The animalist says we are animals. This thesis is commonly understood as the universal generalization that all human persons are human animals. This article proposes an alternative: the thesis is a generic that admits of exceptions. We defend the resulting view, which we call ‘generic animalism’, and show its aptitude for diagnosing the limits of eight case-based objections to animalism.

According to theists, God is an immaterial thinking being. The main question of this article is whether theism supports the view that we are immaterial thinking beings too. I shall argue in the negative. Along the way, I will also explore some implications in the philosophy of mind following from the observation that, on theism, God’s mentality is in a certain respect magical.

This paper is divided into three sections. It aims to give some resources for making possible a straightforward debate on the mind-body problem as well as some serious researches in it. Having these goals into account, the first section offers an introduction to the mind-body problem and the second section explains briefly some of the most influential answers to this problem. The third section is devoted to eliminative materialism.

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.

Mereological nihilists hold that composition never occurs, so that nothing is ever a proper part of anything else. Substance dualists generally hold that we are each identical with an immaterial soul. In this paper, I argue that every popular objection to substance dualism has a parallel objection to composition. This thesis has some interesting implications. First, many of those who reject composition, but accept substance dualism, or who reject substance dualism and accept composition, have some explaining to do. Secondly, one (...) popular objection to mereological nihilism, one which contends that mereological nihilism is objectionable insofar as it is incompatible with the existence of people, is untenable. (shrink)

At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against dualism fail, (...) such as dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and substance dualism is merely a soul-of-the-gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. (shrink)

I reconstruct Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ. I present Aristotle’s account of the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive states, both perceptual and intellectual. On my interpretation, Aristotle’s account is based around the notion of cognitive powers taking on forms in a special preservative way. Based on this account, Aristotle argues that no physical structure could enable a bodily part or combination of bodily parts to produce or determine the full range of forms that (...) the human intellect can understand. For Aristotle, cognitive powers with bodily organs are always spatiotemporally limited, but the understanding is not. Aristotle claims that our understanding applies to all instances of the thing understood wherever and whenever they exist. On Aristotle’s own account the intellect in its nature is only “potential,” it does not actually possess any form. Thus nothing prevents it from possessing all forms. (shrink)

In the standard thought experiments, dualism strikes many philosophers as true, including many non-dualists. This ‘striking’ generates prima facie justification: in the absence of defeaters, we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be, i.e. we ought to be dualists. In this paper, I examine several proposed undercutting defeaters for our dualist intuitions. I argue that each proposal fails, since each rests on a false assumption, or requires empirical evidence that it lacks, or overgenerates defeaters. By the (...) end, our prima facie justification for dualism remains undefeated. I close with one objection concerning the dialectical role of rebutting defeaters, and I argue that the prospects for a successful rebutting defeater for our dualist intuitions are dim. Since dualism emerges undefeated, we ought to believe it. (shrink)

Most answers to the mind-body problem are claims about the nature of mental properties and substances. But advocates of non-reductive physicalism have generally neglected the topic of the nature of substance, quickly nodding to the view that all substances are physical, while focusing their intellectual energy on understanding how mental properties relate to physical ones. Let us call the view that all substances are physical or are exhaustively composed of physical substances substance physicalism (SP). Herein, I argue that non-reductive physicalism (...) (NRP) cannot uphold substance physicalism and is thereby false. For NRP faces a mind problem: its commitment to property irreducibility prevents that which bears the mental properties—the mind, or on some views, the self or person—from being a physical thing. (shrink)

Hylomorphism offers a third way between animalist approaches to personal identity, which maintain that psychology is irrelevant to our persistence, andneo-Lockean accounts, which deny that humans are animals. This paper provides a Thomistic account that explains the intuitive responses to thought experiments involving brain transplants and the transformation of organic bodies into inorganic ones. This account does not have to follow the animalist in abandoning the claim that it is our identity which matters in survival, or countenance the puzzles of (...) spatially coincident entities that plague the neo-Lockean. The key is to understand the human being as only contingently an animal. This approach to our animality is one that Catholics have additional reason to hold given certain views about purgatory, our uniqueness as free and rational creatures, and our having once existed as zygotes. (shrink)

Animalism is at once a bold metaphysical theory and a pedestrian biological observation. For according to animalists, human persons are organisms; we are members of a certain biological species. In this article, I introduce some heretofore unnoticed data concerning the interlocking interests of human persons and human organisms. I then show that the data support animalism. The result is a novel and powerful argument for animalism. Bold or pedestrian, animalism is true.

Among your closest associates is a certain human animal – a living, breathing, organism. You see it when you look in the mirror. When it is sick, you don't feel too well. Where it goes, you go. And, one thinks, where you go, it must follow. Indeed, you can make it move through sheer force of will. You bear, in short, an important and intimate relation to this, your animal. So too rest of us with our animals. Animalism says that (...) this relation is nothing short of identity. According to animalists, we do not only coincide with or constitute or inhabit or otherwise hang out with these close associates, our animals: we are them. In this article, I offer an opinionated take on what animalism might be and situate it against contemporary rivals. Then, I outline a simple case for animalism. Finally, I sketch non-standard routes for animalists to take in light of standard challenges. My goal in all of this is to open up some new avenues of animalist thinking. (shrink)

The special composition question is the question, ‘When do some things compose something?’ The answers to this question in the literature have largely been at odds with common sense, either by allowing that any two things compose something, or by denying the existence of most ordinary composite objects. I propose a new ‘series-style’ answer to the special composition question that accords much more closely with common sense, and I defend this answer from van Inwagen's objections. Specifically, I will argue that (...) the proposed answer entails the transitivity of parthood, that it is non-circular, and that it casts some light on the ancient puzzle about the Ship of Theseus. (shrink)

I argue that property dualists cannot hold that minds are physical substances. The focus of my discussion is a property dualism that takes qualia to be sui generis features of reality.

Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a human person’s existence. The key premise in these arguments are generally supported with thought experiments. I argue that Christians endorsing the Doctrine of the Resurrection have good reason to deny this key premise. Traditional Christianity affirms that eschatological human existence is an embodied existence in the very bodies we inhabited while alive. The raises the Resurrection Question: why would God go through the (...) trouble of resurrecting those bodies? I argue that adequately answering this question requires give up on Modal Arguments within the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

According to the doctrine of animalism, we are animals in the primary and non-derivative sense. In this article, I introduce and defend a novel argument for the view.

I bring to light a set-theoretic reason to think that there are more mental properties than shapes, sizes, masses, and other characteristically “physical” properties. I make use of a couple counting principles. One principle, backed by a Cantorian-style argument, is that pluralities outnumber particulars: that is, there is a distinct plurality of particulars for each particular, but not vice versa. The other is a principle by which we may coherently identify distinct mental properties in terms of arbitrary pluralities of physical (...) properties. I motivate these principles and explain how they together imply that there are more mental properties than physical properties. I then argue that certain parody arguments fail for various instructive reasons. The purpose of my argument is to identify an unforeseen “counting” cost of a certain reductive materialist view of the mind. (shrink)

Em Warranted Christian Belief (2000), Alvin Plantinga (1932-) desenvolve sua Epistemologia Reformada (Calvinista), com o objetivo de oferecer aval (warrant) para a crença teísta (professada pelas Religiões Abraâmicas: Judaísmo, Cristianismo e Islam) e para a crença cristã clássica (uma crença cristã ecumênica aceita pelos Apóstolos de Cristo, os cristãos primitivos, os pais da Igreja, os ortodoxos, os católicos, os protestantes (os luteranos, os reformados e os arminianos) e os anabatistas). Todavia, o mais natural, que poderíamos esperar de uma Epistemologia Reformada, (...) seria uma epistemologia dedicada às crenças da Cosmovisão Reformada. Sendo assim, a questão norteadora do presente trabalho é: A Epistemologia Reformada de Plantinga é Realmente Reformada? (shrink)

Several philosophers have argued that property dualism and substance materialism are incompatible positions. Recently, Susan Schneider has provided a novel version of such an argument, claiming that the incompatibility will be evident once we examine some underlying metaphysical issues. She purports to show that on any account of substance and property-possession, substance materialism and property dualism turn out incompatible. In this paper, I argue that Schneider’s case for incompatibility between these two positions fails. After briefly laying out her case for (...) incompatibility, I present an account of substance—one that relies on a relational ontology—that makes the combination of substance materialism and property dualism unproblematic. Then I show that even under the theories of substance that Schneider considers—those that rely on a constituent ontology—there still is no incompatibility problem. (shrink)

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 (...) knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world, then physicalism is false. In chapter two, I defend the claim that knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. In addition to mounting a prima facie case for the knowledge intuition, I present and defend an epistemology grounded in direct acquaintance to provide a more substantive argument to accept it. Chapters three through five address the physicalist objections to the Knowledge Argument. The first set of objections advocates that knowing all the physical truths is, in fact, sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. The next set of objections admits that there is some sense in which knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. However, these objections maintain that the kind of knowledge that is absent from the complete set of physical truths is know-how or knowledge by acquaintance, and not factual or propositional knowledge. The final set of objections maintain that the kind of propositional knowledge that is left out of the complete set of physical truths is compatible with physicalism. My response to these objections is part of advancing my prima facie case for the Knowledge Argument. The final chapter addresses a structural question that pertains to the Knowledge Argument. Some philosophers have maintained that the structure of the Knowledge Argument invites a kind of self-refutation of any systematic account of reality. The concern is that the Knowledge Argument proves too much, and that the dualist who uses the argument to refute physicalism risks the argument defeating his own position. I will argue that the Knowledge Argument does not refute dualism. (shrink)

This paper suggests a critique of the zombie argument that bypasses the need to decide on the truth of its main premises, and specifically, avoids the need to enter the battlefield of whether conceivability entails metaphysical possibility. It is argued that if we accept, as the zombie argument’s supporters would urge us, the assumption that an ideal reasoner can conceive of a complete physical description of the world without conceiving of qualia, the general principle that conceivability entails metaphysical possibility, and (...) the general principle that for any s and t the metaphysical possibility of s & − t entails that s does not necessitate t, we have to conclude not that materialism is false but rather that either materialism or the “mental paint” (or “phenomenist”) conception of phenomenality is false. And further, given the initial advantages of materialism, the fact that proponents of the zombie argument are not allowed to rely on arguments against materialism in confronting this dilemma, and difficulties with arguments in favor of phenomenism, we find ourselves pushed to reject the mental paint conception rather than materialism. Or at any rate, it is hard to see how the proponent of the zombie argument can carry the burden of proof that lies with her. Thus, whether or not those premises of the zombie argument are true, the argument fails to refute materialism. (shrink)

Psychological accounts of personal identity claim that the human person is not identical to the human animal. Advocates of such accounts maintain that the definition and criterion of death for a human person should differ from the definition and criterion of death for a human animal. My contention is instead that psychological accounts of personal identity should have human persons dying deaths that are defined biologically, just like the deaths of human animals. Moreover, if brain death is the correct criterion (...) for the death of a human animal, then it is also the correct criterion for the death of a human person. What the nonidentity of persons and animals requires is only that they have distinct criteria for ceasing to exist. (shrink)

Is a naturalistic world view coherent? Plantinga’s argumentation against naturalism from Artigas’ perspective In this paper, I examine the critique of the naturalistic world view that Plantinga exposes based on the concept of world view formulated by Artigas. The analysis of the results of contemporary science carried out by the American thinker, stemming from his epistemological investigations, is largely coincident and convergent with that of Artigas, developed almost a decade in advance. The impossibility of sustaining a naturalistic belief, in keeping (...) with the developments of contemporary science, contrasts with the success of the new atheists’ popular diffusion, which Artigas thoroughly studied in Oracles of Science. Both philosophers, Artigas and Plantinga, are examples of how philosophical excellence allows a more attentive interdisciplinary world view and a more extensive and precise knowledge. (shrink)

Inter-level mechanistic explanations in the sciences have long been a focus of philosophical interest, but attention has recently turned to the compositional character of these explanations which work by explaining higher level entities, whether processes, individuals or properties, using the lower level entities they take to compose them. However, we still have no theoretical account of the constitution or parthood relations between individuals deployed in such explanations, nor any accounts of multiple constitution. My primary focus in this paper is to (...) outline a positive account of the constitution/part-whole relations between individuals posited in inter-level mechanistic explanations that takes constituents in the sciences to be ‘working parts’. Using this account, I then go on to illuminate the nature, and varieties, of multiple constitution that we find in the sciences and provide a starting theoretical framework for multiple constitution as well. (shrink)

There remains a need to properly analyze the metaphysical assumptions underlying two organ procurement policies: presumed consent and organ sales. Our contention is that if one correctly understands the metaphysics of both the human body and material property, then it will turn out that while organ sales are illiberal, presumed consent is not. What we mean by illiberal includes violating rights of bodily integrity, property, or autonomy, as well as arguing for or against a policy in a manner that runs (...) afoul of Rawlsian public reason. (shrink)

Many Christians who argue against Christian materialism direct their arguments against what I call ‘Type-I materialism’, the thesis that I cannot exist without my organic body. I distinguish Type-I materialism from Type-II materialism, which entails only that I cannot exist without some body that supports certain mental functions. I set out a version of Type-II materialism, and argue for its superiority to Type-I materialism in an age of science. Moreover, I show that Type-II materialism can accommodate Christian doctrines like the (...) Resurrection of the Body, the Incarnation, and the intermediate state (if there is one). (shrink)

According to the dominant tradition in Christianity and many other religions, human beings are both knowers and actors: beings with conscious beliefs about the world who sometimes act intentionally guided by these beliefs. According to philosopher of mind Robert Cummins the “received view” among philosophers of mind is epiphenomenalism, according to which mental causation does not exist: neural events are the underlying causes of both behavior and belief which explains the correlation (not causation) between belief and behavior. Beliefs do not, (...) in virtue of their semantic content, enter the causal chain leading to action, beliefs are always the endpoint of a causal chain. If that is true the theological anthropology of many religious traditions is false. JP Moreland draws attention to two different ways of doing metaphysics: serious metaphysics and shopping-list metaphysics. The difference is that the former involves not only the attempt to describe the phenomena one encounter, it also involves the attempt of locating them, that is explaining how the phenomena is possible and came to be given the constraints of a certain worldview. For a physicalist these constraints include the atomic theory of matter and the theories of physical, chemical and biological evolution. Mental properties are challenging phenomena to locate within a physicalist worldview, and some physicalists involved in “serious metaphysics” have therefore eliminated them from their worldview. Most however accept them, advocating “non-reductive physicalism” according to which mental properties supervene on physical processes. Even if one allow mental properties to supervene on physical processes, the problem of mental causation remains. If mental properties are irreducible to and therefore distinct from physical properties, as the non-reductive physicalists claim, they cannot exert causal powers if one accepts the causal closure of the physical domain – which one must, if one is a “serious physicalist” according to physicalist philosopher of mind Jaegwon Kim. Alvin Plantinga, in his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, shows that if mental properties, such as the propositional content of beliefs, are causally inefficacious, then evolution has not been selecting cognitive faculties that are reliable, in the sense of being conducive to true beliefs. If the content of our beliefs does not affect our behavior, the content of our belief is irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint, and so the content-producing part of our cognitive faculties are irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint. The “reliability” – truth-conduciveness – of our cognitive faculties can therefore not be explained by evolution, and therefore not located within the physicalist worldview. The only way in which the reliability of our cognitive faculties can be located is if propositional content is relevant for behavior. If we however eliminate or deny the reliability of our cognitive faculties, then we have abandoned any chance of making a rational case for our position, as that would presuppose the reliability that we are denying. But if propositional content is causally efficacious, then that either – if we are non-reductive physicalists and mental properties are taken to be irreducible to physical properties – implies that the causal closure of the physical domain is false or - if we are reductive physicalists and not eliminativists regarding mental properties - it shows that matter qua matter can govern itself by rational argumentation, in which we have a pan-/localpsychistic view of matter. Either way, we have essentially abandoned physicalism in the process of locating the reliability of our cognitive faculties within a physicalist worldview. We have also affirmed the theological anthropology of Christianity, in so far as the capacity for knowledge and rational action is concerned. Keywords: Philosophy of mind, mental causation, reductionism, physicalism, the evolutionary argument against naturalism, the myth of nonreductive materialism, Alvin Plantinga, Jaegwon Kim. (shrink)