, then, moral error theory seems to carry first-order moral implications that by the theory’s own lights are uniformly false. In Section 3 I suggest a formulation that is consistent with the standard formulation of moral error theory, free of first-order moral implications, and subject to no logical difficulties. In Section 4 I consider and rebut Stephen Finlay’s recent attack on moral error theory. According to Finlay the conceptual claim is false because all moral claims – and indeed all normative claims – are, or should be understood as, relativized to some moral standard or system of ends. Moral error theorists thus attribute to ordinary speakers an error that simply isn’t there. I argue that Finlay’s view has some very implausible implications and that it does not avoid commitment to various forms of error theory. This becomes especially clear when we focus on fundamental moral claims. In Section 5 I consider the worry that error theorists’ rejection of categorical reasons proves too much; in particular, the worry that error theorists’ qualms about categorical reasons apply equally to claims about hypothetical reasons, that is, claims to the effect that there is reason to take the means to one’s ends. In my view error theorists such as Mackie and Joyce have failed to pay due consideration to this problem. What the challenge establishes, I submit, is that error theorists cannot just take for granted that hypothetical reasons are metaphysically unproblematic; they must offer an account of hypothetical reasons that shows that they are. I argue that the only plausible account available to error theorists is one according to which claims about hypothetical reasons reduce to non-normative claims about relations between means and ends. (shrink)

According to T.M. Scanlon's buck-passing account of value, to be valuable is not to possess intrinsic value as a simple and unanalysable property, but rather to have other properties that provide reasons to take up an attitude in favour of their owner or against it. The 'wrong kind of reasons' objection to this view is that we may have reasons to respond for or against something without this having any bearing on its value. The challenge is to explain why such (...) reasons are of the wrong kind. This is what I set out to do, after illustrating the objection more thoroughly. (shrink)

The view that we are human animals, " animalism ", is deeply unpopular. This paper explains what that claim says and why it is so contentious. It then argues that those who deny it face an awkward choice. They must either deny that there are any human animals, deny that human animals can think, or deny that we are the thinking things located where we are.

This book presents views of the concept of intention and its relationship to communication from three perspectives: philosphy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. The book is a record of a workshop held in 1987.

It is often said that the same particles can simultaneously make up two or more material objects that differ in kind and in their mental, biological, and other qualitative properties. Others wonder how objects made of the same parts in the same arrangement and surroundings could differ in these ways. I clarify this worry and show that attempts to dismiss or solve it miss its point. At most one can argue that it is a problem we can live with.

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)

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)

Trust me: my chair isn't big enough for two. You may doubt that every rational, conscious being is a person; perhaps there are beings that mistakenly believe themselves to be people. If so, read ‘rational, conscious being’ or the like for 'person'.

Many philosophers say that time involves a kind of passage that distinguishes it from space. A traditional objection is that this passage would have to occur at some rate, yet we cannot say what the rate would be. The paper argues that the real problem with time’s passage is different: time would have to pass at one second per second, yet this is not a rate of change. This appears to refute decisively not only the view that time passes, but (...) any tensed theory of time. (shrink)

The apparent fact that each of us coincides with a thinking animal looks like a strong argument for our being animals (animalism). Some critics, however, claim that this sort of reasoning actually undermines animalism. According to them, the apparent fact that each human animal coincides with a thinking body that is not an animal is an equally strong argument for our not being animals. I argue that the critics' case fails for reasons that do not affect the case for animalism.

In social identity theory, the in-Christ identity is understood as primarily a socially directed process in which people categorise themselves relative to other groups. Intergroup behaviour would cause them to discriminate against the so-called ‘outgroup’, favouring the so-called ‘ingroup’. Although social identity complexity theory has moved beyond single ingroup-outgroup categorisation, it is a question if social identity theories can fully account for the in-Christ identity, especially within an African context. In African religious identity, identity is linked to both the community (...) and the ruling deities, which are perceived to be real entities that intervene in human affairs and identity, presupposing a supernaturalistic epistemology. Contribution: In this contribution, the naturalistic epistemological underpinnings of social identity theories are reconsidered in light of a supernatural aspect that is argued to be constitutive of the 1st century in-Christ identity as well as the African Christian identity. Amid current approaches to the in-Christ identity, which is mainly a Pauline concept, some of the main Pauline texts that have bearing on the in-Christ identity are revisited in light of current theories and epistemologies on identity. (shrink)

The extended-mind thesis says that mental states can extend beyond one’s skin. Clark and Chalmers infer from this that the subjects of such states also extend beyond their skin: the extended-self thesis. The paper asks what exactly the extended-self thesis says, whether it really does follow from the extended-mind thesis, and what it would mean if it were true. It concludes that the extended-self thesis is unattractive, and does not follow from the extended mind unless thinking beings are literally bundles (...) of mental states. (shrink)

According to a view attractive to both metaphysicians and ethicists, every period in a person’s life is the life of a being just like that person except that it exists only during that period. These “subpeople” appear to have moral status, and their interests seem to clash with ours: though it may be in some person’s interests to sacrifice for tomorrow, it is not in the interests of a subperson coinciding with him only today, who will never benefit from it. (...) Or perhaps there is no clash, and a subperson’s interests derive from those of the person it coincides with. But this makes it likely that our own interests derive from those of other beings coinciding with us. (shrink)

The so-called Wrong Kind of Reason (WKR) problem for Scanlon's account of value has been much discussed recently. In a recent issue of Utilitas Gerald Lang provides a highly useful critique of extant proposed solutions to the WKR problem and suggests a novel solution of his own. In this note I offer a critique of Lang's solution and respond to some criticisms Lang directs at a Brentano-style approach suggested by Sven Danielsson and me.

Philip Pettit has drawn together here a series of interconnected essays on three subjects to which he has made notable contributions. The first part of the book discusses the rule-following character of thought. The second considers how choice can be responsive to different sorts of factors, while still being under the control of thought and the reasons that thought marshals. The third examines the implications of this view of choice and rationality for the normative regulation of social behaviour. Rules, (...) Reasons, and Norms makes original and illuminating connections across a large swathe of territory, from metaphysics to philosophical psychology to the theory of rational regulation. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the idea that the solution to some important problems of personal identity lies in the philosophy of language: more precisely in the nature of first-person reference. I will argue that the “linguistic solution” is at best partly successful.

The paper distinguishes between two rival views about the nature of final value (i.e. the value something has for its own sake) — intrinsicalism and conditionalism. The former view (which is the one adopted by G.E. Moore and several later writers) holds that the final value of any F supervenes solely on features intrinsic to F, while the latter view allows that the final value of F may supervene on features non-intrinsic to F. Conditionalism thus allows the final value of (...) F to vary according to the context in which F appears. Given the plausible assumption that there is an intimate tie between final values and appropriate attitudinal responses, it appears that conditionalism is the better approach for mainly the following three reasons: First, intrinsicalism is too indiscriminate, which makes it subject to what I call ‘location problems’ of final value. I illustrate this problem by discussing alleged examples of Moorean organic unities. Second, intrinsicalism evokes symptoms of ‘evaluative schizophrenia’. Third, considerations of theoretical economy tell in favour of conditionalism. Thereafter I respond to some recent challenges to conditionalism. An appendix surveys some meritorious implications that conditionalism offers for various substantial versions of such structurally different views about value as monism, pluralism, and particularism. (shrink)

What is a temporal part? Most accounts explain it in terms of timeless parthood: a thing's having a part without temporal qualification. Some find this hard to understand, and thus find the view that persisting things have temporal parts--fourdimensionalism--unintelligible. T. Sider offers to help by defining temporal parthood in terms of a thing's having a part at a time. I argue that no such account can capture the notion of a temporal part that figures in orthodox four-dimensionalism: temporal parts must (...) be timeless parts. This enables us to state four-dimensionalism more clearly. (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer two questions: What is epistemic agency? And what are the motivations for having this concept? In response to the first question, it is argued that epistemic agency is the agency one has over one’s belief-forming practices, or doxastic dispositions, which can directly affect the way one forms a belief and indirectly affect the beliefs one forms. In response to the second question, it is suggested that the above conception of epistemic agency is either implicitly endorsed (...) by those theorists sympathetic to epistemic normativity or, at minimum, this conception can make sense of the legitimacy of the normative notions applicable to how and what one should believe. It is further contended that belief formation in some respects is a skill that can be intentionally developed and refined. Accepting this contention and the existence of certain epistemic norms provide inconclusive yet good reasons to endorse this concept. Recent challenges to this concept by Hillary Kornblith and Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij are also considered. (shrink)

The Epicurean view is that there is nothing bad about death, and we are wrong to loathe it. This paper distinguishes several different such views, and shows that while some of them really would undermine our loathing of death, others would not. It then argues that any version that did so could be at best vacuously true: If there is nothing bad about death, that can only be because there is nothing bad about anything.

Panentheism is best understood as a philosophical research program. Identifying the core of the research program offers a strong response to the demarcation objection. It also helps focus both objections to and defenses of panentheism — and to show why common objections are not actually criticisms of the position we are defending. The paper also addresses two common criticisms: the alleged inadequacy of panentheism’s double “in” specification of the relationship between God and world, and the “double God” objection. Once the (...) research program framework is in place, topics like these become opportunities for panentheists to engage in the kind of careful constructive work in theology and philosophy — historical, analytic, and systematic — that is required for making long-term, positive contributions to our field. (shrink)

Contributing Authors: Lilli Alanen & Frans Svensson, David Alm, Gustaf Arrhenius, Gunnar Björnsson, Luc Bovens, Richard Bradley, Geoffrey Brennan & Nicholas Southwood, John Broome, Linus Broström & Mats Johansson, Johan Brännmark, Krister Bykvist, John Cantwell, Erik Carlson, David Copp, Roger Crisp, Sven Danielsson, Dan Egonsson, Fred Feldman, Roger Fjellström, Marc Fleurbaey, Margaret Gilbert, Olav Gjelsvik, Kathrin Glüer & Peter Pagin, Ebba Gullberg & Sten Lindström, Peter Gärdenfors, Sven Ove Hansson, Jana Holsanova, Nils Holtug, Victoria Höög, Magnus Jiborn, Karsten Klint Jensen, (...) Sigurður Kristinsson, Isaac Levi, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, David Makinson, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Philippe Mongin, Kevin Mulligan, Lennart Nordenfelt, Jonas Olson, Erik J. Olsson, Ingmar Persson, Johannes Persson, Björn Petersson, Philip Pettit, Hans Rott, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Krister Segerberg, John Skorupski, Howard Sobel, Fredrik Stjernberg, Fred Stoutland, Caj Strandberg, Pär Sundström, Folke Tersman, Torbjörn Tännsjö, Peter Vallentyne, Bruno Verbeek, Stella Villarmea, and Michael J. Zimmerman. (shrink)

It seems evident that things sometimes get bigger by acquiring new parts. But there is an ancient argument purporting to show that this is impossible: the paradox of increase or growing argument.i Here is a sketch of the paradox. Suppose we have an object, A, and we want to make it bigger by adding a part, B. That is, we want to bring it about that A first lacks and then has B as a part. Imagine, then, that we conjoin (...) B to A in some appropriate way. Never mind what A and B are, or what this conjoining amounts to: let A be anything that can gain a part if anything can gain a part, and let B be the sort of thing that can become a part of A, and suppose we do whatever it would take to make B come to be a part of A if this is possible at all. Have we thereby made B a part of A? It seems not. We seem only to have brought it about that B is attached to A, like this. (shrink)

Because there is no agreed use of the term 'self', or characteristic features or even paradigm cases of selves, there is no idea of "the self" to figure in philosophical problems. The term leads to troubles otherwise avoidable; and because legitimate discussions under the heading of 'self' are really about other things, it is gratuitous. I propose that we stop speaking of selves.

Animalism is the view that you and I are animals. That is, we are animals in the straightforward sense of having the property of being an animal, or in that each of us is identical to an animal-not merely in the derivative sense of having animal bodies, or of being "constituted by" animals. And by 'animal' I mean an organism of the animal kingdom." Sensible though it may appear, animalism is highly contentious. The most common objection is that it conflicts (...) with widespread and deep beliefs about our identity over time. These beliefs are brought out in reactions to fictional cases. Suppose, for instance, that your brain is transplanted into my head. The being who ends up with that organ, everyone assumes, will remember your life and not mine. More generally, he will have your beliefs, preferences, plans, and other mental properties, for the most part at least. Who would he be-you, me, or someone else? (shrink)

In The Moral Problem Michael Smith presents what he claims is a decisive argument against moral externalism. Smith's claims that (i) moral externalists are committed to explain the connection between moral beliefs and moral motivation in terms of de dicto desires, and (ii) de dicto desires to perform moral acts amounts to moral fetishism. The argument is spelled out and the difference between desires de dicto and desires de re explained. The tenability of the fetishist argument (as it has been (...) named) is then questioned by focusing on the second clause; contrary to what Smith seems to think, it seems a plausible description of a good moral person that she is often motivated by both kinds of desires and, moreover, there are ways of being motivated to perform moral acts solely by de dicto desires that would not amount to moral fetishism. Lastly, two cases are suggested where being motivated by de dicto desires to perform moral acts would be reasonable as well as morally preferable. Internalists then, should also provide room for de dicto desires in moral motivation.The upshot is that the fetishist argument is unconvincing, though no attempt is made to defend moral externalism in general. (shrink)

The Belief‐Desire model (the B‐D model) of reasons for action has been subject to much criticism lately. Two of the most elaborate and trenchant expositions of such criticisms are found in recent works by Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Fred Stoutland (2002). In this paper we set out to respond to the central pieces of their criticisms. For this purpose it is essential to sort out and regiment different senses in which the term ‘reason’ may be used. It is necessary to (...) go beyond common philosophical practice and distinguish not merely between two such different uses but to make a tripartite distinction. Our aim is largely conciliatory: we grant the main parts of the points made by Stoutland and Dancy but argue that once the B‐D model has been properly stated, and different uses of the term ‘reason’ sufficiently regimented, the B‐D proponent is able to accommodate their respective criticisms within the framework of the B‐D model and thereby undermine their case against the model. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker argues that the functionalist theory of mind entails a psychological-continuity view of personal identity, as well as providing a defense of that view against a crucial objection. I show that his view has surprising consequences, e.g. that no organism could have mental properties and that a thing's mental properties fail to supervene even weakly on its microstructure and surroundings. I then argue that the view founders on "fission" cases and rules out our being material things. Functionalism tells us (...) little if anything about personal identity. (shrink)