Sydney Sharpless Shoemaker (September 29, 1931 – September 3, 2022) was an American

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. He was the Susan Linn Sage Professor of

Philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

and is well known for his contributions to

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...

and

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

Education and career

Shoemaker graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

from

Reed College Reed College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, E ...

and earned his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

from

in 1958 under the supervision of

Norman Malcolm Norman Adrian Malcolm (; 11 June 1911 – 4 August 1990) was an American philosophy, philosopher. Malcolm was primarily active in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology. Biography Malcolm was born in Selden ...

. He taught philosophy at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

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 and Susanna Siegel. 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 world' ...

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

. Shoemaker died on September 3, 2022, at the age of 90. He was buried in Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve 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 is an influence by which one Event (philosophy), event, process, state, or Object (philosophy), object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cause is at l ...

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 pro ...

. 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 ...

, where he defended a

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

psychological continuity theory 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 syste ...

he has argued for a distinctive version of

representationalism In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences.Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Con ...

Selected publications

Books

* '' Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity'' (1963). * ''Personal Identity'' (co-authored with Richard Swinburne) (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. 269–285. * 1988
"On Knowing One's Own Mind"
'' Philosophical Perspectives'', pp. 183–209.

References

External links

Links to some of Shoemaker's papers online
*

Open University The Open University (OU) is a Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate ...

(1973
video of a conversation featuring Sydney Shoemaker
and Hywel Lewis discussing the problem of personal identity, hosted by Godfrey Vesey. {{DEFAULTSORT:Shoemaker, Sydney 1931 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century American essayists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century American 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 American epistemologists American metaphysicians American metaphysics writers Ontologists Philosophers from Idaho American philosophers of mind American philosophers of science Reed College alumni Writers from Boise, Idaho Corresponding fellows of the British Academy