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  1. (1 other version)Material Beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
    According to Peter van Inwagen, visible inanimate objects do not, strictly speaking, exist. In defending this controversial thesis, he offers fresh insights on such topics as personal identity, commonsense belief, existence over time, the phenomenon of vagueness, and the relation between metaphysics and ordinary language.
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  • Material Beings.Peter van Inwagen - 1993 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3):701-708.
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  • (2 other versions)Replies.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (3):623-635.
    Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Human persons are constituted by bodies, without being identical to the bodies that constitute them—just as, I argue, statues are constituted by pieces of bronze, say, without being identical to the pieces of bronze that constitute them. The relation of constitution, therefore, is not peculiar to persons and their bodies, but is pervasive in the natural world.
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  • Fiction and Metaphysics.Amie L. Thomasson - 2002 - Philosophical Quarterly 52 (207):282-284.
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  • Fiction and Metaphysics.Amie L. Thomasson - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This challenging study places fiction squarely at the centre of the discussion of metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally treated fiction as involving a set of narrow problems in logic or the philosophy of language. By contrast Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics. The book develops an 'artifactual' theory of fiction, whereby fictional characters are abstract artifacts as ordinary as laws or symphonies or works of literature. By understanding fictional characters we come to understand how (...)
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  • Natural Minds.Thomas W. Polger - 2004 - Bradford.
    In Natural Minds Thomas Polger advocates, and defends, the philosophical theory that mind equals brain -- that sensations are brain processes -- and in doing so brings the mind-brain identity theory back into the philosophical debate about consciousness. The version of identity theory that Polger advocates holds that conscious processes, events, states, or properties are type- identical to biological processes, events, states, or properties -- a "tough-minded" account that maintains that minds are necessarily indentical to brains, a position held by (...)
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  • Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    What is a human person, and what is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Baker's argument is based on the 'Constitution View' of persons and bodies, which aims to show what distinguishes persons from all other beings and to show how we can be (...)
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  • A Physicalist Manifesto: Thoroughly Modern Materialism.Andrew Melnyk - 2003 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    A Physicalist Manifesto is a full treatment of the comprehensive physicalist view that, in some important sense, everything is physical. Andrew Melnyk argues that the view is best formulated by appeal to a carefully worked-out notion of realization, rather than supervenience; that, so formulated, physicalism must be importantly reductionist; that it need not repudiate causal and explanatory claims framed in non-physical language; and that it has the a posteriori epistemic status of a broad-scope scientific hypothesis. Two concluding chapters argue in (...)
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  • Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research.William Bechtel & Robert C. Richardson - 2010 - Princeton.
    An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Troubles with Functionalism.Ned Block - 1993 - In Alvin I. Goldman (ed.), Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 231.
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  • .Jeffrey Poland (ed.) - 2011 - MIT Press.
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  • Reduction of mind.David K. Lewis - 1994 - In Samuel D. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Blackwell. pp. 412-431.
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  • The (multiple) realization of psychological and other properties in the sciences.Kenneth Aizawa & Carl Gillett - 2009 - Mind and Language 24 (2):181-208.
    Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...)
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  • (1 other version)Explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
    Carl Craver investigates what we are doing when we sue neuroscience to explain what's going on in the brain.
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  • (1 other version)Physicalism, the philosophical foundations.Jeffrey Stephen Poland - 1994 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Physicalism is a program for building a unified system of knowledge about the world on the basis of the view that everything is a manifestation of the physical aspects of existence. Jeffrey Poland presents a systematic and comprehensive exploration of the philosophical foundations of this program. He investigates the core ideas, motivating values, and presuppositions of physicalism; the constraints upon an adequate formulation of physicalist doctrine; the epistemological and modal status, the scope, and the methodological roles of physicalist principles. He (...)
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  • (1 other version)Rethinking mechanistic explanation.Stuart Glennan - 2002 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3):S342-353.
    Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex-systems approach avoids certain (...)
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  • Mechanisms and the nature of causation.Stuart S. Glennan - 1996 - Erkenntnis 44 (1):49--71.
    In this paper I offer an analysis of causation based upon a theory of mechanisms-complex systems whose internal parts interact to produce a system's external behavior. I argue that all but the fundamental laws of physics can be explained by reference to mechanisms. Mechanisms provide an epistemologically unproblematic way to explain the necessity which is often taken to distinguish laws from other generalizations. This account of necessity leads to a theory of causation according to which events are causally related when (...)
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  • Role functions, mechanisms, and hierarchy.Carl F. Craver - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (1):53-74.
    Many areas of science develop by discovering mechanisms and role functions. Cummins' (1975) analysis of role functions-according to which an item's role function is a capacity of that item that appears in an analytic explanation of the capacity of some containing system-captures one important sense of "function" in the biological sciences and elsewhere. Here I synthesize Cummins' account with recent work on mechanisms and causal/mechanical explanation. The synthesis produces an analysis of specifically mechanistic role functions, one that uses the characteristic (...)
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  • Realization.Carl F. Craver & Robert A. Wilson - 2006 - In Paul Thagard (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science. Elsevier.
    For the greater part of the last 50 years, it has been common for philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists to invoke the notion of realization in discussing the relationship between the mind and the brain. In traditional philosophy of mind, mental states are said to be realized, instantiated, or implemented in brain states. Artificial intelligence is sometimes described as the attempt either to model or to actually construct systems that realize some of the same psychological abilities that we and (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Understanding the new reductionism: The metaphysics of science and compositional reduction.Carl Gillett - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (4):193-216.
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  • (1 other version)Interlevel experiments and multilevel mechanisms in the neuroscience of memory.Carl F. Craver - 2002 - Philosophy of Science Supplemental Volume 69 (3):S83-S97.
    The dominant neuroscientific theory of spatial memory is, like many theories in neuroscience, a multilevel description of a mechanism. The theory links the activities of molecules, cells, brain regions, and whole organisms into an integrated sketch of an explanation for the ability of organisms to navigate novel environments. Here I develop a taxonomy of interlevel experimental strategies for integrating the levels in such multilevel mechanisms. These experimental strategies include activation strategies, interference strategies, and additive strategies. These strategies are mutually reinforcing, (...)
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  • Discovering mechanisms in neurobiology: The case of spatial memory.Carl F. Craver & Lindley Darden - 2001 - In Peter McLaughlin, Peter Machamer & Rick Grush (eds.), Theory and Method in the Neurosciences. Pittsburgh University Press. pp. 112--137.
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  • Thinking about mechanisms.Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden & Carl F. Craver - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-25.
    The concept of mechanism is analyzed in terms of entities and activities, organized such that they are productive of regular changes. Examples show how mechanisms work in neurobiology and molecular biology. Thinking in terms of mechanisms provides a new framework for addressing many traditional philosophical issues: causality, laws, explanation, reduction, and scientific change.
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  • Mind in a physical world: An essay on the mind–body problem and mental causation.Jaegwon Kim - 1998 - MIT Press.
    This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind...
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  • The metaphysics of realization, multiple realizability, and the special sciences.Carl Gillett - 2003 - Journal of Philosophy 100 (11):591-603.
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  • (1 other version)Multiple Realizability.Ronald P. Endicott - 2006 - In Donald M. Borchert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd edition. vol. 3. Thomson Gale.
    Multiple realizability has been at the heart of debates about whether the mind reduces to the brain, or whether the items of a special science reduce to the items of a physical science. I analyze the two central notions implied by the concept of multiple realizability: "multiplicity," otherwise known as property variability, and "realizability." Beginning with the latter, I distinguish three broad conceptual traditions. The Mathematical Tradition equates realization with a form of mapping between objects. Generally speaking, x realizes (or (...)
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  • The dimensions of realization: A critique of the standard view.Carl Gillett - 2002 - Analysis 62 (4):316-323.
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  • Realization and the metaphysics of mind.Thomas W. Polger - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):233 – 259.
    According to the received view in philosophy of mind, mental states or properties are _realized_ by brain states or properties but are not identical to them. This view is often called _realization_ _physicalism_. Carl Gillett has recently defended a detailed formulation of the realization relation. However, Gillett’s formulation cannot be the relation that realization physicalists have in mind. I argue that Gillett’s “dimensioned” view of realization fails to apply to a textbook case of realization. I also argue Gillett counts as (...)
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  • Aggregativity: Reductive heuristics for finding emergence.William C. Wimsatt - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (4):372-84.
    Most philosophical accounts of emergence are incompatible with reduction. Most scientists regard a system property as emergent relative to properties of the system's parts if it depends upon their mode of organization--a view consistent with reduction. Emergence can be analyzed as a failure of aggregativity--a state in which "the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts." Aggregativity requires four conditions, giving tools for analyzing modes of organization. Differently met for different decompositions of the system, and in different (...)
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  • Reductionism, levels of organization, and the mind-body problem.William C. Wimsatt - 1975 - In Gordon G. Globus, Grover Maxwell & I. Savodnik (eds.), Consciousness and the Brain. Plenum Press.
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  • Multiple realizations.Lawrence A. Shapiro - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (12):635-654.
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  • The Mind Incarnate.Lawrence A. Shapiro - 2004 - MIT Press.
    Shapiro tests these hypotheses against two rivals, the mental constraint thesis and the embodied mind thesis. Collecting evidence from a variety of sources (e.g., neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and embodied cognition) he concludes that the multiple realizability thesis, accepted by most philosophers as a virtual truism, is much less obvious than commonly assumed, and that there is even stronger reason to give up the separability thesis. In contrast to views of mind that tempt us to see the mind as simply being (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Realization and mental causation.Sydney Shoemaker - 2001 - In Carl Gillett & Barry Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 23-33.
    A common conception of what it is for one property to “realize” another suggests that it is the realizer property that does the causal work, and that the realized property is epiphenomenal. The same conception underlies George Bealer’s argument that functionalism leads to the absurd conclusion that what we take to be self-ascriptions of a mental state are really self-ascriptions of “first-order” properties that realize that state. This paper argues for a different concept of realization. A property realizes another if (...)
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  • (1 other version)Some varieties of functionalism.Sydney Shoemaker - 1981 - Philosophical Topics 12 (1):93-119.
    Fleshing out Ramsey-sentence functionalism; against Lewis's "mad pain" mixed theory; relating functionalism to the causal theory of properties. Empirical functionalism is chauvinistic so probably false. A terrific, in-depth paper.
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  • (2 other versions)Troubles with functionalism.Ned Block - 1978 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 9:261-325.
    The functionalist view of the nature of the mind is now widely accepted. Like behaviorism and physicalism, functionalism seeks to answer the question "What are mental states?" I shall be concerned with identity thesis formulations of functionalism. They say, for example, that pain is a functional state, just as identity thesis formulations of physicalism say that pain is a physical state.
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  • (1 other version)Consciousness and the Brain: A Scientific and Philosophical Inquiry.G. G. Globus, G. Maxwell & I. Savodnik - 1976 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 29 (1):61-68.
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  • (1 other version)Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology.D. M. Armstrong & David Lewis - 1999 - Philosophical Review 110 (1):77.
    This is a collection of twenty-five papers and reviews by the leading analytic philosopher of our time. It adds to the papers on metaphysics and epistemology to be found in his previous two-volume collection published by Oxford University Press. One previously unpublished paper—“Why Conditionalize?”—is included. Australasian philosophers may note with some pride that eleven of the pieces were first published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
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  • Physical Realization.Sydney Shoemaker - 2007 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    In Physical Realization, Sydney Shoemaker considers the question of how physicalism can be true: how can all facts about the world, including mental ones, be constituted by facts about the distribution in the world of physical properties? Physicalism requires that the mental properties of a person are 'realized in' the physical properties of that person, and that all instantiations of properties in macroscopic objects are realized in microphysical states of affairs. Shoemaker offers an account of both these sorts of realization, (...)
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  • Reductive Explanation: A Functional Account.William C. Wimsatt - 1972 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1974:671-710.
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  • Computationalism in the Philosophy of Mind.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (3):515-532.
    Computationalism has been the mainstream view of cognition for decades. There are periodic reports of its demise, but they are greatly exaggerated. This essay surveys some recent literature on computationalism. It concludes that computationalism is a family of theories about the mechanisms of cognition. The main relevant evidence for testing it comes from neuroscience, though psychology and AI are relevant too. Computationalism comes in many versions, which continue to guide competing research programs in philosophy of mind as well as psychology (...)
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  • Material Beings.Peter Van Inwagen - 1990 - Philosophy 67 (259):126-127.
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  • (2 other versions)Realization and Mental Causation.Sydney Shoemaker - 2000 - The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 9:23-33.
    A common conception of what it is for one property to “realize” another suggests that it is the realizer property that does the causal work, and that the realized property is epiphenomenal. The same conception underlies George Bealer’s argument that functionalism leads to the absurd conclusion that what we take to be self-ascriptions of a mental state are really self-ascriptions of “first-order” properties that realize that state. This paper argues for a different concept of realization. A property realizes another if (...)
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  • (1 other version)Consciousness and the Brain: A Scientific and Philo-Sophical Inquiry.William C. Wimsatt, G. G. Globus, G. Maxwell & I. Savodnik - 1976 - In G. Gordon, Grover Maxwell & I. Savodnik (eds.), Consciousness and the Brain: A Scientific and Philosophical Inquiry. Plenum. pp. 61-68.
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  • (2 other versions)Understanding The New Reductionism.Carl Gillett - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (4):193-216.
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  • (2 other versions)Realization and mental causation.Sydney Shoemaker - 2001 - In Carl Gillett & Barry Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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  • Understanding the Dimensions of Realization.Lawrence A. Shapiro - 2008 - Journal of Philosophy 105 (4):213-222.
    Carl Gillett has defended what he calls the “dimensioned” view of the realization relation, which he contrasts with the traditional “flat” view of realization (2003, 2007; see also Gillett 2002). Intuitively, the dimensioned approach characterizes realization in terms of composition whereas the flat approach views realization in terms of occupiers of functional roles. Elsewhere we have argued that the general view of realization and multiple realization that Gillett advances is not able to discharge the theoretical duties of those relations (Shapiro (...)
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  • The idea of mechanism.Stathis Psillos - 2011 - In Phyllis McKay Illari Federica Russo (ed.), Causality in the Sciences. Oxford University Press. pp. 771--788.
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  • Some Metaphysical Anxieties of Reductionism.Thomas W. Polger - 2007 - In Maurice Kenneth Davy Schouten & Huibert Looren de Jong (eds.), The matter of the mind: philosophical essays on psychology, neuroscience, and reduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
    By now it is cliché to observe that so-called reductionism is not one mammoth doctrine. There are, as it were, many reductionisms. Needless to say, there are at least as many antireductionisms. Despite the fact that neither reductionisms nor their counterparts are single and unified doctrines there do seem to be some family resemblances. One, it seems to me, is that both reductionisms and antireductionisms are acute responses to certain metaphysical worries. Some of these worries are metaphysical in nature, and (...)
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  • Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View.Lynne Rudder Baker - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):127-129.
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