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Professor HAROLD NOONAN's Outputs (52)

No reason to doubt desert: reply to Pummer (2025)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. W. (2025). No reason to doubt desert: reply to Pummer. Inquiry, https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2025.2465355

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 culpa... Read More about No reason to doubt desert: reply to Pummer.

The Fission Argument for The Unimportance of Identity Cannot Be Correct (2024)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. (2024). The Fission Argument for The Unimportance of Identity Cannot Be Correct. Argumenta, 2024(19), 369—373. https://doi.org/10.14275/2465-2334/202419.noo

Eric Olson has made an important addition to the discussion started by Parfit of the argument from the possibility of fission to the unimportance of personal iden-tity. Olson’s discussion is challenging. I want, more briefly, to highlight what is the... Read More about The Fission Argument for The Unimportance of Identity Cannot Be Correct.

What Is so Bad about Permanent Coincidence without Identity? (2024)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. W. (2024). What Is so Bad about Permanent Coincidence without Identity?. Organon F, 31(4), 388-398. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2024.21403

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,... Read More about What Is so Bad about Permanent Coincidence without Identity?.

Scepticism About Neo-Aristotelian Essences (2024)
Journal Article
Curtis, B., & Noonan, H. (2024). Scepticism About Neo-Aristotelian Essences. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 80(4), 885-904. https://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2024_80_4_0885

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 cor... Read More about Scepticism About Neo-Aristotelian Essences.

There are more, or fewer, things than most of us think (2024)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. W. (2024). There are more, or fewer, things than most of us think. Metaphysica, 25(2), 193-203. https://doi.org/10.1515/mp-2023-0035

In Chapter 12 of his book Material Beings (Van Inwagen, Peter. 1990. Material Beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press) van Inwagen argues that there are no artefacts, or very few, certainly fewer than most people believe. Artisans very rarely create... Read More about There are more, or fewer, things than most of us think.

Fission, Self-Interest and Commonsense Ethics (2023)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. (2023). Fission, Self-Interest and Commonsense Ethics. Philosophia, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00611-6

Jacob Ross argues that the fission cases discussed in the personal identity literature cannot be accommodated without rejecting basic intuitions of everyday ethical thinking. He notes that many philosophers have responded to the challenge of fission... Read More about Fission, Self-Interest and Commonsense Ethics.

The First Person and ‘The First Person’ (2022)
Book Chapter
Noonan, H. (2022). The First Person and ‘The First Person’. In R. Teichmann (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of Elizabeth Anscombe (397-412). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190887353.013.25

In ‘The First Person’ Anscombe argues that ‘I’ is not a referring expression: ‘I’ is neither a name nor another kind of expression whose logical role is to make a reference, at all. Her no-reference thesis has met with general incredulity. This chapt... Read More about The First Person and ‘The First Person’.

Personal Identity and Morality (2022)
Book Chapter
Noonan, H. (2022). Personal Identity and Morality. In K. Tobia (Ed.), Experimental Philosophy of Identity and the Self (87-97). Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350246928.0011

Does the true account of personal identity undermine everyday moral thinking? Do every day moral practices presuppose a false account of our nature and persistence conditions? I shall consider the three main accounts of personal identity in the conte... Read More about Personal Identity and Morality.

The Personite Problem and the Stage-Theoretic Reply (2022)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. (2022). The Personite Problem and the Stage-Theoretic Reply. Organon F, 29(2), 275-282. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2022.29206

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... Read More about The Personite Problem and the Stage-Theoretic Reply.

The Hybrid Account of Personal Persistence (2021)
Book Chapter
Curtis, B., & Noonan, H. (2021). The Hybrid Account of Personal Persistence. In J. Noller (Ed.), The unity of a person : philosophical perspectives. Routledge

In this paper we argue that persons should be defined as being things that are sometimes capable of first-person thought. We then defend an account (the Hybrid Account) of their persistence conditions. According to it psychological continuity and bio... Read More about The Hybrid Account of Personal Persistence.

Kripke was right even if he was wrong: Sherlock Holmes and the unicorns (2021)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. (2021). Kripke was right even if he was wrong: Sherlock Holmes and the unicorns. Disputatio, 13(60), 51-69. https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2021-0003

In the Addenda to Naming and Necessity (1980), Kripke famously argues that it is false that there could have been unicorns, or more properly, that ‘no counterfactual situation is properly describable as one in which there would have been unicorns.’ H... Read More about Kripke was right even if he was wrong: Sherlock Holmes and the unicorns.

Personal Identity and the Hybrid View: A Middle Way (2021)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. (2021). Personal Identity and the Hybrid View: A Middle Way. Metaphysica, 22(2), 263-283. https://doi.org/10.1515/mp-2020-0007

Two of the main contenders in the debate about personal persistence over time are the neo-Lockean psychological continuity view and animalism as defended by Olson and Snowdon. Both are wrong. The position I shall argue for, which I call, following Ol... Read More about Personal Identity and the Hybrid View: A Middle Way.

No Trust is Hybrid: Reply to Faulkner (2021)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. (2021). No Trust is Hybrid: Reply to Faulkner. Philosophia, 49(5), 2189 - 2195. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00341-7

There is a well-developed literature on trust. In his important article Paul Faulkner (2015) distinguishes three-place, two-place and one-place trust predicates. He then argues that our more basic notions of trust are expressed by the one-place and t... Read More about No Trust is Hybrid: Reply to Faulkner.

Critical Note on Williamson: A defence of the Actualism-Possibilism Debate (2021)
Journal Article
Curtis, B. L., & Noonan, H. (2021). Critical Note on Williamson: A defence of the Actualism-Possibilism Debate. Philosophical Forum, 52(1), 91-96. https://doi.org/10.1111/phil.12283

In his book Modal Logic as Metaphysics (2013) Williamson argues that the traditional actualist-possibilist debate should be abandoned as hopelessly unclear and that we should get on with the clearer contingentism-necessitism debate. We think that Wil... Read More about Critical Note on Williamson: A defence of the Actualism-Possibilism Debate.

The problem of reference change (2020)
Book Chapter
Noonan, H. (2020). The problem of reference change. In S. Biggs, & H. Geirsson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of linguistic reference (600). Routledge

From Essence to Metaphysical Modality? (2020)
Journal Article
Noonan, H. W. (2022). From Essence to Metaphysical Modality?. Axiomathes, 32(2), 345-354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09527-2

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... Read More about From Essence to Metaphysical Modality?.