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  1. (2 other versions)Dualism.Howard Robinson - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    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 (...)
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  • Emergent properties.Timothy O'Connor - 1994 - American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (2):91-104.
    All organised bodies are composed of parts, similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a (...)
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  • The Problem of Nomological Harmony.Brian Cutter & Bradford Saad - forthcoming - Noûs.
    Our universe features a harmonious match between laws and states: applying its laws to its states generates other states. This is a striking fact. Matters might have been otherwise. The universe might have been stillborn in a state unengaged by its laws. The problem of nomological harmony is that of explaining the noted striking fact. After introducing and developing this problem, we canvass candidate solutions and identify some of their virtues and vices. Candidate solutions invoke the likes of a designer, (...)
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  • Explanation, Causation and Deduction.Fred Wilson - 1985 - Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Reidel.
    The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and (...)
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  • Spinoza’s EIp10 As a Solution to a Paradox about Rules: A New Argument from the Short Treatise.Michael Rauschenbach - 2020 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1):12.
    The tenth proposition of Spinoza’s Ethics reads: ‘Each attribute of substance must be conceived through itself.’ Developing and defending the argument for this single proposition, it turns out, is vital to Spinoza’s philosophical project. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible to overstate its importance. Spinoza and his interpreters have used EIp10 to prove central claims in his metaphysics and philosophy of mind (i.e., substance monism, mind-body parallelism, mind-body identity, and finite subject individuation). It’s crucial for making sense of his epistemology (i.e., Spinoza’s (...)
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  • Interactionism for the discerning mind?Derek Shiller - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (4):931-946.
    Jaegwon Kim has developed an argument that interactionist dualists cannot account for the causal relations between minds and brains. This paper develops a closely related argument that focuses instead on the causal relations between minds and neurons. While there are several promising responses to Kim’s argument, their plausibility relies on a relatively simple understanding of mind–brain relations. Once we shift our focus to neurons, these responses lose their appeal. The problem is that even if mind–brain causal pairing can be explained (...)
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  • Interactionism, haecceities, and the pairing argument.Bradford Saad - 2017 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (7):724-741.
    Interactionists hold that non-spatial objects causally interact with physical objects. Interactionists have traditionally grappled with the puzzle of how such interaction is possible. More recently, Jaegwon Kim has presented interactionists with a more daunting threat: the pairing argument, which purports to refute interactionism by showing that non-spatial objects cannot stand in causal relations. After reviewing that argument, I develop a challenge to it on behalf of the interactionist. The challenge poses a dilemma: roughly, either haecceities exist or they do not. (...)
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  • The Road to Substance Dualism.Geoffrey Madell - 2010 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 67:45-60.
    The common materialist view that a functional account of intentionality will eventually be produced is rejected, as is the notion that intentional states are multiply realisable. It is argued also that, contrary to what many materialists have held, the causation of behaviour by intentional states rules out the possibility of a complete explanation of human behaviour in physical terms, and that this points to substance dualism. Kant's criticism of the Cartesian self as a substance, endorsed by P. F. Strawson, rests (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of Emergence.Hong Yu Wong - 2005 - Noûs 39 (4):658 - 678.
    The following framework of theses, roughly hewn, shapes contemporary discussion of the problem of mental causation: (1) Non-Identity of the Mental and the Physical Mental properties and states cannot be identified with specific physical properties and states. (2) Causal Closure (Completeness) of the Physical The objective probability of every physical event is fixed by prior physical events and laws alone. (This thesis is sometimes expressed in terms of explanation: In tracing the causal history of any physical event, one need not (...)
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  • The metaphysics of emergence.Timothy O'Connor - 2005 - Noûs 39 (4):658-678.
    The objective probability of every physical event is fixed by prior physical events and laws alone. (This thesis is sometimes expressed in terms of explanation: In tracing the causal history of any physical event, one need not advert to any non-physical events or laws. To the extent that there is any explanation available for a physical event, there is a complete explanation available couched entirely in physical vocabulary. We prefer the probability formulation, as it should be acceptable to any physicalist, (...)
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  • Indeterministic Causation and Two Patches for the Pairing Argument.Bradford Saad - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (4):664-682.
    The pairing argument aims to demonstrate the impossibility of non-spatial objects (including minds) standing in causal relations. Its chief premises are (roughly) that causation requires pairing relations between causes and effects and that pairing relations require spatial relations. Critics have argued that the first claim suffers from counterexamples involving indeterministic causation. After briefly rehearsing the pairing argument and the objection from indeterministic causation, I offer two ways of revising the pairing argument to meet the objection from indeterministic causation.
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  • What Could Pair a Nonphysical Soul to a Physical Body?Jaegwon Kim - 2015 - In Keith Augustine & Michael Martin (eds.), The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 335-347.
    This paper argues that since nonphysical souls lack a position in space, they cannot have the pairing relations that would allow them to interact with physical bodies. For example, if two rifles (A and B) are fired at the same time, and consequently Andy and Buddy are killed, we can only say that rifle A killed Andy while rifle B killed Buddy, rather than the other way around, if there are appropriate spatial relations (such as distance and orientation) that pair (...)
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  • Primitive causal relations and the pairing problem.Paul Audi - 2011 - Ratio 24 (1):1-16.
    There is no doubt that spatial relations aid us in pairing up causes and effects. But when we consider the possibility of qualitatively indiscernible things, it might seem that spatial relations are more than a mere aid – they might seem positively required. The belief that spatial relations are required for causal relations is behind an important objection to Cartesian Dualism, the pairing problem. I argue that the Cartesian can answer this objection by appeal to the possibility of primitive causal (...)
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  • Neo-Thomistic hylomorphism applied to mental causation and neural correlates of consciousness.Matthew Keith Owen - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Birmingham
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  • Intentional Scraps.R. L. Barnette - 1975 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 13 (1):12-20.
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  • Two solutions to the neural discernment problem.Bradford Saad - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):2837-2850.
    Interactionists hold that minds are non-physical objects that interact with brains. The neural discernment problem for interactionism is that of explaining how non-physical minds produce behavior and cognition by exercising different causal powers over physiologically similar neurons. This paper sharpens the neural discernment problem and proposes two interactionist models of mind-brain interaction that solve it. One model avoids overdetermination while the other respects the causal closure of the physical domain.
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