Eric Olson
Contemporary · American-born philosopher at the University of Sheffield
“You are a human animal”
Life and education
- Education
- BA, Reed College; PhD, Syracuse University
- Position
- Professor of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, UK
- Fields
- Personal identity, material objects, time, death
- Also
- Author of the SEP entries "Personal Identity" and "Animalism"
American-born philosopher teaching at the University of Sheffield in the UK, and the best-known defender of "animalism" in the personal identity debate. He wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on personal identity.
In The Human Animal (1997) he took on the psychological continuity theory that had dominated since Locke, arguing that we are essentially biological human organisms, and that our identity conditions lie in the continuation of life processes, not psychology. His criticisms that psychological theories face the "thinking animal problem" and the "fetus problem" drove a major debate.
Timeline
- 1997The Human Animal: Personal Identity without Psychology
- 1997"Was I Ever a Fetus?"
- 2007What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology
- NowProfessor of Philosophy, University of Sheffield
Big ideas
If you think like them…
If you're like Eric Olson, you see "you" as this living body more than as memories or personality. Teleportation is just copying, and even if you lost every memory, you'd still be you. You have a realist streak that trusts biological facts over philosophical intuitions.
Rough positions on the five questions the quiz uses. These simplify each philosopher's actual views and are open to interpretation.
Thought experiments featuring them
Key works
- The Human Animal (1997)
- "Was I Ever a Fetus?" (1997)
- What Are We? (2007)