Johnston, M. (2010). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Not read. The summary is drawn from the abstract or from what the work is standardly cited for. A reading should check it first.
Why this is here
A philosopher’s version of the owner’s thesis (CLAIM-491) run in reverse: if the self’s extent is set by what one identifies with, the good person’s self is as large as humanity. THEORY-464 already holds a neighbouring Parfitian claim.
Read in its place
The book cannot be read here, so the record holds it at second hand:
- Its author’s retraction. Johnston 2023 (LIT-1788, NOTE-1257) restates the book’s surrogate for survival, “living on in the onward rush of humankind”, which rested on the view that we are higher-order things whose deepest future-directed attitudes fix which embodiments are ours. It then gives that view up: we are essentially embodied wills.
Missing still: the book’s ethics, how the good person comes to identify with humanity and so survives, which the record cites against the owner’s thesis (CLAIM-491). The 2023 paper describes it only in a sentence.