Non-reductive Physicalism Research Articles

Kompatybilistyczna odpowiedź na problem wykluczenia przyczynowego

The causal exclusion problem, as presented by Jaegwon Kim, is aimed to show that non-reductive physicalism is self-contradictory, as it is impossible for effects already having a sufficient physical cause to have a distinct mental cause. One possible reply to Kim’s argument is compatibilism — a view within non-reductive physicalism that states that psychophysical supervenience is able to sustain the coexistence of efficacious mental and physical causes. The aim of this paper is to describe the currently most popular compatibilist strategy, as well as to present and evaluate some objections to it. First, I sketch the causal exclusion problem and show how compatibilists could undermine the causal exclusion principle using counterfactual analysis. Then I point out why this is a troublesome and insufficient tool and what challenges await compatibilism in its current form.

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.

Vertical versus horizontal: What is really at issue in the exclusion problem?

I outline two ways of reading what is at issue in the exclusion problem faced by non-reductive physicalism, the “vertical” versus “horizontal”, and argue that the vertical reading is to be preferred to the horizontal. I discuss the implications: that those who have pursued solutions to the horizontal reading of the problem have taken a wrong turn.

"How to Keep the Non-Reductive in Nonreductive Physicalism?" by Nancey Murphy: An Appreciative Response

"How to Keep the Non-Reductive in Nonreductive Physicalism?" by Nancey Murphy:An Appreciative Response Robert John Russell It is a rare privilege to respond to my colleague and friend of nearly four decades, Nancey Murphy. It is especially wonderful given the nature of this paper, with its inclusion of such diverse areas as biblical and theological anthropology, atomism versus dynamical systems, and a response to the problem of reductionism through an appeal to emergence and downward causality in complex dynamical systems. In this response I will first summarize the second part of Nancey's paper and then raise three questions about it. In the second part of her paper, Murphy begins with the new atomism in classical physics and with it the "inevitability" of causal reductionism. Under the shadow of Thomas Hobbes's reductionist theory of human nature and society the "defeat" of causal reductionism became crucial. A vital step was taken through the articulation of downward causation by Robert Van Gulick. While a system is composed of its parts, the causal powers of a system include both those of its parts and their organization. In the latter case, the system "at least partially determines what contributions are made by its parts."1 An additional step in the defeat of causal reductionism was achieved through the idea of emergence in nature. Murphy cites Terrence Deacon as "providing the best account so far of emergence" and spelled out in terms of three orders of emergence. [End Page 465] Systems with first-order emergence display properties such as the viscosity of liquids, but these properties do not endure. Instead they are dampened out in time, and the reductionist claim is left unthreatened. But in second-order emergence such properties are amplified and have system-wide and long-lasting effects. Finally, third-order emergence arises in biological systems in which second-order systems are selected and constrained by the environment. This complex form of emergence has characteristics which can be called "memory" and give the system a "history." Now she asks a pivotal question: "Do these more sophisticated accounts of emergence and downward causation solve the problem of the reduction of human capacities to biology?" While previously she thought they might, she now raises a point which I find very exciting: How is it not the case that humans are, in a sense, trapped by a combination of downward causation from their environments and the biological factors that do (still) contribute to our behavior? Where is there room for human agency? This is the point at which we must turn to the resources of complex systems theory.2 Here she turns to the work of philosopher of science Alicia Juarrero and her 1999 book, Dynamics in Action. Murphy paraphrases Juarrero in calling for a "shift in ontological emphasis" from "things, with their intrinsic properties, to processes and their relational properties." This shift is warranted by the fact that biological systems are "decoupled" from their atomic components; "if the functional system works, it does not matter what its components are made of."3 Such systems have what philosophers call "internal relations" while elements such as atoms have only "external relations." Hence complex dynamic systems enhance our understanding of causation: Along with routine, efficient causation we now find that constraints are placed on the system by the internal relations between its components and by its relations to the environment which serves as its context. Juarrero also distinguishes between "context-free" and "context-sensitive" constraints. So successive throws of a pair of dice are independent of the results of past throws, but as a card game proceeds, the probability of an "ace" changes by the results of previous draws. This leads Murphy [End Page 466] to recommend that we speak of whole–part "constraints" instead of "downward causation." Here the whole does not exert efficient causality on its parts; instead the whole changes the probabilities of the behavior of its parts. This in turn leads Murphy to set aside the traditional sharp distinction between determinism and indeterminism and adopt the idea of "propensity," a term created by Karl Popper to mean "an irregular or non-necessitating causal disposition of an object or system to produce...

How to Keep the Non-Reductive in Nonreductive Physicalism?

How to Keep the Non-Reductive in Nonreductive Physicalism?

Mary Does Not Learn Anything New

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 serves as an effectual response to the anti-physicalist stance enclosed within the Knowledge Argument and the Zombie Thought Experiment.

Does Naturalism Make Room for Teleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel

Research Article| January 01 2019 Does Naturalism Make Room for Teleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel Mikael Leidenhag Mikael Leidenhag University of Edinburgh Mikael Leidenhag is a Research Fellow in Theology and Science at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his PhD at the University of Uppsala. His current research area is on the relationship between natural teleology and Christian eschatology. Some of his more recent publications are “From Emergence Theory to Panpsychism: A Philosophical Evaluation of Nancey Murphy’s Non-Reductive Physicalism” (Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions [2016], “The Mysterianism of Owen Flanagan’s Normative Mind Science” (Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science [2018]), “Religious Naturalism: The Current Debate” (Philosophy Compass [2018]), and Naturalizing God? A Critical Evaluation of Religious Naturalism (forthcoming with State University of New York Press). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Journal of Theology & Philosophy (2019) 40 (1): 5–19. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjtheophil.40.1.0005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mikael Leidenhag; Does Naturalism Make Room for Teleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 1 January 2019; 40 (1): 5–19. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjtheophil.40.1.0005 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressAmerican Journal of Theology & Philosophy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Why incompatibilism about mental causation is incompatible with non-reductive physicalism

ABSTRACTThe exclusion problem is meant to show that non-reductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: if mental properties are not identical with physical properties, then they are not causally efficacious. Defenders of a difference-making account of causation suggest that the exclusion problem can be solved because mental properties can be difference-making causes of physical effects. Here, we focus on what we dub an incompatibilist implementation of this general strategy and argue against it from a non-reductive physicalist perspective. Specifically, we argue that incompatibilism undermines either the non-reductionist or the physicalist aspirations of non-reductive physicalism.

Why Can´t We Regard Robots As People?

With the development of autonomous robots, one day probably capable of speaking, thinking and learning, self-reflecting, sharing emotions, in fact, with the raise of robots becoming artificial moral agents (AMAs) robot scientists like Abney, Veruggio and Petersen are already optimistic that sooner or later we need to call those robots “people” or rather “Artificial People” (AP). The paper rejects this forecast, due to its argument based on three metaphysical conflicting assumptions. Firstly, it is the idea that it is possible to precisely define persons and apply the definition to robots or use it to differentiate human beings from robots. Further, the argument of APs favors a position of non-reductive physicalism (second assumption) and materialism (third assumption), finally producing weird convictions about future robotics. Therefore, I will suggest to follow Christine Korsgaard’s defence of animals as ends in themselves with moral standing. I will show that her argument can be transmitted to robots, too, at least to robots which are capable of pursuing their own good (even if they are not rational). Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant delivers an option that allows us to leave out complicated metaphysical notions like “person” or “subject” in the debate, without denying robots’ status as agents.

Causal Exclusion and Causal Autonomism

The causal exclusion problem is often considered as one of the major difficulties for which non-reductive physicalists have no easy solution to offer. Some non-reductive physicalists address this problem by arguing that mental properties are to some extent causally autonomous. If this is the case, then mental properties will not be causally excluded by their physical realizers because causation, in general, is a relation between properties of the same level. In this paper, I argue that the response from causal autonomy cannot be successful for two reasons. First, it does not offer a satisfactory explanation for how mental particulars can have causal efficacy in a non-reductive physicalist framework. Second, the causal considerations underpinning this response do not really support the conclusion that mental properties are causally autonomous.

The Dispositional Nature of Phenomenal Properties

According to non-reductive physicalism, mental properties of the phenomenal sort are essentially different from physical properties, and cannot be reduced to them. This being a quarrel about properties, I draw on the categorical / dispositional distinction to discuss this non-reductive claim. Typically, non-reductionism entails a categorical view of phenomenal properties. Contrary to this, I will argue that phenomenal properties, usually characterized by what it is like to have them, are mainly the manifestation of dispositional properties. This paper is thus divided into two parts. In the first part, after tracing a working distinction between categorical and dispositional properties, I argue that there is a form of incoherence looming behind the idea of taking phenomenal properties as categorical. In the second part, I argue in favor of the view that phenomenal properties are dispositional properties with an essential manifestation. This interpretation allows us to broaden dispositionalism so as to include the sciences of mind, thus ultimately favoring a physicalist view on the mind.

Agency, Chance, and the Scientific Status of Psychology.

Psychologists generally reject the reductionist, physicalist, "nothing but" stance of the natural sciences. At the same time they consider their discipline a science and wonder why it does not enjoy the status (and funding) of the natural sciences. Ferguson American Psychologist, 70, 527-542 (2015), Lilienfeld American Psychologist, 67, 111-129 (2012), and Schwartz et al. American Psychologist, 71, 52-70 (2016) are among those who adopt a soft naturalism of nonreductive physicalism which declares, or implies, that when it comes to humans, there is more than what the natural sciences can unravel. They envision psychology as scientific in the epistemological sense of generating reproducible results, but reject the reductive ontology of science which currently points to the undeterminable chance of quantum theory as the closest physics has come to the beginnings and what might loosely be called the foundation of the universe (e.g., Bridgman Harper's, 158, 443-451 1929; Eddington 1948). The case made here is that any science, including a psychological one, must be based on a naturalist ontology. This implies restricting the term science to disciplines which not only meet epistemological criteria like reproducibility, but which also adopt-on the ontological level-the parsimonious assumption that at present it makes sense to think that "there is nothing but time and chance" (e.g., Cox and Forshaw 2011; Crease and Goldhaber 2014; Rorty 1989). From this perspective, psychology emerges as two distinct disciplines, one a natural science, the other a human science in the broad sense of science as scientia.

Mental causation via neuroprosthetics? A critical analysis

Some recent arguments defending the genuine causal efficacy of the mental have been relying on empirical research on neuroprosthetics. This essay presents a critical analysis of these arguments. The problem of mental causation, and the basic idea and results of neuroprosthetics are reviewed. It is shown how appealing to the research on neuroprosthetics can be interpreted to give support to the idea of mental causation. However, it does so only in a rather deflationary sense: by holding the mental identical with the neural. So contrary to what the arguments have been assuming, neuroprosthetics cannot be used to argue for nonreductive physicalism. It can rather be taken to illustrate just the opposite: how the mental and the physical are identical.

How Counterpart Theory Saves Nonreductive Physicalism

How Counterpart Theory Saves Nonreductive Physicalism

Causal Relevance of Mental Properties: A Refutation of Kim’s Exclusion Argument

Non-reductive physicalism is attacked by Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument. Kim argues that if mental and physical properties are distinct, then mental properties are causally irrelevant. My task in this paper is to refute this argument and to provide a solution for the problem of mental causation. Taking mental properties as higher-order properties, I attempt to propose a property-exemplification account of events that is compatible with the thesis of token identity. I then attempt to refute the exclusion argument by arguing that mental causation and physical causation are not homogeneous; that is, they are two different kinds of causation. Kim’s exclusion argument only demonstrates the impossibility of a productive conception of mental causation; however, only a difference-making conception is appropriate for mental causation and human agency. If these results are plausible, they would serve as a metaphysical basis for an autonomy approach to mental causation, which attempts to save the causal relevance of mental properties by arguing that there is only intra-level causal relevance.

Global Supervenience without Reducibility

Does the global supervenience of one class on another entail reductionism, in the sense that any property in the former class is definable from properties in the latter class? This question appears to be at the same time formally tractable and philosophically significant. It seems formally tractable because the concepts involved are susceptible to rigorous definition. It is philosophically significant because in a number of debates about inter-level relationships, there are prima facie plausible positions that presuppose that there is no such entailment: standard versions of non-reductive physicalism and of normative non-naturalism accept global supervenience while rejecting reductionism. I identify a gap in an influential argument for the entailment, due to Frank Jackson and Robert Stalnaker, and draw on the model theory of infinitary languages to argue that some globally supervening properties are not reducible.

Nonreductive Physicalism and Mental Causation

In this work I articulate and defend a problem about the place of the mind in the causation of behaviour. Ask why someone did a certain action and you can see the problem arise, if only you assume certain plausible suppositions about the world. The suppositions are taken to be those of nonreductive materialism.I think that the argument from exclusion, originally developed by Jaegwon Kim, shows that unless there is overdetermination, the mental cannot be causally relevant in the causation of behaviour. It is my view, however, that a proper understanding of overdetermination shows that the overdetermination move is not available to the nonreductive physicalist. That is, he cannot escape exclusion by claiming that the mental overdetermines the physical in the causation of our actions.It is argued that neither appeals to economy nor to Bennett's counterfactual test are good ways to decide matters of overdetermination. That should be decided in terms of the ability of a theory to consistently permit such overdetermination, which however is shown not to be the case for nonreductive materialism.Moreover, in general all realized properties will face this problem - assuming them to be causally relevant will ignite exclusionary claims and in the competition for relevance, physical properties will have a better and more fundamental claim for relevance, threatening once again to relegate realized properties to the category of epiphenomena.

Neuroscientific findings in the light of Aquinas' understanding of the human being

Neuroscience is one of the most propulsive of all sciences and very often, directly or not, it tries to answer the question: What is man? However, neuroscientific research does not acknowledge the concept of man as a unity of body and soul. The modern scientific research paradigm therefore rests on physicalism, while theologians are turning towards non-reductive physicalism. In this paper, we will highlight a few key points of the theory of philosopher and theologian Nancey Murphy, which is based on the deconstruction of Aquinas's thought about the human soul and its reduction to the physical. We aim to show that she neglected the full scope of Aquinas teachings. In the second part of this paper, for the scientific paradigm of humans we shall propose new-old hylomorphism, and try to complement certain points of such a system with modern neuroscientific views. The aim of this work is to offer advice for the interdisciplinary cooperation between neuroscience, philosophy and theology alongside the guidelines of Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism.

Nonreductive Physicalism and Mental Causation

I want now to consider what the correct way to understand overdetermination could tell us about the exclusion problem. But what is a better understanding of overdetermination? I think the following example, to be understood as a counterexample to Bennett's test, can lead the way.

A double face view on mind-brain relationship: the problem of mental causation

Abstract: Interpreting results of contemporary neuroscientif studies, I present a non-reductive physicalist account of mind-brain relationship from which the criticism of unintelligibility ascribed to the notion of mental causation is considered. Assuming that a paradigmatic criticism addressed to the notion of mental causation is that presented by Jaegwon Kim’s analysis on the theory of mind-body supervenience, I present his argument arguing that it encompasses a formulation of the problem of mental causation, which leads to difficulties by him pointed. To ask "how mental events, being a non-physical property of the brain, could act causally on brain structure and functioning?", is not to treat the mind as a property of the brain, but as a Cartesian substance. I argue that, rather than asking "how does mind could act causally on the brain?", as if the mind were something apart and independent of the brain, it would be more in line with a non-reductive physicalist view to ask "how the brain, guided by its mind, could act causally on itself?". To justify this last formulation of the problem of mental causation, I propose a "double face view", which consists in considering the consciousness as the essential property of the mind, and mind and brain as inseparable, dependent and irreducible faces. It means, in general terms, that the conscious mind is the result of brain structure and activity - "conscious mind as brain" - and that the brain, using its conscious mind as a guide to its actions, interacts with its body, and with the physical and sociocultural environment, constructing and being constructed by both - "brain as conscious mind".