Results for 'causal argument for physicalism'

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  1. Overdetermination and Causal Closure: A Defense of the Causal Argument for Physicalism.Alyssa Ney - 2022 - ProtoSociology 39:35-50.
    Among the arguments that have been proposed for physicalism, the “causal argument” is widely taken to be the most compelling. Justin Tiehen (2015) has raised an interesting objection to this argument that takes the form of a dilemma. Tiehen’s ultimate conclusion is that at best, the causal argument is circular and so its premises cannot provide support for its conclusion, physicalism. The aim of the present paper is to respond to Tiehen’s objection in (...)
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  2. No Good Arguments for Causal Closure.Keith Buhler - 2020 - Metaphysica 21 (2):223-236.
    Many common arguments for physicalism begin with the principle that the cosmos is “causally closed.” But how good are the arguments for causal closure itself? I argue that the deductive, a priori arguments on behalf of causal closure tend to beg the question. The extant inductive arguments fare no better. They commit a sampling error or a non-sequitur, or else offer conclusions that remain compatible with causal openness. In short, we have no good arguments that the (...)
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  3. Some Evidence for Physicalism.Andrew Melnyk - 2003 - In Sven Walter & Heinz-Dieter Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action. Imprint Academic. pp. 155-172.
    This paper presents an irreducibly inductive argument for physicalism based on the causal closure of the physical (for which it argues), and defends it against various detractors.
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  4. Physicalism.Justin Tiehen - 2018 - Analysis 78 (3):537-551.
    As a first pass, physicalism is the doctrine that there is nothing over and above the physical. Much recent philosophical work has been devoted to spelling out what this means in more rigorous terms and to assessing the case for the view. What follows is a survey of such work. I begin by looking at competing accounts of what is meant by nothing over and above and then turn to how the physical should be understood. Once we are clear (...)
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  5. Causation in Physics & in Phyiscalism.Justin Tiehen - forthcoming - Acta Analytica.
    It is widely thought that there is an important argument to be made that starts with premises taken from the science of physics and ends with the conclusion of physicalism. The standard view is that this argument takes the form of a causal argument for physicalism. Roughly: physics tells us that the physical realm is causally complete, and so minds (among other entities) must be physical if they are to interact with the world as (...)
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  6. Type Physicalism and Causal Exclusion.Joseph A. Baltimore - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Research 38:405-418.
    While concerns of the mental being causally excluded by the physical have persistently plagued non-reductive physicalism, such concerns are standardly taken to pose no problem for reductive type physicalism. Type physicalists have the obvious advantage of being able to countenance the reduction of mental properties to their physical base properties by way of type identity, thereby avoiding any causal competition between instances of mental properties and their physical bases. Here, I challenge this widely accepted advantage of type (...)
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  7. Emergence, Downwards Causation and the Completeness of Physics.David Yates - 2009 - Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234):110-131.
    The 'completeness of physics' is the key premise in the causal argument for physicalism. Standard formulations of it fail to rule out emergent downwards causation. I argue that it must do this if it is tare in a valid causal argument for physicalism. Drawing on the notion of conferring causal power, I formulate a suitable principle, 'strong completeness'. I investigate the metaphysical implications of distinguishing this principle from emergent downwards causation, and I argue (...)
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  8. Consciousness and Causal Emergence: Śāntarakṣita Against Physicalism.Christian Coseru - 2014 - In Jonardon Ganeri (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 360–378.
    In challenging the physicalist conception of consciousness advanced by Cārvāka materialists such as Bṛhaspati, the Buddhist philosopher Śāntarakṣita addresses a series of key issues about the nature of causality and the basis of cognition. This chapter considers whether causal accounts of generation for material bodies are adequate in explaining how conscious awareness comes to have the structural features and phenomenal properties that it does. Arguments against reductive physicalism, it is claimed, can benefit from an understanding of the structure (...)
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  9. Physicalism, Dualism and the Mind-Body Problem.Dolores G. Morris - 2010 - Dissertation, University of Notre Dame
    In this dissertation, I examine the implications of the problem of mental causation and what David Chalmers has dubbed the “ hard problem of consciousness” for competing accounts of the mind. I begin, in Chapter One, with a critical analysis of Jaegwon Kim’s Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. (2005) There, I maintain that Kim’s ontology cannot adequately address both the problem of mental causation and the “ hard problem of consciousness.” In Chapter Two, I examine the causal pairing (...)
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  10. Conservation Laws and Interactionist Dualism.Ben White - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (267):387–405.
    The Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that since (1) every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and (2) cases of causal overdetermination are rare, it follows that if (3) mental events cause physical events as frequently as they seem to, then (4) mental events must be physical in nature. In defence of (1), it is sometimes said that (1) is supported if not entailed by conservation laws. Against this, I argue that conservation laws do not lend (...)
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  11. Emerging from the causal drain.Richard Corry - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (1):29-47.
    For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If (...)
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  12. The Third Meditation: Causal Arguments for God's Existence.Lawrence Nolan - 2014 - In David Cunning (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes’ Meditations. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 127-48.
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  13. Reductive Physicalism and Phenomenal Properties: The Nature of the Problem.Brian Crabb - 2010 - Lambert Academic Publishers.
    This work examines and critically evaluates the proposal that phenomenal properties, or the subjective qualities of experience, present a formidable challenge for the mind-body identity theory. Physicalism per se is construed as being ontically committed only to phenomena which can be made epistemically and cognitively available in the third person; observed and understood from within an objective frame of reference. Further, the identity relation between the mental and the physical is taken to be strict identity; the mental phenomena in (...)
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  14. Consciousness, physicalism, and the problem of mental causation.Christian Coseru - 2022 - In Itay Shani & Susanne Kathrin Beiweis (eds.), Cross-cultural approaches to consciousness: mind, nature and ultimate reality. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    Is there such a thing as mental causation? Is it possible for the mental to have causal influence on the physical? Or has the old “mind over matter” question been rendered obsolete by the advent of brain science? Whatever our answers to these questions, it seems that we cannot systematically pursue them without considering what makes mental causation problematic in the first place: The causal closure of the physical world. This paper revisits the problem of mental causation by (...)
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  15. Sufficient Reason and the Causal Argument for Monism.Landon Frim - 2011 - Society and Politics 5 (2):137-158.
    What is the role of the principle of sufficient reason in Baruch Spinoza’s ontological proof for God’s existence? Is this role identical within Spinoza’s early work on method, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and his magnum opus, the Ethics? This paper argues affirmatively that the methodology employed within the Ethics is consonant with that method found within the Treatise, and this claim is substantiated through an engagement with the influential works of Don Garrett and Aaron Garrett. It (...)
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  16. Metaphysical necessity dualism.Ben White - 2018 - Synthese 195 (4):1779-1798.
    A popular response to the Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that mental events depend on their physical bases in such a way that the causation of a physical effect by a mental event and its physical base needn’t generate any problematic form of causal overdetermination, even if mental events are numerically distinct from and irreducible to their physical bases. This paper presents and defends a form of dualism that implements this response by using a dispositional essentialist view (...)
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  17. On the probabilistic character of irreducible mental causation.Dejan R. Dimitrijević - 2024 - Synthese 203 (6):1-27.
    It has recently been remarked that the argument for physicalism from the causal closure of the physical is incomplete. It is only effective against mental causation manifested in the action of putative mental forces that lead to acceleration of particles in the nervous system. Based on consideration of anomalous, physically unaccounted-for correlations of neural events, I argue that irreducible mental causation whose nature is at least prima facie probabilistic is conceivable. The manifestation of such causation should be (...)
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  18. Closing in on Causal Closure.Robert K. Garcia - 2014 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 21 (1-2):96-109.
    I examine the meaning and merits of a premise in the Exclusion Argument, the causal closure principle that all physical effects have physical causes. I do so by addressing two questions. First, if we grant the other premises, exactly what kind of closure principle is required to make the Exclusion Argument valid? Second, what are the merits of the requisite closure principle? Concerning the first, I argue that the Exclusion Argument requires a strong, “stringently pure” version (...)
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  19. Turning the Tables: How Neuroscience Supports Interactive Dualism.Alin C. Cucu - 2023 - Mind and Matter 21 (2):219-239.
    Physicalists typically believe that neurophysiology has refuted the thesis that non-physical minds can interact with the brain. In this paper, I argue that it is precisely a closer look at the neurophysiology of volitional actions that suggests otherwise. I start with a clarification of how the present inquiry relates to the main argument for physicalism, and how the most common alternative views relate to the findings of my study. I then give a brief overview of the neurophysiological research (...)
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  20. Einige Bemerkungen zum Prinzip der kausalen Abgeschlossenheit des Physischen.Andreas Hüttemann - 2013 - In Jan G. Michel & Gernot Münster (eds.), Die Suche nach dem Geist. Münster: Mentis. pp. 35-53.
    The principle of the causal closure of the physical plays a central role in the philosophy of mind, especially as a premise in arguments for physicalism. In this paper I explore what role the principle can play in the argument for physicalism and whether the evidence we have for the principle allows for such a role or function.
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  21. A Step-by-Step Argument for Causal Finitism.Joseph C. Schmid - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):2097-2122.
    I defend a new argument for causal finitism, the view that nothing can have an infinite causal history. I begin by defending a number of plausible metaphysical principles, after which I explore a host of novel variants of the Littlewood-Ross and Thomson’s Lamp paradoxes that violate such principles. I argue that causal finitism is the best solution to the paradoxes.
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  22. Another Argument for Animalism: The Argument from Causal Powers.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2012 - Prolegomena 11 (2):169-180.
    The causal powers that I have, such as the ability to go to the store for cold beer, for instance are the same causal powers as those had by the human animal closely associated with me. That is, the biological organism that invariably stares back at me, whenever I look in the mirror. Thus, if I want to avoid gratuitous causal overdetermination – i.e. if I want to avoid positing two separate individuals with identical, and thus redundant, (...)
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  23.  68
    Turning the Tables: How Neuroscience Supports Interactive Dualism.Alin C. Cucu - 2023 - Mind and Matter 21 (2):219-239.
    Physicalists typically believe that neurophysiology has refuted the thesis that non-physical minds can interact with the brain. In this paper, I argue that it is precisely a closer look at the neurophysiology of volitional actions that suggests otherwise. I start with a clarification of how the present inquiry relates to the main argument for physicalism, and how the most common alternative views relate to the findings of my study. I then give a brief overview of the neurophysiological research (...)
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  24. Two Physicalist Arguments for Microphysical Manyism.Simon Thunder - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-22.
    I here defend microphysical manyism. According to microphysical manyism, each composite or higher-level object is a mere plurality of microphysical particles. After clarifying the commitments of the view, I offer two physicalist-friendly arguments in its favour. The first argument appeals to the Canberra Plan. Here I argue that microphysical particles acting in unison play the theoretical roles associated with composite objects - that they do everything that we think of composite objects as doing - and thus that composite objects (...)
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  25. Causal exclusion and overdetermination.Markus E. Schlosser - 2006 - In Ezio Di Nucci & Conor McHugh (eds.), Content, Consciousness, and Perception: Essays in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge Scholars Press.
    This paper is about the causal exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism. Many philosophers think that this argument poses a serious problem for non-reductive theories of the mind — some think that it is decisive against them. In the first part I will outline non-reductive physicalism and the exclusion argument. Then I will distinguish between three versions of the argument that address three different versions of non-reductive physicalism. According to the first, the relation (...)
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  26. Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness: A Meta-Causal Approach.John A. Barnden - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (2):397-425.
    I present considerations surrounding pre-reflective self-consciousness, arising in work I am conducting on a new physicalist, process-based account of [phenomenal] consciousness. The account is called the meta-causal account because it identifies consciousness with a certain type of arrangement of meta-causation. Meta-causation is causation where a cause or effect is itself an instance of causation. The proposed type of arrangement involves a sort of time-spanning, internal reflexivity of the overall meta-causation. I argue that, as a result of the account, any (...)
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  27. An inexplicably good argument for causal finitism.Ibrahim Dagher - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (2):199-211.
    Causal finitism, the view that the causal history of any event must be finite, has garnered much philosophical interest recently—especially because of its applicability to the Kalām cosmological argument. The most prominent argument for causal finitism is the Grim Reaper argument, which attempts to show that, if infinite causal histories are possible, then other paradoxical states of affairs must also be possible. However, this style of argument has been criticized on the grounds (...)
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  28. Physicalism unfalsified: Chalmers' inconclusive argument for dualism.Andrew Melnyk - 2001 - In Carl Gillett & Barry Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 331-349.
    This paper aims to show that David Chalmers' conceivability argument against physicalism, as presented in his 1996 book, The Conscious Mind, is inconclusive. The key point is that, while the argument seems to assume that someone competent with a given concept thereby has access to the primary intension of the concept, there are physicalist-friendly views of conceptual competence which imply that this assumption is not true.
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  29. Causal Argument.Ulrike Hahn, Frank Zenker & Roland Bluhm - 2017 - In Michael Waldmann (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 475-494.
    In this chapter, we outline the range of argument forms involving causation that can be found in everyday discourse. We also survey empirical work concerned with the generation and evaluation of such arguments. This survey makes clear that there is presently no unified body of research concerned with causal argument. We highlight the benefits of a unified treatment both for those interested in causal cognition and those interested in argumentation, and identify the key challenges that must (...)
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  30. Three Arguments for Humility.David Yates - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (2):461-481.
    Ramseyan humility is the thesis that we cannot know which properties realize the roles specified by the laws of completed physics. Lewis seems to offer a sceptical argument for this conclusion. Humean fundamental properties can be permuted as to their causal roles and distribution throughout spacetime, yielding alternative possible worlds with the same fundamental structure as actuality, but at which the totality of available evidence is the same. On the assumption that empirical knowledge requires evidence, we cannot know (...)
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  31. Consciousness and Causality: Dharmakīrti Against Physicalism.Christian Coseru - 2020 - In Birgit Kellner, McAllister Patrick, Lasic Horst & McClintock Sara (eds.), Reverberations of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy: Proceedings of the Fifth International Dharmakīrti Conference Heidelberg, August 26 to 30, 2014. Austrian Academy of Sciences. pp. 21-40.
    This paper examines Dharmakīrti's arguments against Cārvāka physicalism in the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter of his magnum opus, the Pramāṇavārttika, with a focus on classical Indian philosophical attempts to address the mind-body problem. The key issue concerns the relation between cognition and the body, and the role this relation plays in causal-explanatory accounts of consciousness and cognition. Drawing on contemporary debates in philosophy of mind about embodiment and the significance of borderline states of consciousness, the paper proposes a philosophical reconstruction (...)
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  32. In God We Trust. Or Why This Argument for Causal Finitism Should Not Convince Theists.Enric F. Gel - forthcoming - Faith and Philosophy.
    Causal finitism claims nothing can have an infinite causal history. An influential defense of this position uses infinity paradoxes to argue that, if causal finitism is false, several impossible scenarios would be possible. In this paper, I defend that theists should not be persuaded by this argument. If true, this is an important development, since causal finitism is often argued for by theists as a core premise in Kalam-style cosmological arguments for theism. I extend the (...)
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  33. Interacting Minds in the Physical World.Alin C. Cucu - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Lausanne
    Mental causation, idea that it is us – via our minds – who cause bodily actions is as commonsensical as it is indispensable for our understanding of ourselves as rational agents. Somewhat less uncontroversial, but nonetheless widespread (at least among ordinary people) is the idea that the mind is non-physical, following the intuition that what is physical can neither act nor think nor judge morally. Taken together, and cast into a metaphysical thesis, the two intuitions yield interactive dualism: the view (...)
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  34. Anti-reductionist Interventionism.Reuben Stern & Benjamin Eva - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):241-267.
    Kim’s causal exclusion argument purports to demonstrate that the non-reductive physicalist must treat mental properties (and macro-level properties in general) as causally inert. A number of authors have attempted to resist Kim’s conclusion by utilizing the conceptual resources of Woodward’s interventionist conception of causation. The viability of these responses has been challenged by Gebharter, who argues that the causal exclusion argument is vindicated by the theory of causal Bayesian networks (CBNs). Since the interventionist conception of (...)
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  35. Avicenna’s and Mullā Ṣadrā’s Arguments for Immateriality of the Soul from the Viewpoint of Physicalism.Mahdi Homazadeh - 2020 - Angelicum 97 (3):367-390.
    I seek to explicate the ways in which the soul is deemed immaterial in two main strands of Islamic philosophy, and then consider some arguments for the immateriality of the soul. To do so, I first overview Avicenna’s theory of the spiritual incipience (al-ḥudūth al-rūḥānī) of the soul and his version of substance dualism. I will then discuss Mullā Ṣadrā’s view of the physical incipience (al-ḥudūth al-jismānī) of the soul and how the soul emerges and develops towards immateriality on his (...)
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  36. The Universe Didn't Begin Uncaused: A New Argument for the Kalām Causal Principle.David Lu - forthcoming - Faith and Philosophy.
    The causal principle of the Kalām cosmological argument—Everything that begins to exist has a cause—remains controversial. One common objection is that while the principle may apply to things within the universe, it does not apply to the universe itself. Here, I argue that if the universe began uncaused, then there is an extremely high probability that the universe began just moments ago with the appearance of age. However, I further argue that the general agreement of independent estimates for (...)
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  37. Causal Power and Perfection: Descartes's Second a Posteriori Argument for the Existence of God.Samuel Murray - 2024 - Review of Metaphysics 77 (3):445-459.
    The third Meditation is typically understood to contain two a posteriori arguments for the existence of God. The author focuses on the second argument, where Descartes proves the existence of God partly in virtue of proving that Descartes cannot be the cause of himself. To establish this, Descartes argues that if he were the cause of himself, then he would endow himself with any conceivable perfection. The justification for this claim is that bringing about a substance is more difficult (...)
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  38. The Argument for Panpsychism from Experience of Causation.Hedda Hassel Mørch - 2019 - In William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism. Routledge.
    In recent literature, panpsychism has been defended by appeal to two main arguments: first, an argument from philosophy of mind, according to which panpsychism is the only view which successfully integrates consciousness into the physical world (Strawson 2006; Chalmers 2013); second, an argument from categorical properties, according to which panpsychism offers the only positive account of the categorical or intrinsic nature of physical reality (Seager 2006; Adams 2007; Alter and Nagasawa 2012). Historically, however, panpsychism has also been defended (...)
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  39. Aptness and means-end coherence: a dominance argument for causal decision theory.J. Robert G. Williams - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-19.
    Why should we be means-end rational? Why care whether someone’s mental states exhibit certain formal patterns, like the ones formalized in causal decision theory? This paper establishes a dominance argument for these constraints in a finite setting. If you violate the norms of causal decision theory, then your desires will be aptness dominated. That is, there will be some alternative set of desires that you could have had, which would be more apt (closer to the actual values (...)
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  40. Mary does not learn anything new: Applying Kim's critique of mental causation to the knowledge argument and the problem of consciousness.Adam Khayat - 2019 - Stance 2019 (1):45-55.
    Within the discourse surrounding mind-body interaction, mental causation is intimately associated with non-reductive physicalism. However, such a theory holds two opposing views: that all causal properties and relations can be explicated by physics and that special sciences have an explanatory role. Jaegwon Kim attempts to deconstruct this problematic contradiction by arguing that it is untenable for non-reductive physicalists to explain human behavior by appeal to mental properties. In combination, Kim’s critique of mental causation and the phenomenal concept strategy (...)
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  41. On a Causal Principle in an Argument for a Necessary Being.Noël Blas Saenz - 2022 - Analysis 82 (2):272-277.
    In Necessary Existence, Pruss and Rasmussen give an argument for a necessary being employing a modest causal principle. Here I note that, when applied to highly general and fundamental matters, the principle may well be false (or at least not so obvious).
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  42. Deprioritizing the A Priori Arguments against Physicalism.Richard Brown - 2010 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 17 (3-4):47-69.
    In this paper I argue that a priori arguments fail to present any real problem for physicalism. They beg the question against physicalism in the sense that the argument will only seem compelling if one is already assuming that qualitative properties are nonphysical. To show this I will present the reverse-zombie and reverse-knowledge arguments. The only evidence against physicalism is a priori arguments, but there are also a priori arguments against dualism of exactly the same variety. (...)
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  43. Phenomenology of Fundamental Reality.Nino Kadić - 2022 - Dissertation, King's College London
    Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is present everywhere at the fundamental level of reality, has established itself as an increasingly popular option in the philosophy of mind. Situated between substance dualism and reductive physicalism, panpsychism aims to capture the intuitions behind both, integrating consciousness into the physical world without explaining it in terms of purely physical facts. In this thesis, I offer a defence of panpsychism. -/- First, I examine influential arguments against physicalism, such as Thomas Nagel’s (1974, (...)
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  44. Anomalous monism: Oscillating between dogmas.M. De Pinedo - 2006 - Synthese 148 (1):79-97.
    Davidson’s anomalous monism, his argument for the identity between mental and physical event tokens, has been frequently attacked, usually demanding a higher degree of physicalist commitment. My objection runs in the opposite direction: the identities inferred by Davidson from mental causation, the nomological character of causality and the anomaly of the mental are philosophically problematic and, more dramatically, incompatible with his famous argument against the third dogma of empiricism, the separation of content from conceptual scheme. Given the anomaly (...)
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  45. Consciousness and the Self without Reductionism: Touching Churchland's Nerve.Eric LaRock & Mostyn W. Jones - 2024 - In Mihretu P. Guta & Scott B. Rae (eds.), Taking Persons Seriously: Where Philosophy and Bioethics Intersect. Eugene, Oregon.: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers.
    Patricia Churchland's Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain is her most recent wide-ranging argument for mind-to-brain reductionism. It's one of the leading anti-dualist works in neurophilosophy. It thus deserves careful attention by anti-reductionists. We survey the main arguments in this book for her thesis that the self is nothing but the brain. These arguments are based largely on the self's dependence upon neural activities as reflected in its various impairments, its unified experiences, and its powers of agency. We (...)
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  46. The evolutionary argument for phenomenal powers.Hedda Hassel Morch - 2017 - Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1):293-316.
    Epiphenomenalism is the view that phenomenal properties – which characterize what it is like, or how it feels, for a subject to be in conscious states – have no physical effects. One of the earliest arguments against epiphenomenalism is the evolutionary argument (James 1890/1981; Eccles and Popper 1977; Popper 1978), which starts from the following problem: why is pain correlated with stimuli detrimental to survival and reproduction – such as suffocation, hunger and burning? And why is pleasure correlated with (...)
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  47.  41
    Error Theories of Absence Causation Are Not (Yet) Adequately Motivated.Phillip John Meadows - 2024 - Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts 5 (2):347-366.
    In this paper I consider the merits and motivations for eliminativist error theories of absence causation, such as those offered by Beebee, Varzi, and Mumford. According to such views, there is no causation by absence. Here I argue that, despite of- fering an alternative picture of the practice of citing absences as causes, these views are inadequately motivated. I consider and reject a range of arguments for error-theoretic approaches, including appeals to ontological economy, physicalism and the causal clo- (...)
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  48. Three Arguments for Absolute Outcome Measures.Jan Sprenger & Jacob Stegenga - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):840-852.
    Data from medical research are typically summarized with various types of outcome measures. We present three arguments in favor of absolute over relative outcome measures. The first argument is from cognitive bias: relative measures promote the reference class fallacy and the overestimation of treatment effectiveness. The second argument is decision-theoretic: absolute measures are superior to relative measures for making a decision between interventions. The third argument is causal: interpreted as measures of causal strength, absolute measures (...)
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  49. Neutral Monism Beyond Russell.Michael Schon - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison
    The dissertation begins with a question: Are the mind and brain the same or different? -/- I spend Chapter 1 showing how this simple question leads to a philosophical puzzle known as the mind-body problem. By way of explaining the puzzle, I show that there are two demands that a satisfactory solution to the puzzle must meet – what I call the Ontological and Explanatory Demands. I also explain why ontological idealism is not an attractive solution to the problem. Along (...)
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  50.  5
    Nominalism.Zoltan Szabo - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.
    …entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..
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