Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on (...) the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice. (shrink)

A thoroughly physical view on reality and our common sense view on agency and free will seem to be in a direct conflict with each other: if everything that happens is determined by prior physical events, so too are all our actions and conscious decisions; you have no choice but to do what you are destined to do. Although this way of thinking has intuitive appeal, and a long history, it has recently began to gain critical attention. A number of (...) arguments have been raised in defense of the idea that our will could be genuinely free even if the universe is governed by deterministic laws of physics. Determinism and free will have been argued to be compatible before, of course, but these recent arguments seem to take a new step in that they are relying on a more profound and concrete view on the central elements of the issue, the fundamental laws of physics and the nature of causal explanation in particular. The basic idea of this approach is reviewed in here, and it is shown how a careful analysis of physics and causal explanation can indeed enhance our understanding of the issue. Although it cannot be concluded that the problem of free will would now be completely solved (or dissolved), it is clear that these recent developments can bring significant advancement to the debate. (shrink)

The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such concrete fictions. (...) Before their realizations neither minimal cells nor alternative genetic systems were any well-defined objects, and the subsequent experimental work has given more content to these originally schematic imaginings. But it is as yet unclear whether individual members of these heterogeneous groups of somewhat functional synthetic constructs will eventually turn out to be fully realizable, remain only partially realizable, or prove outright impossible. (shrink)

Some recent arguments defending the genuine causal efficacy of the mental have been relying on empirical research on neuroprosthetics. This essay presents a critical analysis of these arguments. The problem of mental causation, and the basic idea and results of neuroprosthetics are reviewed. It is shown how appealing to the research on neuroprosthetics can be interpreted to give support to the idea of mental causation. However, it does so only in a rather deflationary sense: by holding the mental identical with (...) the neural. So contrary to what the arguments have been assuming, neuroprosthetics cannot be used to argue for nonreductive physicalism. It can rather be taken to illustrate just the opposite: how the mental and the physical are identical. (shrink)

The paper investigates and refines the proportionalist solution to the causal exclusion problem developed by Menzies and List. First and foremost, it explores the implications of their inter-level compatibility result. It is highlighted that in theory the inter-level causal compatibility of realizer and realized properties allows for scenarios where the higher-level property is multiply realized. By developing concrete illustrations, the paper proves this to be an empirically plausible option. Further non-trivial implications of the framework are unpacked to show that the (...) sensitivity of causal relations to background conditions is as important in deciding on the existence and the direction of exclusion as sensitivity to the realization of the cause. This insight also opens the way to further refinements: a richer reconceptualization of upwards exclusion and a plausible answer to a critic of the Menzies and List project. (shrink)

One of the main line of responses to the infamous causal exclusion problem has been based on the counterfactual account of causation. However, arguments have begun to surface to the effect that the counterfactual theory is in fact ill-equipped to solve the exclusion problem due to its commitment to downward causation. This argumentation is here critically analysed. An analysis of counterfactual dependence is presented and it is shown that if the semantics of counterfactuals is taken into account carefully enough, the (...) counterfactual notion of causation does not need to be committed to downward causation. However, it is a further question whether this is eventually enough to solve the exclusion problem for the analysis shows how the problem itself can take various different forms. (shrink)

This thesis explores the use of the concept 'realization' in the philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on the role realization plays in assessing or opposing identity theory. The history of the use of the concept of realization in the philosophy of mind is reviewed, and from that a set of desiderata to be used for assessing accounts of realization is extracted. The desiderata are applied to a sample account of realization proposed by Sydney Shoemaker. (2007) Next the application (...) of 'realization' in contemporary contexts is considered, focusing on the idea that mental kinds are, potentially, multiply realized. Based on interpretations of results from research in the relevant sciences this thesis considers two kinds of strategies used to object to multiple realization, (1) arguments against the concept of multiple realization: the Grain Argument (Bechtel and Mundale 1999), and Shapiro's Dilemma (Shapiro 2000), and (2) defeaters for alleged cases/examples of multiple realization proposed by Lawrence Shapiro and Thomas Polger: unification, individual differences, kind splitting, and abstraction and idealization. (Polger and Shapiro 2016) The thesis argues that, ultimately, these arguments hinge on the claim that there is no empirical evidence of multiply realized mental kinds. In response to this claim, the fourth chapter presents novel examples of multiple realization drawn from research in the cognitive neuroscience of language. There are three aspects from the study of language that are presented as examples of multiple realization: (1) language lateralization, (2) reading acquisition, and (3) second/multi- language learning. The analysis of these case studies applies Shoemaker's account of realization as a framework for describing the empirical data as cases of multiple realization. Objections to, and defeaters for, these cases are considered and rejected. The thesis concludes by raising the possibility that mental kinds are realized by mechanisms. This proposal involves drawing connections between traditional questions/views from the philosophy of mind with a current research program from the philosophy of science; the view is particularly important in the philosophy of neuroscience and the philosophy of biology, known as 'new mechanism'. (shrink)