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Phenomenal concepts and the explanatory gap

In Torin Andrew Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism. Oxford University Press (2006)

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  1. Whose Consciousness? Reflexivity and the Problem of Self-Knowledge.Christian Coseru - 2020 - In Mark Siderits, Ching Keng & John Spackman (eds.), Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness: Tradition and Dialogue. Boston: Brill | Rodopi. pp. 121-153.
    If I am aware that p, say, that it is raining, is it the case that I must be aware that I am aware that p? Does introspective or object-awareness entail the apprehension of mental states as being of some kind or another: self-monitoring or intentional? That is, are cognitive events implicitly self-aware or is “self-awareness” just another term for metacognition? Not surprisingly, intuitions on the matter vary widely. This paper proposes a novel solution to this classical debate by reframing (...)
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  • Addressing Higher-Order Misrepresentation with Quotational Thought.Vincent Picciuto - 2011 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (3-4):109-136.
    In this paper it is argued that existing ‘self-representational’ theories of phenomenal consciousness do not adequately address the problem of higher-order misrepresentation. Drawing a page from the phenomenal concepts literature, a novel self-representational account is introduced that does. This is the quotational theory of phenomenal consciousness, according to which the higher-order component of a conscious state is constituted by the quotational component of a quotational phenomenal concept. According to the quotational theory of consciousness, phenomenal concepts help to account for the (...)
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  • Phenomenal and perceptual concepts.David Papineau - 2006 - In Torin Andrew Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism. Oxford University Press. pp. 111--144.
    1 Introduction 2 Perceptual Concepts 2.1 Perceptual Concepts are not Demonstrative 2.2 Perceptual Concepts as Stored Templates 2.3 Perceptual Semantics 2.4 Perceptually Derived Concepts 3 Phenomenal Concepts.
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  • A Dualist Account of Phenomenal Concepts.Martina Fürst - 2014 - In Andrea Lavazza & Howard Robinson (eds.), Contemporary Dualism. A Defense. 112-135. Routledge. pp. 112-135.
    The phenomenal concept strategy is considered a powerful response to anti-physicalist arguments. This physicalist strategy aims to provide a satisfactory account of dualist intuitions without being committed to ontological dualist conclusions. In this paper I first argue that physicalist accounts of phenomenal concepts fail to explain their cognitive role. Second, I develop an encapsulation account of phenomenal concepts that best explains their particularities. Finally, I argue that the encapsulation account, which features self-representing experiences, implies non-physical referents. Therefore, the account of (...)
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  • Dualism: How Epistemic Issues Drive Debates About the Ontology of Consciousness.Brie Gertler - 2020 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    A primary goal of this chapter is to highlight neglected epistemic parallels between dualism and physicalism. Both dualist and physicalist arguments employ a combination of empirical data and armchair reflection; both rely on considerations stemming from how we conceptualize certain phenomena; and both aim to establish views that are compatible with scientific results but go well beyond the deliverances of empirical science. -/- I begin the chapter by fleshing out the distinctive commitments of dualism, in a way that illuminates the (...)
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  • Acquaintance, Parsimony, and Epiphenomenalism.Brie Gertler - 2019 - In Sam Coleman (ed.), The Knowledge Argument. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 62-86.
    Some physicalists (Balog 2012, Howell 2013), and most dualists, endorse the acquaintance response to the Knowledge Argument. This is the claim that Mary gains substantial new knowledge, upon leaving the room, because phenomenal knowledge requires direct acquaintance with phenomenal properties. The acquaintance response is an especially promising way to make sense of the Mary case. I argue that it casts doubt on two claims often made on behalf of physicalism, regarding parsimony and mental causation. I show that those who endorse (...)
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  • Phenomenology of Fundamental Reality.Nino Kadić - 2022 - Dissertation, King's College London
    Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is present everywhere at the fundamental level of reality, has established itself as an increasingly popular option in the philosophy of mind. Situated between substance dualism and reductive physicalism, panpsychism aims to capture the intuitions behind both, integrating consciousness into the physical world without explaining it in terms of purely physical facts. In this thesis, I offer a defence of panpsychism. -/- First, I examine influential arguments against physicalism, such as Thomas Nagel’s (1974, 1979) perspective-based (...)
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  • The Semiotic Mind: A Fundamental Theory of Consciousness.Marc Champagne - 2014 - Dissertation, York Universiy
    One of the leading concerns animating current philosophy of mind is that, no matter how good a scientific account is, it will leave out what its like to be conscious. The challenge has thus been to study or at least explain away that qualitative dimension. Pursuant with that aim, I investigate how philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition can positively reshape ongoing debates. Specifically, I think the account of iconic or similarity-based reference we find in semiotic theory offers a (...)
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  • A Kantian account of the knowledge argument.de Sá Pereira Roberto Horácio - 2018 - Kant-e-Print 13 (3):32-55.
    This paper is a new defense of type-B materialism against Jackson’s knowledge argument (1982) inspired by the Kantian main opposition between concepts and sensible intuitions. Like all materialists of type B, I argue that on her release from her black-and-white room, Mary makes cognitive progress. However, contrary to the so-called phenomenal concept strategy (henceforth PCS), I do not think that such progress can be accounted for in terms of the acquisition of new concepts. I also reject Tye’s recent account of (...)
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  • What We Can Learn about Phenomenal Concepts from Wittgenstein’s Private Language.de Sá Pereira Roberto Horácio - 2016 - Nordic Wittgenstein Review 5 (2):125-152.
    This paper is both systematic and historical in nature. From a historical viewpoint, I aim to show that to establish Wittgenstein’s claim that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” (PI §580) there is an enthymeme in Wittgenstein’s private language argument (henceforth PLA) overlooked in the literature, namely Wittgenstein’s suggestion that both perceptual and bodily experiences are transparent in the relevant sense that one cannot point to a mental state and wonder “What is that?” From a systematic viewpoint, (...)
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  • Das Bewusstsein erklären.Michael Schmitz - 2005 - Dissertation, Universität Konstanz
    Abstract. The dissertation defends the thesis that the mind-body problem arises against the background of the elimination of the manifest physical world, and that the only satisfactory response to it is to take back that elimination and thus to dissolve the problem. Various materialist and dualist responses are shown to be inadequate. They are only different forms of ontological fundamentalism – physics fundamentalism and consciousness fundamentalism – that lead to ultimately meaningless metaphysical constructions. By contrast, on the ontologically pluralist view (...)
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  • Universal History and the Emergence of Species Being.Brown Haines - manuscript
    This paper seeks to recover the function of universal history, which was to place particulars into relation with universals. By the 20th century universal history was largely discredited because of an idealism that served to lend epistemic coherence to the overwhelming complexity arising from universal history's comprehensive scope. Idealism also attempted to account for history's being "open"--for the human ability to transcend circumstance. The paper attempts to recover these virtues without the idealism by defining universal history not by its scope (...)
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  • Representational theories of consciousness.William G. Lycan - 2000 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The idea of representation has been central in discussions of intentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begun playing a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly in theories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiple representational theories of consciousness, corresponding to different uses of the term "conscious," each attempting to explain the corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. More cautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon in terms of _intentionality_, and assumes that intentionality (...)
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  • Qualia.Michael Tye - 1997 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, (...)
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  • Qualia: The Knowledge Argument.Martine Nida-Rumelin - 2002 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Zombies.Robert Kirk - 2003 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Phenomenal Concepts.Katalin Balog - 2009 - In Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), Oxford Handbook in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press. pp. 292--312.
    This article is about the special, subjective concepts we apply to experience, called “phenomenal concepts”. They are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. Conscious experience strike many philosophers as philosophically problematic and difficult to accommodate within a physicalistic metaphysics. Second, PCs are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. The sense that there is something special about PCs (...)
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  • Acquaintance and the mind-body problem.Katalin Balog - 2012 - In Simone Gozzano & Christopher S. Hill (eds.), New Perspectives on Type Identity: The Mental and the Physical. Cambridge University Press. pp. 16-43.
    In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will offer (...)
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  • Self-Representationalism and the Neo-Russellian Ignorance Hypothesis: A Hybrid Account of Phenomenal Consciousness.Tom McClelland - 2012 - Dissertation, Sussex
    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 (...)
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  • Debunking Arguments for Illusionism about Consciousness.David Chalmers - 2020 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (5-6):258-281.
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  • On the psychological origins of dualism: Dual-process cognition and the explanatory gap.Brian Fiala, Adam Arico & Shaun Nichols - 2011 - In Edward Slingerland & Mark Collard (eds.), Creating Consilience: Issues and Case Studies in teh Integration of the Sciences and Humanities. Oxford University Press.
    Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained. This gives rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gulf between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this essay presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. This dual-process model, we suggest, provides an important (...)
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  • Phenomenal Acquaintance.Kelly Trogdon - 2009 - Dissertation, Umass Amherst
    Chapter 1 is devoted to taking care of some preliminary issues. I begin by distinguishing those states of awareness in virtue of which we’re acquainted with the phenomenal characters of our experiences from those states of awareness some claim are at the very nature of experience. Then I reconcile the idea that experience is transparent with the claim that we can be acquainted with phenomenal character. -/- In Chapter 2 I set up a dilemma that is the primary focus of (...)
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  • Tracking Representationalism.David Bourget & Angela Mendelovici - 2014 - In Andrew Bailey (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: The Key Thinkers. Continuum. pp. 209-235.
    This paper overviews the current status of debates on tracking representationalism, the view that phenomenal consciousness is a matter of tracking features of one's environment in a certain way. We overview the main arguments for the view and the main objections and challenges it faces. We close with a discussion of alternative versions of representationalism that might overcome the shortcomings of tracking representationalism.
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  • Multi-Descriptional Physicalism, Level(s) of Being, and the Mind-Body Problem.Savvas Ioannou - 2022 - Dissertation, University of St. Andrews
    The main idea of this thesis is multi-descriptional physicalism. According to it, only physical entities are elements of our ontology, and there are different ways to describe them. Higher-level vocabularies (e.g., mental, neurological, biological) truly describe reality. Sentences about higher-level entities are made true by physical entities. Every chapter will develop multi-descriptional physicalism or defend it from objections. In chapter 1, I will propose a new conceptual reductive account that conceptually reduces higher-level entities to physical entities. This conceptual reductive account (...)
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  • The Phenomenal Concept Strategy and a Master Argument.Napoleon Mabaquiao Jr - 2015 - Kemanusiaan 22 (1):53-74.
    The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the concepts by means of which we think about our (...)
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  • The conceivability argument and the intuition of dualism.Karol Polcyn - 2010 - Diametros 24:90-106.
    Kripke’s antimaterialist argument, under David Papineau’s new interpretation, is not based on assuming that the conceivability of zombies entails possibility and does not lead to the conclusion that materialism is false but rather to the conclusion that we are all in the grip of the intuitive feeling that materialism is false. Leaving it open whether or not Papineau’s interpretation of Kripke’s argument is correct, I argue here that by appealing to the intuition of dualism we can see that the conceivability (...)
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  • What We Can Learn about Phenomenal Concepts from Wittgenstein’s Private Language.Roberto Sá Pereira - 2016 - Nordic Wittgenstein Review 5 (2):125-152.
    This paper is both systematic and historical in nature. From a historical viewpoint, I aim to show that to establish Wittgenstein’s claim that “an ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria” there is an enthymeme in Wittgenstein’s private language argument overlooked in the literature, namely Wittgenstein’s suggestion that both perceptual and bodily experiences are _transparent_ in the relevant sense that one cannot point to a mental state and wonder “What is that?” From a systematic viewpoint, I aim to show (...)
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  • Thinking about phenomenal concepts.Luca Malatesti - 2011 - Synthesis Philosophica 26 (2):391-402.
    Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and different conceivability arguments, advanced by Saul Kripke, David Chalmers and Joseph Levine, conclude that consciousness involves non-physical properties or properties that cannot be reductively accounted for in physical terms. Some physicalists have replied to these objections by means of different versions of the phenomenal concept strategy. David Chalmers has responded with the master argument, a reasoning that, if successful, would undermine any reasonable version of the phenomenal concept strategy. In this paper, I argue that the (...)
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  • Don't Ask, Look! Linguistic Corpora as a Tool for Conceptual Analysis.Roland Bluhm - 2013 - In Migue Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. DuEPublico. pp. 7-15.
    Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...)
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  • The Meta-Problem of Consciousness.David Chalmers - 2018 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (9-10):6-61.
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  • Two Problems with the Socio-Relational Critique of Distributive Egalitarianism.Christian Seidel - 2013 - In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. Duisburg-Essen: DuEPublico. pp. 525-535.
    Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...)
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  • The Integrated Information Theory facing the Hard problem of consciousness.Wael Basille - 2020 - Dissertation, Sorbonne Université
    The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) formulated for the first time in 2004 by the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, is a theoretical framework aiming to scientifically explain phenomenal consciousness. The IIT is presented in the first part of this work. Broadly speaking, integrated information is an abstract quantitative measure of the causal power a system has on itself. The main claim of IIT is the identity between informational structures and experience. The nature of this identity will be the subject of the second (...)
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  • A Dilemma about the Mental.Guy Dove & Andreas Elpidorou - 2021 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 1.
    Physicalism demands an explication of what it means for something to be physical. But the most popular way of providing one—viz., characterizing the physical in terms of the postulates of a scientifically derived physical theory—is met with serious trouble. Proponents of physicalism can either appeal to current physical theory or to some future physical theory (preferably an ideal and complete one). Neither option is promising: currentism almost assuredly renders physicalism false and futurism appears to render it indeterminate or trivial. The (...)
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  • The phenomenal concept strategy.Peter Carruthers & Benedicte Veillet - 2007 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (9-10):212-236.
    A powerful reply to a range of familiar anti-physicalist arguments has recently been developed. According to this reply, our possession of phenomenal concepts can explain the facts that the anti-physicalist claims can only be explained by a non-reductive account of phenomenal consciousness. Chalmers (2006) argues that the phenomenal concept strategy is doomed to fail. This article presents the phenomenal concept strategy, Chalmers' argument against it, and a defence of the strategy against his.
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  • Naturalizing Qualia.Alessandra Buccella - 2017 - Phenomenology and Mind 12:152 - 161.
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  • Conscious Experiences as Ultimate Seemings: Renewing the Phenomenal Concept Strategy.François Kammerer - 2016 - Argumenta 1 (2):233-243.
    The Phenomenal Concept Strategy is a popular strategy used to support physicalism in the realm of conscious experience. This Strategy accounts for dualist intuitions but uses the ways in which we think about our experiences to explain these intuitions in a physicalist framework, without any appeal to ontological dualism. In this paper, I will raise two issues related to the currently available versions of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. First, most of the theories belonging to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy posit that (...)
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  • El problema mente-cuerpo: metafísica de la mente.Agustin Vicente - 2015 - In Josep Lluis Prades (ed.), Metafísica. Tecnos.
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  • Physical basis for the emergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge.W. P. Hall - 2011 - Kororoit Institute Working Papers (2):1-63.
    Paper type: Conceptual perspective. Background(s): Physics, biology, epistemology Perspectives: Theory of autopoietic systems, Popperian evolutionary epistemology and the biology of cognition. Context: This paper is a contribution to developing the theories of hierarchically complex living systems and the natures of knowledge in such systems. Problem: Dissonance between the literatures of knowledge management and organization theory and my observations of the living organization led to consideration of foundation questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is knowledge? How are life (...)
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  • Modals vs. Morals. Blackburn on Conceptual Supervenience. Dohrn - 2012 - GAP 8 Proceedings.
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  • A defense of the knowledge argument.John Martin DePoe - unknown
    Defenders of the Knowledge Argument contend that physicalism is false because knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world. In particular, proponents of the Knowledge Argument claim that physicalism is false because the truths about the character of conscious experience are not knowable from the complete set of physical truths. This dissertation is a defense of the Knowledge Argument. Chapter one characterizes what physicalism is and provides support for the claim that if (...)
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  • Intrinsic naturalism: a type-F monist account of phenomenal consciousness.Luke Alexander Gordon Palmer - unknown
    The aim of this thesis is to provide a theory of phenomenal consciousness which accords with both the science-friendly spirit of physicalism and the acknowledgement of panpsychism that phenomenal properties may be inextricably linked to entities, but with none of the problems associated with either type of model. Initially, physicalism and panpsychism are evaluated by the lights of their most serious problems, and solutions are offered to these problems from the point of view of a third kind of model: intrinsic (...)
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