Peter Unger

Peter K. Unger (born 1942) is a contemporary American philosopher and professor at New York University. His main interests lie in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. He attended Swarthmore College at the same time as David Lewis, earning a B.A. in philosophy in 1962,^[1] and Oxford University, where he studied under A. J. Ayer^[2] and earned a doctorate in 1966.^[3]

Unger has written a defense of profound philosophical skepticism and claims that many philosophical questions cannot be definitively answered. In the field of applied ethics, he argues that one has a moral duty to make large donations to life-saving charities (such as Oxfam and UNICEF) if one can, even if one has to beg, borrow, or steal in the process. Unger, moreover, has also used the paradox of the heap to argue for mereological nihilism, which entails that he, along with all other composite objects, does not exist.

Selected publications

Books

• Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford University Press, 1975 and 2002) ISBN 0198244177
• Philosophical Relativity (Blackwell and Minnesota, 1984; Oxford, 2002) ISBN 019515553X
• Identity, Consciousness and Value (Oxford, 1990) ISBN 0-19-507917-5
• Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (Oxford, 1996) ISBN 0-19-510859-0
• All the Power in the World (Oxford, 2006) ISBN 0-19-515561-0
• Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (Oxford, 2006) ISBN 0-19-515552-1
• Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Oxford, 2006) ISBN 0-19-530158-7

Articles

• "I do not Exist", in Perception and Identity, G. F. MacDonald (ed.), London: Macmillan, 1979.
• "The Problem of the Many", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 5 (1980), pp. 411‑467.
• "Free Will and Scientiphicalism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 65 (2002).
• "The Survival of the Sentient", Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 14 (2000).

References

External links

• Page at NYU