Nonreductive Materialism Research Articles

Social Objects, Response-Dependence, and Realism

AbstractThere is a widespread sentiment that social objects such as nation-states, borders, and pieces of money are just figments of our collective imagination and not really ‘out there’ in the world. Call this the ‘antirealist intuition’. Eliminativist, reductive materialist, and immaterialist views of social objects can all make sense of the antirealist intuition, in one way or another. But these views face serious difficulties. A promising alternative view is nonreductive materialism. Yet it is unclear whether and how nonreductive materialists can make sense of the antirealist intuition. I develop a version of nonreductive materialism that is able to meet this explanatory demand. The central idea is that social objects are materially constituted, response-dependent objects. I go on to offer an independent argument in favor of this response-dependent view of social objects. I then suggest that a proponent of this view can appeal to the response-dependent nature of social objects to explain, or explain away, the antirealist intuition.

The Crucified Apostle: Essays on Peter and Paul

The Crucified Apostle: Essays on Peter and Paul

Theorizing how the brain encodes consciousness based on negentropic entanglement.

The physicality of subjectivity is explained through a theoretical conceptualization of guidance waves informing meaning in negentropically entangled non-electrolytic brain regions. Subjectivity manifests its influence at the microscopic scale of matter originating from de Broglie 'hidden' thermodynamics as action of guidance waves. The preconscious experienceability of subjectivity is associated with a nested hierarchy of microprocesses, which are actualized as a continuum of patterns of discrete atomic microfeels (or "qualia"). The mechanism is suggested to be through negentropic entanglement of hierarchical thermodynamic transfer of information as thermo-qubits originating from nonpolarized regions of actin-binding proteinaceous structures of nonsynaptic spines. The resultant continuous stream of intrinsic information entails a negentropic action (or experiential flow of thermo-quantum internal energy that results in a negentropic force) which is encoded through the non-zero real component of the mean approximation of the negentropic force as a 'consciousness code'. Consciousness consisting of two major subprocesses: (1) preconscious experienceability and (2) conscious experience. Both are encapsulated by nonreductive physicalism and panexperiential materialism. The subprocess (1) governing "subjectivity" carries many microprocesses leading to the actualization of discrete atomic microfeels by the 'consciousness code'. These atomic microfeels constitute internal energy that results in the transfer intrinsic information in terms of thermo-qubits. These thermo-qubits are realized as thermal entropy and sensed by subprocess (2) governing "self-awareness" in conscious experience.

Symptoms are not the solution but the problem: Why psychiatric research should focus on processes rather than symptoms.

Progress in psychiatric research has been hindered by the use of artificial disease categories to map distinct biological substrates. Efforts to overcome this obstacle have led to the misconception that relevant psychiatric dimensions are not biologically reducible. Consequently, the return to phenomenology is once again advocated. We propose a process-centered paradigm of biological reduction compatible with non-reductive materialism.

Process Externalism and mental causation: setting metaphysical bounds on cognitive science

In this article, I examine the argument by which Process Externalism—an interesting empirical theory that echoes 4E’s core ideas—undermines Kim’s supervenience argument. If mental properties do not depend exclusively on neurological properties but depend on external or extra-cranial properties, mental causation cannot be pre-empted by or reduced to neurological properties. In this sense, Keijzer and Schouten argue that this theory entails a robust nonreductive materialism (RNM) that vindicates a notion of mental causation. However, I will argue that this maneuver produces different kinds of overdetermination problems that compromise the metaphysical austerity of a materialist theory of cognition and, for this reason, Process Externalism might not be conceived as entailing an RNM. Finally, I will suggest that the theory could be rendered as a moderate reductive account of the cognitive phenomena that would avoid the overdetermination problems that haunt nonreductive accounts of cognition.

Do Personality Features Influence Our Intuitions of the Mind-Body Problem? A Pilot Study.

The elusive relationship between the mental domain and the physical brain, known as the mind-body problem, is still a hot topic of discussion among philosophers and neuroscientists. Rather than solving this problem, our pilot study addresses the question as to whether personality features could influence intuitions of the mind-body problem, or more precisely, whether it is possible to identify a person’s intuitive inclinations toward dualism or materialism and their inclinations toward reduction of the mind to the brain. For the purposes of this pilot study, we developed a questionnaire, which employed several theories of analytic philosophy of the mind, in order to determine which category the participants would belong to. These main categories were dualism, non-reductive materialism and reductive materialism. To test whether personality features affect preferences for these categories, the participants were investigated by Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). We found significant differences in the self-transcendence dimension of the TCI between participants who were evaluated as dualists and those who were assessed as reductive materialists. Our data show that the personality dimension of self-transcendence correlates with intuitive inclination toward reductive materialism or dualism. In addition, our results suggest that ideas, theories, and hypothetical solutions of the mind-body problem and possibly even conclusions, acceptance, and disputations of thought experiments of philosophy of the mind can be biased by personality traits. This fact should be taken into account in future discussions of the philosophy of the mind and may also be important for empirical research and an empirical understanding of the mind.

G. T. Fechner (1801-1887) In and For Psychology

I have presented a broader review of Fechner “in and for psychology” than that with which psychologists are generally familiar. Fechner wrote in a time before the emergence of psychology as a discipline and a profession. (1) He offered a quantitative theory of pleasure as a computational principle in action, directed toward the goal of stability or equilibrium. (2) Bodies and minds are collections of phenomena in Fechner’s phenomenalism. Mental changes are a function of bodily changes, but not vice versa, an asymmetric relationship. Double-aspect theory can be seen as relating clusters of body phenomena and mental phenomena. Is their relation functional or causal? (3) Fechner’s psychological parallelism contributed a widely-accepted meme to nineteenth-century philosophical and psychological thought. (4) Scholars have anchored his psychophysics in sensitivity, expanded it to a psychophysical worldview, and drawn lessons for memory from the inner psychophysics. (5) Fechner’s experimental aesthetics drew on judgments of beautiful objects by naïve subjects, taking into consideration the proportions of the object as well as the feelings of the subject. Part II will address Fechner “beyond psychology”: his physics and chemistry, indeterminism, atomism, non-reductive materialism, satirical writings, and philosophy of religion.

Dan Zahavi and John Searle on Consciousness and Non-Reductive Materialism

In his 1994 paper, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet affirmed that he found a way to test the interaction between the mind and the brain. He believed that this procedure would also test the reality of a non-physical mind, emerging from neural activity. In 2000 John Searle objected to Libet’s evident dualism, affirming that the mind is not a hypothesis to test but a datum to be explained. According to Searle, Libet’s problem arose from accepting the Cartesian distinction of ‘mind’ and ‘body’, obsolete categories from an old philosophy. Searle’s solution implied the rejection both of dualism and reductive materialism, suggesting a non-reductive materialism. This first-person ontology, as Searle calls it, aims at preserving, against reductive materialism, the essential features of consciousness, i.e. subjective, qualitative and unified. Searle argued, however, that the nature of consciousness remained biological. Dan Zahavi’s thesis is that a phenomenological approach to the self and consciousness can offer a complementing alternative to the contemporary comprehension of the nature of consciousness. Engaged in an open dialogue with neuroscience and cognitive science in his dealings with consciousness, Zahavi holds, nonetheless, that this notion cannot be completely understood without reference to the notion of the self. Thus, this paper will analyse Zahavi’s ideas about the self and consciousness in Subjectivity and Selfhood (2005) as to evaluate whether his phenomenological approach is able to overcome the materialist tones of Searle’s philosophy of mind, opening the possibility of a non-reductive comprehension of human beings.

The Baby and the Bathwater: Hans Jonas's Recovery of Aristotelian Biological Concepts

The idiom referred to in the title, “don't throw out the baby with the bath water,” instructs us to keep what is essential and to only throw away what is inessential. Bathing babies has the well-being of the child in mind, the end result of which is cleanliness. Efficiency in the task of cleaning is secondary. No one would throw away a baby when draining the baby's bathwater. Somewhat analogously, science and philosophy each have the goal of the attainment of truth in mind. Part and parcel of this search for truth has been the attachment of being parsimonious, especially since William of Ockham. If the goal is truth, then one cannot get lost in the pursuit of parsimony, therefore losing the truth. The goal of finding the truth must remain intact; the method of parsimony at best remains subservient to the attainment of truth. Hans Jonas believed this regarding truth and pursued the criticism of reductive materialism as part and parcel of his research program in philosophy of biology and philosophical anthropology beginning in 1950. In his mind, reductive materialism, as it was practiced, involved the pursuit of parsimony at the cost of the truth through neglect of the purpose-driven conscious life of the subject. In this article, I expose and defend the recovery of certain elements of Aristotelian biology by Professor Hans Jonas. In the process, I show how Jonas was among the early authors writing on the philosophy of biology and defending ontological essentialism and purposefulness in organisms against reductive materialism and the relentless pursuit of the unity of the sciences. Along this line, I position Jonas among the arguments made regarding teleological explanations current in the philosophy of biology. First, I explain and defend Jonas's thesis that a full understanding of organisms requires recognizing an ontological essentialism regarding organisms. Secondly, I explain and defend Jonas's forward looking and backward looking teleological conceptions of activity insofar as it concurs directly with the conscious experience of life for humans, while situating it within the mainstream of philosophy of biology. Last, the importance of this recovery of Aristotelian concepts highlights Jonas's position as an early proponent of non-reductive materialism. More importantly, his thought forces us to recognize that in the pursuit of truth we must use parsimony well. We should take extreme care to preserve the truth; we should not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Causal Overdetermination and Kim’s Exclusion Argument

Jaegwon Kim’s influential exclusion argument attempts to demonstrate the inconsistency of nonreductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. Kim’s argument begins by showing that the three main theses of nonreductive materialism, plus two additional considerations, lead to a specific and (by now) familiar picture of mental causation. The exclusion argument can succeed only if, as Kim claims, this picture is not one of genuine causal overdetermination. Accordingly, one can resist Kim’s conclusion by denying this claim, maintaining instead that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. I call this strategy the ‘overdetermination challenge’. One of the main aims of this paper is to show that the overdetermination challenge is the most appropriate response to Kim’s exclusion argument, at least in its latest form. I argue that Kim fails to adequately respond to the overdetermination challenge, thus failing to prevent his opponents from reasonably maintaining that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. Interestingly, this discussion reveals a curious dialectical feature of Kim’s latest response to the overdetermination challenge: if it succeeds, then a new, simpler and more compact version of the exclusion argument is available. While I argue against the consequent of this conditional, thereby also rejecting the antecedent, this dialectical feature should be of interest to philosophers on either side of this debate.

‘What is man but a mass of thawing clay?’: Thoreau, Embodiment, and the Nineteenth-Century Posthuman

This paper argues for a new understanding of Thoreau’s appraisal of the relationship between humans and the natural world by locating him in current posthuman discourse. Examining the developing nineteenth-century inclination to emphasize basic hybridities between humans and nature reveals how Thoreau’s later work pointed toward an ecological yet non-reductive materialism, neither reducing nature to mere matter nor elevating it to ineffa¬ble spirit. As Thoreau erased distinctions between natural and supernatural realms, an interplay between religion and science in his writing unfolded with respect to competing views of natural history in the nineteenth-century transatlantic world. In this reading, Thoreau destabilized traditional interpretations of the af?liation between humans and nature and, in their place, offered a model with interpenetrating identities between matter and spirit. This paper therefore situates Thoreau as a transitional ?gure occupying an intermediate space between liberal humanism and posthumanism. In the end, Thoreau’s struggle—namely, to resolve his wavering between identi?cation with and alienation from the material world—produced new and radical answers to the questions: What is humanity, what is nature, and what is the true relation between the two? In this way he was a forerunner of the posthuman, a radical rethinking or rewriting of what it means to be human.

The Constraint Interpretation of Physical Emergence

I develop a variant of the constraint interpretation of the emergence of purely physical (non-biological) entities, focusing on the principle of the non-derivability of actual physical states from possible physical states (physical laws) alone. While this is a necessary condition for any account of emergence, it is not sufficient, for it becomes trivial if not extended to types of constraint that specifically constitute physical entities, namely, those that individuate and differentiate them. Because physical organizations with these features are in fact interdependent sets of such constraints, and because such constraints on physical laws cannot themselves be derived from physical laws, physical organization is emergent. These two complementary types of constraint are components of a complete non-reductive physicalism, comprising a non-reductive materialism and a non-reductive formalism.

The location problem in social ontology

Mental, mathematical, and moral facts are difficult to accommodate within an overall worldview due to the peculiar kinds of properties inherent to them. In this paper I argue that a significant class of social entities also presents us with an ontological puzzle that has thus far not been addressed satisfactorily. This puzzle relates to the location of certain social entities. Where, for instance, are organizations located? Where their members are, or where their designated offices are? Organizations depend on their members for their existence, but the members of an organization can be where the organization is not. The designated office of an organization, however, need be little more than a mailbox. I argue that the problem can be solved by conceptualizing the relation between social entities and non-social entities as one of constitution, a relation of unity without identity. Constituted objects have properties that cannot be reduced to properties of the constituting objects. Thus, my attempt to solve the Location Problem results in an argument in favor of a kind of non-reductive materialism about the social.

Naturalized truth and Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism

There are three major theses in Plantinga’s latest version of his evolutionary argument against naturalism. (1) Given materialism, the conditional probability of the reliability of human cognitive mechanisms produced by evolution is low; (2) the same conditional probability given reductive or non-reductive materialism is still low; (3) the most popular naturalistic theories of content and truth are not admissible for naturalism. I argue that Plantinga’s argument for (1) presupposes an anti-materialistic conception of content, and it therefore begs the question against materialism. To argue for (2), Plantinga claims that the adaptiveness of a belief is indifferent to its truth. I argue that this claim is unsupported unless it again assumes an anti-materialistic conception of content and truth. I further argue that Plantinga’s argument for (3) is not successful either, because an improved version of teleosemantics can meet his criticisms. Moreover, this version of teleosemantics implies that the truth of a belief is (probabilistically) positively related to its adaptiveness, at least for simple beliefs about physical objects in human environments. This directly challenges Plantinga’s claim that adaptiveness is indifferent to truth.

Intangible materialism: the body, scientific knowledge, and the power of language

Taking as his point of departure Norbert Weiner’s statement that information is basic to understanding materialism in our era, Ronald Schleifer shows how discoveries of modern physics have altered conceptions of matter and energy and the ways in which both information theory and the study of literature can enrich these conceptions. Expanding the reductive notion of “the material” as simply matter and energy, he formulates a new, more inclusive idea of materialism.Schleifer’s project attempts to bridge the divisions between the humanities and the sciences and to create a nonreductive materialism for the information age. He presents a materialistic account of human bodily experience by delving into language and literature that powerfully represents our faces, voices, hands, and pain. For example, he examines the material resources of poetic “literariness” as it is revealed in the condition of Tourette’s syndrome. Schleifer also investigates gestures of the hand in the formation of sociality, and he studies pain as both a physiological and phenomenological experience.This ambitious work explores physiological analyses, evolutionary explanations, and semiotic descriptions of materialism to reveal how aspects of physical existence discover meaning in experience.

Il problema mente-corpo nel dibattito contemporaneo

- The mind-body problem is a crucial question to philosophers and cognitive scientists who pursue a program of naturalization of mind while preserving its causal efficacy. Two options seem to be open if we approach the question from a materialistic point of view: either preserve the notion of mental autonomy, by adhering to a nonreductive materialism, or give up that notion by supporting a reductive option. What I propose for discussion here is a neo-reductive perspective which considers mental causation as a sort of physical causation and maintains the mind-body identity.Keywords: Mental causation, Physicalism, Supervenience, Epiphenomenalism, Qualia, Identity theory.Parole chiave: Causalitŕ mentale, Materialismo, Sopravvenienza, Epifenomenalismo, Qualia, Teoria dell'identitŕ psico-fisica.

Coincidence as Overlap1

NoûsVolume 40, Issue 4 p. 623-659 Coincidence as Overlap† L. A. Paul, L. A. Paul University of Arizona and the Australian National University, RSSSSearch for more papers by this author L. A. Paul, L. A. Paul University of Arizona and the Australian National University, RSSSSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 November 2006 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2006.00627.xCitations: 45Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume40, Issue4December 2006Pages 623-659 RelatedInformation

La situación de la teoría y terminología de la psicología popular y el futuro de la psicología científica

This article discusses the origins and function of folk psychology and its assimilation in a future scientific psychology. The problems of reductionism in science and eliminativism in psychology are analyzed. The author defends a non-reductive materialism view of psychology and argues for a vindication of the status and role of folk psychology. In this article the unity of science thesis and reductionism are explored and questioned to conclude that taking as an example, the problem of micro-reductions in physics. It is proposed, in contrast, a pluralist standpoint whereby the autonomy and interrelation of the different levels of reality are maintained. The article defends the role of folk psychology, as a source of non-reductive explanations, in the growth of scientific psychology which can be understood in a proposal of two possible uses.

La ineficacia causal de lo mental y el éxito explicativo de la psicología

Las llamadas "estrategias deflacionistas" han constituido una alternativa relativamente popular para enfrentar el problema de la presunta ineficacia causal de los estados mentales en el marco del materialismo no reduccionista. Las propuestas de Lynn Baker y Tyler Burge, desarrolladas en el marco de esta estrategia, coinciden en señalar la necesidad de limitar la importancia de la reflexión metafísica y privilegiar el análisis de la explicación mentalista como fuente para la solución (o "disolución") de los problemas de la causación mental. En contra de esta pretensión, sostenemos que, aun cuando fuera posible reflexionar sobre la causación mental sin recurrir a la metafísica, las dificultades derivadas de lograr una caracterización de lo que constituye una explicación psicológica satisfactoria, sumadas a la competencia explicativa generalizada en la teorización psicológica, resultan obstáculos casi insalvables para estas estrategias.

Die gegenwärtigen Geist-Gehirn-Theorien in der Analytischen Philosophie des Geistes und ihre epistemische Bedeutung für die Psychiatrie

This article begins with an orientational survey of the historical evolution of analytical philosophy of mind (APM) which was formulated in the last 40 years as "philosophy of mind" in the Anglo-Saxon scientific-cultural world and which, in the meantime, dominates to a great extent contemporary German philosophy. Then there follows a discussion of the currently most popular mind-brain theories in philosophy. In comparison to the more marginal dualist variants (interactionism, epiphenomenalism, parallelism), it is mainly the monistic positions of non-reductive, reductive and eliminative materialism and the materialist functionalism underlying it, which determines analytical philosophy of mind and its influence on psychopathology and psychiatry. Under the additional influence of modern brain research methods, particularly neuroimaging, it is progressively developing into a subdiscipline of neuroscience, a complex and increasingly more firmly established scientific discipline which comprises the totality of all sciences dealing with neuronal functions, including the close epistemic associations of APM and neuroimaging. This is the effective epistemic central idea determining the theory of the neuronal network which, in the form of a connectionist psychopathology, is intended to make possible a fundamentally new access to the comprehension of psychiatric forms of illness. In this respect it is evident, however, that the perception of the naturality of the mind as the fundamental thesis of APM and thus of connectionism cannot be followed through, since, up to now, neither from the phenomenality of the mind (especially the quality of senses, "Qualia") nor from intentionality of the mind (i. e. the ability to act intentionally, free from the constraint of the causality of nature and thus in self-responsible fashion) has proved it possible to reconstruct a generally accepted naturalist theory. Furthermore, it has not been possible to reformulate it in an exclusively physical, i. e. non-phenomenological concept and terminology which is, above all, free from the intentionality idiom. The consequence of this, however, is that a connectionist psychopathology can only represent a subpersonal, i. e., subhuman area and that in order to establish a personal psychopathology, naturalistic unreduced theories of experience-qualities and intentional acts of completeness are absolutely essential. The neuroscientific-connectionist paradigm of psychopathology must therefore - at least for the present - be supplement by the paradigm of a non-natural (e. g. phenomenological-hermeneutic) psychopathology. This result can only encourage the relinquishing of epistemically one-sided materialist and other monistic mind-brain theories of APM in favour of an epistemically open pragmatic interactionist dualism as the scientific position which best represents the current state of knowledge.