Some philosophers consider that some of their colleagues deny that consciousness exists. We shall call the latter ‘deniers’, adopting a term that was initially meant pejoratively. What do the deniers deny? In order to answer this question, we shall examine arguments, both of some deniers and of their critics, and present denialism as a systematic highly non-trivial position that has had some interesting achievements. We will show that the denialist project concerns the epistemology of the mind and specifically of consciousness: (...) what can be known about it, and how it can be known. The main argument of denialism is that first-person reports about the mental realm are not always the best source of information about that realm, and are certainly not reliable. This leads the deniers to realize that the reference and meaning of mental terms as used in standard philosophical literature are vague and call for clarification, and that what many take to be empirical data in the study of the mind are actually heavily laden with theory. Denialism thus makes scientific and philosophical research clearer and more fruitful. (shrink)

This paper makes a novel linkage between the multiple-computations theorem in philosophy of mind and Landauer’s principle in physics. The multiple-computations theorem implies that certain physical systems implement simultaneously more than one computation. Landauer’s principle implies that the physical implementation of “logically irreversible” functions is accompanied by minimal entropy increase. We show that the multiple-computations theorem is incompatible with, or at least challenges, the universal validity of Landauer’s principle. To this end we provide accounts of both ideas in terms of (...) low-level fundamental concepts in statistical mechanics, thus providing a deeper understanding of these ideas than their standard formulations given in the high-level terms of thermodynamics and cognitive science. Since Landauer’s principle is pivotal in the attempts to derive the universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics in statistical mechanics, our result entails that the multiple-computations theorem has crucial implications with respect to the second law. Finally, our analysis contributes to the understanding of notions, such as “logical irreversibility,” “entropy increase,” “implementing a computation,” in terms of fundamental physics, and to resolving open questions in the literature of both fields, such as: what could it possibly mean that a certain physical process implements a certain computation. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 4, Page 765-781, August 2022.

I argue that wholes are neither identical to nor distinct from their parts. Instead, wholes are invariants under some transformations in their parts. Similarly, higher-level properties are neither identical to nor distinct from their lower-level realizers. Instead, higher-level properties are aspects of their realizers that are invariant under some transformations in their realizers. Nowhere in this picture is there any ontological hierarchy between levels of composition or realization. Neither wholes nor their parts are more fundamental. Neither is prior. Neither reduces (...) to the other. Neither is eliminated. Ditto for higher-level properties and their lower-level realizers. Instead, wholes and their properties as well as parts and their properties are different yet invariant aspects of reality. The result is an egalitarian account of composition and realization. (shrink)

It is commonly maintained that neuroplastic mechanisms in the brain provide empirical support for the hypothesis of multiple realizability. We show in various case studies that neuroplasticity stems from preexisting mechanisms and processes inherent in the neural structure of the brain. We argue that not only does neuroplasticity fail to provide empirical evidence of multiple realization, its inability to do so strengthens the mind-body identity theory. Finally, we argue that a recently proposed identity theory called Flat Physicalism can be enlisted (...) to explain the current state of the mind-body problem more adequately. (shrink)

According to contemporary computational neuroscience the mental is associated with computations implemented in the brain. We analyze in physical terms based on recent results in the foundations of statistical mechanics two well-known (independent) problems that arise for this approach: the problem of multiple-computations and the problem of multiple-realization. We show that within the computational theory of the mind the two problems are insoluble by the physics of the brain. We further show that attempts to solve the problems by the interactions (...) of the systems implementing the computations with an environment (in or outside the brain) must introduce non- physical factors, and therefore fail on physical grounds. We also show that the problems are endemic and pertain to other forms of functional theories of the mind, most notably, causal functionalism. Finally, we propose a physicalist reductive identity theory, which is a generalization of statistical mechanics for all the special sciences, and show that only a theory of this kind can provide physical solutions to the above two problems in computational neuroscience. We conclude that functionalism in the theory of mind must be replaced with a reductive identity theory. This result has far-reaching implications with respect to the research programs in brain science. (shrink)