Sydney Sharpless Shoemaker (September 29, 1931 – September 6, 2022) was an American philosopher. He was the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

and is well known for his contributions to

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...

and

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

Education and career

Shoemaker graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

from

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

and earned his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from

in 1958 under the supervision of

Norman Malcolm Norman Malcolm (; 11 June 1911 – 4 August 1990) was an American philosopher. Biography Malcolm was born in Selden, Kansas. He studied philosophy with O. K. Bouwsma at the University of Nebraska, then enrolled as a graduate student at Ha ...

. He taught philosophy at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

from 1957 to 1960 then, in 1961, returned to Cornell as a faculty member of the philosophy department. In 1978 he was appointed the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy, a position he held until his retirement, as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy. Among his students at Cornell were Richard Moran, Susanna Siegel, and John Perry. In 1971, he delivered the

John Locke Lectures The John Locke Lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy given at the University of Oxford. Named for British philosopher John Locke, the Locke Lectures are the world's most prestigious lectures in philosophy, and are among the worl ...

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

. Shoemaker died on September 3, 2022, at the age of 90. He was buried in

Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve is a non-profit cemetery located at 293 Irish Hill Road in Newfield, New York. Founded in 2006 as a natural burial cemetery, the preserve covers of rolling meadows and is surrounded by of Cornell University ...

in Newfield.

Philosophical work

Shoemaker worked primarily in the

and

, and published many classic papers in both of these areas (as well as their overlap). In "Functionalism and Qualia" (1975), for example, he argued that functionalism about mental states can account for the qualitative character (or 'raw feel') of mental states. In "Self-Reference and Self-Awareness" (1968), he argued that the phenomenon of absolute 'immunity to error through misidentification' is what distinguishes self-attributions of mental states (such as "I see a canary") from self-attributions of physical states (such as "I weigh 200 pounds"). In metaphysics, he defended the view that laws are metaphysically necessary, a position that follows from his view of properties as clusters of conditional

causal Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the ca ...

powers. He also applied his view of properties to the

problem of mental causation The problem of mental causation is a conceptual issue in the philosophy of mind. That problem, in short, is how to account for the common-sense idea that intentional thoughts or intentional mental states are causes of intentional actions. The prob ...

. He also distinguished contributions to the literature on self-knowledge and

personal identity Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time ca ...

, where he defended a

Lockean John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...

psychological

continuity theory The continuity theory of normal aging states that older adults will usually maintain the same activities, behaviors, relationships as they did in their earlier years of life. According to this theory, older adults try to maintain this continui ...

in his influential paper "Persons and their Pasts". In his later work on the content of

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

, he has argued for a distinctive version of

representationalism In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, the question of direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, is the debate over the nature of conscious experience;Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Consc ...

Selected publications

Books

* '' Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity'' (1963). * ''

Personal Identity Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time ca ...

'' (co-authored with

Richard Swinburne Richard Granville Swinburne (IPA ) (born December 26, 1934) is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for ...

) (1984). * '' Identity, Cause and Mind: Philosophical Essays'' (1984). * ''The First-Person Perspective, and other Essays'' (1996). * '' Physical Realization'' (2007).

Articles

* 1970
"Persons and their Pasts"
'' American Philosophical Quarterly'', pp.269–85.

References

External links

Links to some of Shoemaker's papers online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shoemaker, Sydney 1931 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century essayists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century essayists Action theorists American male essayists American male non-fiction writers American philosophy academics Analytic philosophers American consciousness researchers and theorists Cornell University alumni Cornell University faculty Epistemologists Metaphysicians Metaphysics writers Ontologists Philosophers from Idaho Philosophers of mind Philosophers of science Philosophy writers Reed College alumni Writers from Boise, Idaho Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy