Fission, Self-Interest and Commonsense Ethics

Noonan, Harold

Abstract

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 ‘by rejecting the metaphysical assumptions on which it rests’. In particular, that many have denied that in fission one ceases to exist. He contends that these denials do not meet the challenge to commonsense ethical thinking. I reject these claims. One of the metaphysical views he considers is the multiple occupancy view of Lewis and Robinson, according to which in fission there are all along two numerically distinct, initially collocated, persons. I claim that Ross has not shown that this view has counterintuitive ethical implications.

Citation

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

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 4, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Feb 2, 2023
• Publication Date: Feb 2, 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 3, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 3, 2023
• Journal: Philosophia
• Print ISSN: 0048-3893
• Electronic ISSN: 1574-9274
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00611-6
• Keywords: Philosophy
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/16800562
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-023-00611-6