Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) of the personal past, and about relations between self and body. Sutton demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on 'the phantasmal chaos of association'. Going on to defend connectionism against Fodor and critics of passive mental representations, he shows how problems of the self are implicated in cognitive science. (shrink)

I argue that appreciation of the phenomenon of forgetting requires serious attention to its origins and place in nature. This, in turn, necessitates metaphysical inquiry as well as empirical backing – a combination likely to be eschewed by psychological orthodoxy. But, if we hope to avoid the conceptual vacuity that characterizes too much of contemporary psychological inquiry (e.g., Klein, 2012, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a), a “big picture” approach to phenomena of interest is essential. Adopting this investigative posture turns the “received view” (...) of the relation between remembering and forgetting on its head: Rather than treated as the result of breakdowns and limitations of biologically engineered systems of remembering, forgetting is accorded elevated status as the driving force behind the evolution of organic systems of information retention. (shrink)

Metaphysical orthodoxy holds that a privileged minority of properties carve reality at its joints. These are the so-called fundamental properties. This thesis concerns the contemporary philosophical debate about the nature of fundamental properties. In particular, it aims to answer two questions: What is the most adequate conception of fundamental properties? What is the “big picture” world-view that emerges by adopting such a conception? I argue that a satisfactory answer to both questions requires us to embrace a novel conception of powerful (...) qualities, according to which properties are at once dispositional and qualitative. By adopting the proposed conception of powerful qualities, an original theory of fundamental properties comes to light. I call it Dual-Aspect Account. In this thesis, I defend the Dual-Aspect Account and its superiority with respect to rival views of fundamental properties. I illustrate this claim by examining Dispositionalism, the view defended among others by Alexander Bird and Stephen Mumford, Categoricalism, which has been advocated notably by David Lewis and David Armstrong, and the Identity Theory of powerful qualities, primarily championed by C. B. Martin and John Heil. The latter is the standard conception of powerful qualities. However, in the literature, the Identity Theory faces the charge of contradiction. A preliminary task is therefore to show that a conception of powerful qualities is coherent. To accomplish this aim, I introduce the notion of an aspect of a property. On this interpretation, powerful qualities can be thought of as having dispositional and qualitative aspects. I show that such a conception allows us to disambiguate the claim that a property’s dispositionality is identical with its qualitativity, and evade the charge of contradiction. Aspects bring us other theoretical benefits. I illustrate this claim by showing how the Dual-Aspect Account offers us a promising theory of resemblance. I then compare its merits with David Armstrong’s theory of partial identity. The conclusion of this thesis is that the Dual-Aspect Account is better suited to capturing the world as we find it in everyday life and scientific investigation as compared to the theoretical positions examined. (shrink)

1 Non-reductive physicalists deny that there is any explanation of mentality in purely physical terms, but do not deny that the mental is entirely determined by and constituted out of underlying physical structures. There are important issues about the stability of such a view which teeters on the edge of explanatory reductionism on the one side and dualism on the other (see Kim 1998). 2 Save perhaps for eliminative materialism (see Churchland 1981 for a classic exposition). In fact, however, while.

This entry concerns dualism in the philosophy of mind. The term ‘dualism’ has a variety of uses in the history of thought. In general, the idea is that, for some particular domain, there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. In theology, for example a ‘dualist’ is someone who believes that Good and Evil — or God and the Devil — are independent and more or less equal forces in the world. Dualism contrasts with monism, which is (...) the theory that there is only one fundamental kind, category of thing or principle; and, rather less commonly, with pluralism, which is the view that there are many kinds or categories. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing. Because common sense tells us that there are physical bodies, and because there is intellectual pressure towards producing a unified view of the world, one could say that materialist monism is the ‘default option’. Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world. (shrink)

The systems studied in the special sciences are often said to be causally autonomous, in the sense that their higher-level properties have causal powers that are independent of the causal powers of their more basic physical properties. This view was espoused by the British emergentists, who claimed that systems achieving a certain level of organizational complexity have distinctive causal powers that emerge from their constituent elements but do not derive from them. More recently, non-reductive physicalists have espoused a similar view (...) about the causal autonomy of special-science properties. They argue that since these properties can typically have multiple physical realizations, they are not identical to physical properties, and further they possess causal powers that differ from those of their physical realisers. Despite the orthodoxy of this view, it is hard to find a clear exposition of its meaning or a defence of it in terms of a well-motivated account of causation. In this paper, we aim to address this gap in the literature by clarifying what is implied by the doctrine of the causal autonomy of special-science properties and by defending the doctrine using a prominent theory of causation from the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The past decade or so has witnessed an increase in the number of philosophical discussions about emergence and reduction in science. However, many of these discussions (though not all) remain too abstract and theoretical, and are wanting with respect to concrete examples taken from the sciences. This dissertation studies the topics of reduction and emergence in the context of a case study. I focus on the case of chemistry and investigate how emergentism can help us secure the autonomy of this (...) discipline in relation to the underlying microphysics. I develop an account of emergence (called functional emergence) that is, I argue, capable of answering the question of why we have chemistry instead of just applied quantum mechanics. I argue that functionally emergent properties in chemistry -- properties that are defined by their behaviour, not by some shared microphysical constituent -- can help us defend the autonomy of chemistry; they allow for the existence of sui generis chemical regularities, which can be used in sui generis chemical explanations. Functional emergence generates difficulties for some accounts of inter-theoretic reduction, but unlike other theories of emergence it is compatible with weaker forms of reductionism. (shrink)

This article builds on ideas presented in Klein (2015a) concerning the importance of a more nuanced, conceptually rigorous approach to the scientific understanding and use of the construct “memory”. I first summarize my model, taking care to situate discussion within the terminological practices of contemporary philosophy of mind. I then elucidate the implications of the model for a particular operation of mind – the manner in which content presented to consciousness realizes its particular phenomenological character (i.e., mode of presentation). Finally, (...) I discuss how the model offers a reconceptualization of the technical language used by psychologists and neuroscientists to formulate and test ideas about memory. (shrink)

Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature. In twentieth-century philosophy, this dilemma is (...) posed most acutely in C. D. Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature . The phenomena of mind, for Broad, are the phenomena of consciousness. The central problem is that of locating mind with respect to the physical world. Broad’s exhaustive discussion of the problem culminates in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental-physical relation.1 On Broad’s taxonomy, a view might see the mental as nonexistent , as reducible, as emergent, or as a basic property of a substance . The physical might be seen in one of the same four ways. So a four-by-four matrix of views results. At the end, three views are left standing: those on which mentality is an emergent characteristic of either a physical substance or a neutral substance, where in the latter case, the physical might be either emergent or delusive. (shrink)

This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...) intentional object and ontological object. Chapter 2 explores the possible contents of our personal memories, which prove to be heterogeneous, whereas chapter 3 analyses their possible intentional objects, with a special focus on past events. The second part of the thesis explores an aspect of our personal memories that was omitted in the first part: the senses in which our personal past is apprehended as personal. Chapter 4 examines the way in which the “self” intervenes in the construction of our personal memories. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the analysis of what seems to be the most subjective aspect of our memories, that is, the emotions and feelings of our past experiences. In these last two chapters, I analyze the different interactions that can take place between memories and emotions and defend the idea that there can be emotional memories that are reducible neither to a propositional memory nor an occurrent and present emotion. The overall intention of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to show to the philosophical community that there is still a lot to be said and discussed about memory as a mental phenomenon. And second, I intend to emphasize the importance of bringing into the philosophical discussions about the mind ideas coming from different philosophical traditions as well as ideas and empirical data coming from scientific research. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008.

This thesis introduces the Problem of Consciousness as an antinomy between Physicalism and Primitivism about the phenomenal. I argue that Primitivism is implausible, but is supported by two conceptual gaps. The ‘–tivity gap’ holds that physical states are objective and phenomenal states are subjective, and that there is no entailment from the objective to the subjective. The ‘–trinsicality gap’ holds that physical properties are extrinsic and phenomenal qualities are intrinsic, and that there is no entailment from the extrinsic to the (...) intrinsic. Stoljar’s Epistemic View (EV) suggests that we have a limited conception of the physical world, and that the apparent inexplicability of consciousness is merely a symptom of our ignorance. I argue that EV must satisfy two conditions which require it to specify the content of our ignorance. EV’s best hope is a Russellian appeal to our ignorance of intrinsic physical properties. After arguing in favour of this ignorance claim, I show how it undermines the –trinsicality gap. However, I suggest that the –tivity gap cannot be dealt with by the Russellian ignorance hypothesis, nor by any other version of EV. However, I then argue that the Russellian ignorance hypothesis can still be deployed as half of a hybrid account of the phenomenal. Representationalist theories of consciousness have difficulty with the –trinsicality gap, but show promise with the –tivity gap. Specifically, Kriegel’s Self-Representationalism indicates that there can indeed be an entailment from objective physical states to subjective phenomenal states. This paves the way for my hybrid account of consciousness: the subjectivity of a phenomenal state is the product of its self-representational structure, and the qualitative character of a phenomenal state is the product of the epistemically inaccessible intrinsic physical properties involved in its implementation. (shrink)

The received view about emergence and reduction is that they are incompatible categories. I argue in this paper that, contrary to the received view, emergence and reduction can hold together. To support this thesis, I focus attention on dynamical systems and, on the basis of a general representation theorem, I argue that, as far as these systems are concerned, the emulation relationship is sufficient for reduction (intuitively, a dynamical system DS1 emulates a second dynamical system DS2 when DS1 exactly reproduces (...) the whole dynamics of DS2). This representational view of reduction, contrary to the standard deductivist one, is compatible with the existence of structural properties of the reduced system that are not also properties of the reducing one. Therefore, under this view, by no means are reduction and emergence incompatible categories but, rather, complementary ones. (shrink)

The “explanatory gap” is proposed to be the “hard problem” of consciousness research and has generated a great deal of recent debate. Arguments brought forward to reveal this gap include the conceivability of zombies or the “super-neuroscientist” Mary. These are supposed to show that the facts of consciousness are not a priori entailed by the microphysical facts. Similar arguments were already proposed by emergence theories in the context of the debate between mechanism and vitalism. According to synchronic emergentism, the property (...) of a system is emergent, when it cannot - in principle - be deduced from a complete description of the system’s components. Here, I argue that apart from phenomenal properties there are many other properties that, even though they are clearly physical, are not reductively explainable either. The explanatory gap of consciousness is therefore only a part of a much more general problem. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether evolutionary principles are compatible with epiphenomenalism, and argues for an affirmative answer. A general summary of epiphenomenalism is provided, along with certain specifications relevant to the issues of this paper. The central argument against compatibility is stated and rebutted. A specially powerful version of the argument, due to William James (1890), is stated. The apparent power of this argument is explained as resulting from a problem about our understanding of pleasure and an equivocation on (...) 'explanation'. Finally, an argument by Plantinga (2004), which applies to beliefs rather than phenomenal qualities, is stated and rebutted. (shrink)

The titular ‘Mary’ refers to Jackson’s famous protagonist. Her story takes place in the future, when all physical facts have been discovered. This includes “everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles”. Mary learns all this by watching lectures on a monochromatic television monitor. But she spends her life in a black-and-white room and has no color experiences. Then she leaves (...) the room and sees colors for the first time. (shrink)

Because there is no agreed use of the term 'self', or characteristic features or even paradigm cases of selves, there is no idea of "the self" to figure in philosophical problems. The term leads to troubles otherwise avoidable; and because legitimate discussions under the heading of 'self' are really about other things, it is gratuitous. I propose that we stop speaking of selves.

This PhD thesis focuses on the philosophical foundations of Neuroeconomics, an innovative research program which combines findings and modelling tools from economics, psychology and neuroscience to account for human choice behaviour. The proponents of Neuroeconomics often manifest the ambition to foster radical modifications in the accounts of choice behaviour developed by its parent disciplines. This enquiry provides a philosophically informed appraisal of the potential for success and the relevance of neuroeconomic research for economics. My central claim is that neuroeconomists can (...) help other economists to build more predictive and explanatory models, yet are unlikely to foster revolutionary modifications in the economic theory of choice. The contents are organized as follows. In chapters 1-2, I present neuroeconomists’ investigative tools, distinguish the most influential approaches to neuroeconomic research and reconstruct the case in favour of a neural enrichment of economic theory. In chapters 3-7, I combine insights from neuro-psychology, economic methodology and philosophy of science to develop a systematic critique of Neuroeconomics. In particular, I articulate four lines of argument to demonstrate that economists are provisionally justified in retaining a methodologically distinctive approach to the modelling of decision making. My first argument points to several evidential and epistemological concerns which complicate the interpretation of neural data and cast doubt on the inferences neuroeconomists often make in their studies. My second argument aims to show that the trade-offs between the modelling desiderata that neuroeconomists and other economists respectively value severely constrain the incorporation of neural insights into economic models. My third argument questions neuroeconomists’ attempts to develop a unified theory of choice behaviour by identifying some central issues on which they hold contrasting positions. My fourth argument differentiates various senses of the term ‘revolution’ and illustrates that neuroeconomists are unlikely to provide revolutionary contributions to economic theory in any of these senses. (shrink)

Panpsychism is the view that every concrete and unified thing has some form of phenomenal consciousness or experience. It is an age-old doctrine, which, to the surprise of many, has recently taken on new life. In philosophy of mind, it has been put forth as a simple and radical solution to the mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996, 2003;Strawson 2006; Nagel 1979, 2012). In metaphysics and philosophy of science, it has been put forth as a solution to the problem of accounting for (...) the intrinsic nature of the physical itself (Strawson 2006, Seager 2006). In this thesis, I show that panpsychism can also be defended on the basis of an argument from our (arguable) acquaintance with the nature of causation in agency. This argument has made frequent appearances throughout the history of philosophy, with philosophers such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer and James, and I construct and defend an updated version of it. Furthermore, I offer a solution to the combination problem: how can complex (human and animal-type) consciousness result from simple (fundamental particle-type) consciousness? This is generally regarded as the most serious problem facing contemporary panpsychism. I propose that mental combination can be construed as kind causal process culminating in a fusion, and show how this avoids the main difficulties with accounting for mental combination. (shrink)

Understanding a normative concept like oppression requires attention to not only its harms but also the causes of those harms. In other words, a complete understanding of such a concept requires a proper causal explanation. This causal explanation can also inform and constrain our moral response to such harms. Therefore, the conceptual explanatory framework that we use to inform our moral diagnosis and our moral response become significant. The first goal of this dissertation is to propose complexity theory as the (...) proper framework for not only explaining a social phenomenon like oppression but also understanding the proper sites for social change. The second goal of this dissertation is to answer three interrelated questions about how we should respond, morally, to a chronic and complex social problem like racial or gender inequality: (1) Why do the current interventions to address these problems fail? (2) Do social movements play any unique role in addressing these problems? (3) What is our individual responsibility to participate in social movements? In response, I argue that the explanatory frameworks that we choose to understand the cause(s) of social problems can be the source of the inadequacy of our intervention. I argue that a proper social and moral intervention needs to capture the complex and dynamic nature of the social world. I also show that changing the explanatory framework allows us to see the unique role social movements play in making effective and sustainable social change possible. Finally, I conclude supporting such movements is a moral imperative. (shrink)

In the thesis I offer an analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of the extended cognition thesis via an examination of standard views of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations. -/- In summary form, the extended cognition thesis is a view put forth in naturalistic philosophy of mind stating that the physical basis of cognitive processes and cognitive processing may, in the right circumstances, be distributed across neural, bodily, and environmental vehicles. As such, the extended cognition thesis breaks substantially with the still (...) widely held view in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, namely that cognitive processes and cognitive processing take place within the skin-and-skull of individual organisms. The standard view of metaphysical building relations can be expressed as the conjunction of two theses. First, that a metaphysical building relation – such as composition, constitution, realization, supervenience or emergence – is a relation of ontological dependence, because if a metaphysical building relation holds between X (or the Xs) and Y, then it is in virtue of X (or the Xs) that Y exists. Second, metaphysical building relations are synchronic (durationless) relations of ontological dependence. In the thesis, I propose an alternative diachronic framework by which to extend the standard synchronic accounts of metaphysical dependence relations, and by which to reformulate the metaphysical foundation of the extended cognition thesis. The project fills an important gap between analytical metaphysics (in particular, the metaphysics of dependence relations) and naturalistic philosophy of mind (especially the extended cognition thesis). To my knowledge there has been no attempt to establish a robust diachronic account of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations such as, e.g., composition and constitution. However, this is precisely what I argue is required to properly advance and ground the metaphysics of extended cognition. Ultimately, my aim of reformulating the metaphysics of extended cognition consists in taking several steps toward a third-wave of extended cognition. (shrink)

Few contemporary researchers in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences have any doubt about whether mental phenomena occur without being conscious. There is extensive and convincing clinical and experimental evidence for the existence of thoughts, desires, and related mental states that aren’t conscious. We characterize thoughts, desires, intentions, expectations, hopes, and many other mental states in terms of the things they are about and, more fully, in terms of their content, as captured by a sentence nominalization, such as a clause (...) beginning with the word ‘that’. The philosophical literature follows Franz Brentano’s adaptation of Thomist terminology in referring to all such states as intentional states. But there is another type of mental phenomena, which lack intentionality and whose mental nature consists instead of some qualitative feature. These states include bodily sensations, such as aches and pains, and perceptual states, such as visual sensations of color and tactile sensations of heat and cold. And these states all exhibit some mental quality or another, such as the mental quality distinctive of pain or the mental quality of red or blue.1 And even theorists who acknowledge that intentional states can and do occur without being conscious have sometimes insisted that qualitative states cannot. There is, according to these theorists, nothing to a state’s being qualitative or exhibiting some mental quality unless that state is conscious – unless it is, as we might metaphorically say, “lighted up”. It’s striking that Freud himself seems to have adopted this double standard toward the two types of mental state. In his metapsychological paper, “The Unconscious”, for example, he writes that “all the categories which we employ to describe conscious mental acts, such as ideas, purposes, resolutions, and so forth, can be applied to [unconscious mental occurrences]” (Freud 1915e, p. 168). But he seems here to have in.. (shrink)

E.J. Lowe has recently proposed a model of mental causation on which mental events are emergent, thus exerting a novel, downward causal influence on physical events. Yet on Lowe's model, mental causation is at the same time empirically undetectable, and in this sense is "invisible". Lowe's model is ingenious, but I don't think emergentists should welcome it, for it seems to me that a primary virtue of emergentism is its bold empirical prediction about the long-term results of human physiology. Here (...) I'll try to restore emergentism's empirical status, but my broader aim is to use Lowe's model to explore some central topics in the mental causation debate, including the "causal closure" of the physical world and the nature of causal powers. (shrink)

Content disjunctivism is the view that veridical experience involves contents and objects that differ from those of corresponding hallucinations. On one formulation of this view, we are aware of ordinary material things in our surroundings when we experience veridically, and we are aware of mere appearances when we hallucinate. This paper proposes a way of developing this view and offers some considerations in support. Central to the proposed regimentation will be a distinction between different notions of appearance. We distinguish between (...) the notion of something merely appearing to have a property and the notion of mere appearances, which are types of objects that we can refer to and be aware of. Mere appearances are not sense data or Meinongian non-existent objects but existing objects that do not have the properties that they appear to have. These notions of appearance will be elucidated, in particular by characterizing how they are involved in hallucination and illusion. I argue that the resulting view is supported by how our mental life seems to us when we experience our environment. (shrink)

The ontology of marketing, particularly the question of what products and brands are, is still largely unexplored. The ontological status of brands hinges on their relationship with products. Idealists about brands see perceptual or cognitive acts of consumers grouped under the heading ‘brand awareness’ or ‘brand image’ as constitutive for the existence of brands so that, in their view, tools of the marketing mix can influence relevant mental dispositions and attitudes. Brand realists, on the other hand, reject the view of (...) brands as mere marks or names and interpret them as emergent products with properties that afford branding in the sense of Gibson’s ecological psychology. Brand strength is a function of the degree to which brands occupy defensible niches in product space. Branding as a process involves changing external or internal boundaries of products. Several arguments are proposed in favor of brand realism. The fragments of an ontology of marketing are developed in a broadly Aristotelian framework. Brand realism has significant implications for a new understanding of issues ranging from the effects of advertising to financial brand valuation, the nature of trademarks, and marketing strategy in general. It permits one to treat brand equity as a real phenomenon not dependent on associations, attitudinal states such as brand loyalty, or spurious constructs such as brand character or personality. (shrink)

Luonnontieteiden kiistattoman menestyksen sekä kartesiolaisen mieli-ruumis -dualismin ylipääsemättömiksi osoittautuneiden sisäisten ongelmien seurauksena mielenfilosofiassa ovat viime vuosikymmeninä olleet vallalla erilaiset materialistiset tai fysikalistiset opit. Niiden mukaan mentaaliset ilmiöt ovat joko identtisiä tiettyjen fysikaalisten ilmiöiden kanssa tai ainakin täysin riippuvaisia sellaisista – siis fysikaalisten asioiden määräämiä.

This Ph.D. thesis provides a pilosophical account of the structure of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. The first, more historical part analyses how classical genetics came to be integrated into evolutionary thinking, highlighting in particular the importance of chromosomal mapping of Drosophila strains collected in the wild by Dobzansky, but also the work of Goldschmidt, Sumners, Timofeeff-Ressovsky and others. The second, more philosophical part attempts to answer the question wherein the unity of the synthesis consisted. I argue (...) that it exemplifies a weak of form of explanatory unification. (shrink)

This paper is an analysis of scientific types – the categories of a scientific taxonomy. I argue that the philosophical view about mental types stands in contrast to the real nature of scientific types, which is in turn responsible for the mind-body problem. Since the view on the relation between psychology and neurology was broadened to the status about special sciences in general, my argument can also be applied to the general special science discussion. My picture of types being the (...) result of categorizing tokens with respect to their micro structure is used to show how scientific practice makes multiple realizability implausible. (shrink)

Ansgar Beckermann Once, a mind-body theory based upon the idea of supervenience seemed to be a promising alternative to the various kinds of reductionistic physicalism. In recent years, however, Jaegwon Kim has subjected his own brainchild to a very thorough criticism. With most of Kim’s arguments I agree wholeheartedly - not least because they converge with my own thoughts.² In order to explain the few points of divergence with Kim’s views, I shall have to prepare the ground a little. In (...) the course of this paper I will therefore do two things: At the start, I will try to sketch the logical topography of the „solution space“ of the problem Kim is concerned with. As a second step, I shall then comment on the concepts of identity, realization and reduction and attempt to show that Kim’s concept of realization is too narrow, because he is still very much in the grip of the traditional view with regard to what it means to show that a property _F _is identical with, or realized by, another property _G_. (shrink)

The concept of quality points at a significant philosophical problem. The issue of the ontological status of the qualities of experience and reality leads us to discuss the issues of naturalism and reductionism in philosophy of mind. I argue that a transcendental version of the enactive approach is able to address these issues, thanks to its conception of the relation between subject and object as dependent co-origination. In this way, the enactive approach constitutes an alternative to both the internalism and (...) the externalism about qualities, constituting a process-oriented and relationist framework that can be fruitfully applied to the analysis of different ontological domains. In the conclusive section, I distinguish between an ontological and a metaphysical interpretation of this view, stressing the advantages of the former. (shrink)

I shall first set out the main lines of Meinong’s account then look at the theo- ries of dependence and possibility on which it is based. Finally I consider some applications of the theory, most of which are at least hinted at by Meinong.

In this paper, I shall argue that both emergence and downward causation, which are strongly interconnected, presuppose the presence of levels of reality. However, emergence and downward causation pull in opposite directions with respect to my best reconstruction of what levels are. The upshot is that emergence stresses the autonomy among levels while downward causation puts the distinction between levels at risk of a reductio ad absurdum, with the further consequence of blurring the very notion of downward. Therefore, emergence and (...) downward causation are not fit to each other vis-a-vis the concept of level. (shrink)

This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...) what is it about consciousness that makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference? (shrink)

The Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that since (1) every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and (2) cases of causal overdetermination are rare, it follows that if (3) mental events cause physical events as frequently as they seem to, then (4) mental events must be physical in nature. In defence of (1), it is sometimes said that (1) is supported if not entailed by conservation laws. Against this, I argue that conservation laws do not lend sufficient support to (...) (1) to render its denial ‘unscientific’, and that those who accept (3) and deny (4) may consequently respond to the Exclusion Argument by denying (1) without thereby setting themselves at odds with current science. I also argue that conservation laws are compatible with (3) and the negation of (4), and that one can therefore accept conservation laws and (3) while denying both (1) and (4). (shrink)

I assess a number of connected ideas about temporal experience that are introspectively plausible, but which I believe can be argued to be incorrect. These include the idea that temporal experiences are extended experiential processes, that they have an internal structure that in some way mirrors the structure of the apparent events they present, and the idea that time in experience is in some way represented by time itself. I explain how these ideas can be developed into more sharply defined (...) views, and then argue that these views are inconsistent with certain empirical facts about how time is represented in the brain. These facts instead support a kind of atomic view, on which temporal experiences are temporally unstructured atoms. (shrink)

Closure is the central premise in one of the best arguments for physicalism—the argument from causal overdetermination. According to Closure, at every time at which a physical event has a sufficient cause, it has a sufficient physical cause. This principle is standardly defended by appealing to the fact that it enjoys empirical support from numerous confirming cases (and no disconfirming cases) in physics. However, in recent literature on mental causation, attempts have been made to provide a stronger argument for it. (...) This essay argues that, insofar as these attempts are successful, they actually establish a far stronger closure principle. Worryingly, the acceptance of this stronger principle presents a new problem for the most popular form of physicalism, that of nonreductive physicalism. The problem shall be referred to as the 'Problem of Strong Closure.'. (shrink)

Was ist das überhaupt – Bewußtsein? Beim Gebrauch des Substantivs „Bewußt- sein“ sollte man eine gewisse Vorsicht walten lassen. Die deutsche Sprache kennt dieses Substantiv nur innerhalb weniger Redewendungen – „Dann verlor er das Bewußtsein“, „Nach vielen Stunden kam er wieder zu Bewußtsein“, „Im Bewußtsein seiner schweren Verantwortung“ usw. Außerhalb dieser Redewen- dungen kommt das Wort dagegen praktisch nicht vor; und deshalb sollte man skeptisch werden, wenn Philosophen Sätze formulieren wie „Menschen haben ein Bewußtsein“. „Bei Bewußtsein sein“ ist gebräuchliches Deutsch, (...) „ein Be- wußtsein haben“ nicht.1 Diese Bemerkungen mahnen zwar zu besonderer Vor- sicht, helfen in der Sache jedoch nicht viel weiter. Wovon reden wir also, wenn wir fragen, ob Bewußtsein reduktiv erklärbar ist? Fragen wir vielleicht so: Was fehlt dem, der das Bewußtsein verloren hat? (shrink)

According to Lynne Baker, there are three main arguments for the.

Imagine slicing your hand with a steak knife. Inevitably, this leads to a characteristic unpleasant sensation, and just as reliably, to a withdrawal of the wounded limb. But can this rather mundane fact--and other similar facts--shed any light on the mind-body problem or the issue of the role of experience in causing behavior? In my dissertation, I explore this issue head on, and in the process clarify and criticize the arguments of philosophers who have given an affirmative answer to this (...) question--philosophers such as William James and Herbert Spencer. These arguments have coupled evidence like the above with the fact that human beings have evolved, in order to make the case that epiphenomenalism with respect to qualia is false. My first task will be to formulate a rigorous version of a James-Spencer style argument, which will occupy us in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is dedicated to answering a number of objections to the argument, in an effort to show that if there is a problem with it, this problem lies elsewhere. Chapter 3 explores alternative arguments in the spirit of the original one formulated in Chapter 1, and discusses any resulting effects on the plausibility of the conclusion. Chapter 4 is the capstone chapter of the dissertation. In it, I discuss a crucial objection to all arguments in the spirit of that given in the first chapter--namely, that physicalism has analogous flaws to epiphenomenalism where accommodating the relevant evidence is concerned. My conclusions in this final chapter are twofold. First, that even if there is no fatal flaw in the general strategy the evolutionary argument employs, it works against all forms of dualism, not just epiphenomenalism. And second, the accusations made in the objection are correct; physicalism suffers from problems analogous to those faced by epiphenomenalism. Although the primary findings of the dissertation are negative, there are many lessons we can take from them along the way. Most prominent among them is an improved perspective on the appropriate roles of empirical findings and armchair philosophical theorizing in debate over the mind-body problem. (shrink)