Many philosophers today accept that phenomenal truths cannot be explained in terms of ordinary physical truths. Two possible routes to accounting for consciousness have received much attention: the emergentist route is to accept that ordinary experience is inexplicable in physical terms but that microscopic entities as described in physics nonetheless bring about conscious experience. The second route is to argue that microscopic entities have features not described in physics which can fully explain conscious experience. The view associated with panprotopsychism is (...) that microscopic entities have no phenomenal properties. The view associated with panpsychism is that microscopic entities do have phenomenal properties. In this paper it is argued that if consciousness is extended in space only the latter view is possible. According to this argument for micropsychism, if phenomenal truths are not merely structural, all truths about a whole are truths about its parts plus structural relational truths. If there are phenomenal truths about the whole, this must be because there are phenomenal truths about its parts. It wouldn’t follow that panpsychism is true, since it does not follow that consciousness exists outside the wholes we know to be conscious, but it does follow that emergentism and protopanpsychism are false. (shrink)

How could physicalism be true of a world in which there are no fundamental physical phenomena? A familiar answer, due to Barbara Gail Montero and others, is that physicalism could be true of such a world if that world does not contain an infinite descent of mentality. Christopher Devlin Brown has produced a counterexample to that solution. We show how to modify the solution to accommodate Brown’s example: physicalism could be true of a world without fundamental physical phenomena if that (...) world does not contain an infinite descent of mentally constituted mentality. This solution is independently plausible and is available to physicalists of virtually all significant varieties. (shrink)

Frank Jackson's case of Mary the colour scientist, and the knowledge argument against physicalism built upon it, are well known. This paper starts from Jackson's other, more neglected, thought experiment, about Fred, who sees a unique shade of red. It explores two senses in which properties are said to be 'objective', roughly corresponding to the ideas of a property's being intersubjectively accessible, on the one hand, and its being knowable without the need for special experiences, on the other. These senses (...) of the objective are contrasted, and their links to the doctrine of physicalism explored, and it is argued that, in the sense of objectivity we should embrace, mental qualities come out as objective and physical properties. The paper ends up by proposing a novel theory about how mental qualities fit into the world—as determinates of determinable physical properties, a view that is distinguished from the closely related 'Russellian monism'. (shrink)

This paper develops and defends a new argument against physicalist views of consciousness: the inconceivability argument. The argument has two main premises. First, it is not (ideally, positively) conceivable that phenomenal truths are grounded in physical truths. (For example, one cannot positively conceive of a situation in which someone has a vivid experience of pink wholly in virtue of the movements of colorless, insentient atoms.) Second, (ideal, positive) inconceivability is a guide to falsity. I attempt to show that the inconceivability (...) argument enjoys a significant advantage over the more familiar conceivability argument. One can reasonably endorse the inconceivability argument without endorsing the conceivability argument, but one cannot reasonably endorse the conceivability argument without also endorsing the inconceivability argument. (shrink)

It is often claimed that Russellian monism carries a commitment to a structuralist conception of physics, on which physics describes the world only in terms of its spatiotemporal structure and dynamics. We argue that this claim is mistaken. On Russellian monism, there is more to consciousness, and to the rest of concrete reality, than spatiotemporal structure and dynamics. But the latter claim supports only a conditional claim about physics: _if_ structuralism about physics is true, then there is more to consciousness (...) and to the rest of concrete reality than physics describes. Given the fundamental nature of their position, Russellian monists can, we argue, deny the antecedent without inconsistency. We also draw out two significant consequences of that result. One is that it provides a response to some recent objections to Russellian monism, by Alyssa Ney and Eric Hiddleston. The other consequence concerns a line of reasoning known as _the structure and dynamics argument_—reasoning that is thought to motivate Russellian monism. In David J. Chalmers’s version, which is regarded as canonical, structuralism about physics is implied by a premise. If our main thesis is true, then that version is problematic, at least from the perspective of Russellian monists who take the argument to motivate their theory. However, we argue, the argument can be reformulated without relying on structuralism about physics. (shrink)

Much of contemporary philosophy of mind is marked by a dissatisfaction with the two main positions in the field, standard materialism and standard dualism, and hence with the search for alternatives. My concern in this paper is with two such alternatives. The first, which I will call non-standard materialism, is a position I have defended in a number of places, and which may take various forms. The second, panpsychism, has been defended and explored by a number of recent writers. My (...) main goals are: (a) to explain the differences between these positions; and (b) to suggest that non-standard materialism is more plausible than panpsychism. (shrink)

This paper brings out an inconsistency between David Chalmers's dualism, which is the main element of his philosophy of mind, and his structuralism, which is the main element of his epistemology. The point is ad hominem , but the inconsistency if it can be established is of considerable independent interest. For the best response to the inconsistency, I argue, is to adopt what Chalmers calls ‘type‐C Materialism’, a version of materialism that has been much discussed in recent times because of (...) its promise to move us beyond the stand‐off between standard versions of materialism and dualism. In turn, if that version of materialism is true, both dualism and structuralism should be rejected. (shrink)

According to Russellian monism, consciousness is constituted at least partly by quiddities: intrinsic properties that categorically ground dispositional properties described by fundamental physics. If the theory is true, then consciousness and such dispositional properties are closely connected. But how closely? The contingency thesis says that the connection is contingent. For example, on this thesis the dispositional property associated with negative charge might have been categorically grounded by a quiddity that is distinct from the one that actually grounds it. Some argue (...) that Russellian monism entails the contingency thesis and that this makes its consciousness‐constituting quiddities epiphenomenal—a disastrous outcome for a theory that is motivated partly by its prospects for integrating consciousness into physical causation. We consider two versions of that argument, a generic version and an intriguing version developed by Robert J. Howell, which he bases on Jaegwon Kim's well‐known “exclusion argument.” We argue that neither succeeds. (shrink)

Extensional articulations of physicalism define what it means to be physical relative to the properties of a set of entities, such that physicalism is true if the fundamental properties which compose the entities in this set are the same sorts of fundamental properties which compose everything that exists. Here I present a novel problem for these articulations of physicalism: they are consistent with phenomenal idealism, which is the view that only phenomenal properties exist. Under this view, paradigm physical objects such (...) as tables and chairs are constructed out of more basic phenomenal properties. Since this view says that everything—including paradigm physical entities—is ultimately constituted by phenomenal properties, it follows that this view is consistent with extensional definitions of physicalism, since such definitions only require that there be no fundamental difference between paradigm physical entities and everything else. Yet a good definition of physicalism should not be consistent with phenomenal idealism. (shrink)