Abstract
The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics (EJPE) interviewed Kagan about his formative years; his work on death, the moral status of animals, and desert; his views on changing one’s mind and convergence in philosophy; and his advice for graduate students in moral philosophy.
Highlights
EJPE: Professor Kagan, what first drew you to philosophy? SHELLY KAGAN: I was interested in Jewish religious thought from an early age
In your book How to Count Animals, more or less5 you argue that moral status is hierarchical
I think that absolutist deontology extended to all animals with moral standing is very implausible, precisely for that reason
Summary
EJPE: Professor Kagan, what first drew you to philosophy? SHELLY KAGAN: I was interested in Jewish religious thought from an early age. I started having what I thought were philosophical discussions with some of my friends It wasn’t really until I went off to college, though, that I began studying philosophy in a systematic way. You think my dissertation is pretty good and you are going to help me by giving comments When it is revised, you’ll see whether Oxford is interested in publishing it’. The thought that there couldn’t be an answer is probably itself based on meta-philosophical views about what an adequate criterion of personal identity would look like. To think about whether the personality or the body view of personal identity is correct, for instance, you ask the reader to imagine a mad scientist who has kidnapped two people, Linda and Shelly (132–139). Strictly speaking, I endorse the existence requirement, I don’t endorse the implications that it would be natural to think follow from it
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