Background
Shoemaker, Sydney S. was born on September 29, 1931 in Boise, Idaho, United States. Son of Roy Hopkins and Sarah Parker (Anderson) Shoemaker.
(The concept of human identity or who we really are has pe...)
The concept of human identity or who we really are has perplexed thinkers in all ages. Currently psychologists have shunned discussing this topic since it is an area that is incapable of being objectified or accurately defined. Yet the lack of self-knowledge is the problem of all problems. Due to such a lack we, for the most part, lead lives fraught with illusions, superficialities, and economic woes. This book is about how we can know our real selves or our genuine identity. It is the author's considered belief that we are all far greater than what we think we are, and the more we know about ourselves, the better we will be able, not only to make the most of life, but also to solve effectively social, economic, and political problems related to such areas as crime, poverty, competition, capitalism, individualism, freedom, and democracy, as well as war and peace. The viewpoint presented in this book is that, without a thorough understanding of who we are, no meaningful social reform can ever materialize. The author, a psychologist and teacher, breaks new ground in the field of understanding human identity and human problems. The guidance offered should be of capital interest to those who seek in life something deeper than the mere surface, something more than what is promoted by the zeitgeist of recent centuries and materialistic culture. The book is a valuable resource to readers aiming to enhance their capacity to know themselves and find their path in life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440112185/?tag=2022091-20
(This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal...)
This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal collection of his work on interrelated issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Reproducing all of the original papers, many of which are now regarded as classics, and including four papers published since the first edition appeared in 1984, Identity, Cause, and Mind's reappearance will be warmly welcomed by philosophers and students alike.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199264694/?tag=2022091-20
(The essays in this collection deal with the way in which ...)
The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds. Professor Shoemaker opposes the "inner sense" conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have nonrepresentational features--"qualia"--that determine what it is like to have them. Among the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the "first-person perspective" gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521568714/?tag=2022091-20
(Personal Identity and Ethics provides a lively overview o...)
Personal Identity and Ethics provides a lively overview of the relationship between the metaphysics of personal identity and ethics. How does personal identity affect our ethical judgments? It is a commonplace to hold that moral responsibility for past actions requires that the responsible agent is in some relevant respect identical to the agent who performed the action. Is this true? On the other hand, can ethics constrain our account of personal identity? Do the practical requirements of moral theory commit us to holding that persons do remain identical over time? Or is it the case that personal identity is not, in fact, relevant to ethics? Shoemaker provides the first comprehensive examination of these issues for the undergraduate audience. Topics include personal identity and prudential rationality; personal identity's significance for moral responsibility and ethical theory; and the practical consequences of accounts of personal identity for issues such as abortion, stem cell research, cloning, advance directives, populations ethics, multiple personality disorder, and the definition of death.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1551118823/?tag=2022091-20
(Personal Identity and Ethics provides a lively overview o...)
Personal Identity and Ethics provides a lively overview of the relationship between the metaphysics of personal identity and ethics. How does personal identity affect our ethical judgments? It is a commonplace to hold that moral responsibility for past actions requires that the responsible agent is in some relevant respect identical to the agent who performed the action. Is this true? On the other hand, can ethics constrain our account of personal identity? Do the practical requirements of moral theory commit us to holding that persons do remain identical over time? Or is it the case that personal identity is not, in fact, relevant to ethics? Shoemaker provides the first comprehensive examination of these issues for the undergraduate audience. Topics include personal identity and prudential rationality; personal identity's significance for moral responsibility and ethical theory; and the practical consequences of accounts of personal identity for issues such as abortion, stem cell research, cloning, advance directives, populations ethics, multiple personality disorder, and the definition of death.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1551118823/?tag=2022091-20
Shoemaker, Sydney S. was born on September 29, 1931 in Boise, Idaho, United States. Son of Roy Hopkins and Sarah Parker (Anderson) Shoemaker.
Bachelor, Reed College, 1953. Postgraduate, Edinburgh University, Scotland, 1954. Doctor of Philosophy, Cornell University, 1958.
Taught at Ohio State University, 1957-1960, Harvard, 1960 I, Cornell, 1961-1967, Rockefeller Institute, New York, 1967 70. Professor of Philosophy at Cornell, from 1970. Susan Linn Sage Professor, Cornell, from 1978: Visiting Professor at Columbia, 1968, Calgary, 1969, and
Harvard, 1970.
John Locke Lecturer. University of Oxford. 1972; Fellow of Center for Advanced Study in Behavioural Sciences, Stanford. 1973-1974; National F.ndowment for Humanities Fellowship, 1980-1981.
Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow at National Humanities Center, 1987 -8. Vice president, Eastern Division. American Philosophical Association.
1992-1993, President. 1993-1994; Editor, Philosophical Review, intermittently from 1964. General Editor, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy, 1982-1990.
(This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal...)
(Personal Identity and Ethics provides a lively overview o...)
(Personal Identity and Ethics provides a lively overview o...)
(The concept of human identity or who we really are has pe...)
(The essays in this collection deal with the way in which ...)
(Book by Sydney Shoemaker, Richard Swinburne)
Author: Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity, 1963, Identity, Cause, and Mind, 1984, The First-Person Perspective, 1996. Co-author: Personal Identity, 1984. Co-editor: Knowledge and Mind, 1983, Philso.Review, since 1964 (intermittently). General editor: Cambridge Studies in Philosophy, 1982-1990.
Initially, in Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (1963), Shoemaker appealed to criteria, especially bodily identity, for analysing personal identity, while insisting that we know ourselves without criteria. Later, however, he gave primacy to psychological continuity over bodily identity and, discussing the possibility of ‘fission’ in ‘Persons and their pasts’ (1970), introduced ‘quasi-remembering’, where the previous experience that memory involves need not be that of the rememberer. But he then abandoned the emphasis on criteria and concentrated instead on the functionalism for which he has been most influential: mental states are defined by how they function, i.e. by their causes and effects on behaviour.
He has argued, controversially, that functionalism can tolerate qualia, that it is impossible that qualia should be absent from a creature behaving exactly like one in which they were present, but that your qualia and mine could in principle differ in behaviourally undetectable ways.
Member American Association of University Professors, American Academy Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Association (member executive committee eastern division 1977-1980, vice president 1992-1993, president 1993-1994).
Philosophy of mind: metaphysics.
Locke, Wittgenstein. Malcolm. Putnam. Armstrong, D. Lewis and Davidson.
Married Molly McDonald, October 1, 1960. 1 son, Peter William.