A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

By Hud Hudson

Hud Hudson presents an innovative view of the metaphysics of human persons according to which human persons are material objects but not human organisms. In developing his account, he formulates and defends a unique collection of positions on parthood, persistence, vagueness, composition, identity, and various puzzles of material constitution.The author also applies his materialist metaphysics to issues in ethics and in the philosophy of religion. He examines the implications for ethics of his metaphysical views for standard arguments addressing the moral permissibility of our treatment of human persons and their parts, fetuses and infants, the irreversibly comatose, and corpses. He argues that his metaphysics provides the best foundation in the philosophy of religion for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body.Hudson addresses a broad range of metaphysical issues, but among his most strikingly original contributions are his defense of the "Partist" view (according to which a material object can exactly occupy multiple, overlapping regions of spacetime) and his argument for the compatibility of Christianity with a materialistic theory of human persons.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801438896
• ISBN13: 9780801438899
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

One of the great books of contemporary metaphysics and mereology

The other review of this book is one of the most disappointing things I have ever seen. It certainly didn't come from a philosopher, and equally certainly not from someone who actually read the book. With regards to the former, would you discount the works of Descartes for similar reasons? As for the latter, the book only briefly mentions Christianity as an aside. It is both an interesting and an important endeavor to reconcile a materialist view of human persons with Christianity, and Hud Hudson does an excellent job! The other review aside, this is tied with Peter VanInwagen's Material Beings, as far as I'm concerned, in the category of human mereology. Hud's writing is perhaps the clearest and most refreshingly concise I have ever read in the field of metaphysics. His skill with words makes his books a genuine pleasure to read, and his creative and studied mind give the books a depth beyond that mere pleasure.