Position In Philosophy Of Mind Research Articles

Is Reductive Materialism a Defensible Philosophy of Mind?

Over the past decades, reductive materialism has made a recipe for philosophy of mind to explore the subtle nature of the human mind. By and large, many identity theorists were likely to argue that mental states can be found in cognitive faculties of the brain so that the mind, if not most, associates with discoverable phenomena with no burden of proof. To put this bluntly, reductive materialism is typically defined by its very nature: all mental states are neurological states of the brain; ergo, it is implausible to make room for the substance dualism thereto. In response to this naturalist stance, aka reductive materialism, this article, thereby, contends that reductive materialism cannot be placed in a defensible position in philosophy of mind vis-à-vis the Kripkean modality; accordingly, this brief survey has identified several barnstorming findings in support of the thesis: the necessity and contingency, the core plank of possibility, rigid and non-rigid designators, and conceivability and possibility. In spite of its limitations, the study certainly adds to our understanding of the so-called reductive materialism in philosophy of mind. Nevertheless, a full discussion of naturalism lies beyond the scope of this study. Further work is, therefore, needed to fully digest the implications of reductive materialism and Kripke’s modal argument.

The Prospects for Non-reductive Physicalism

The aim of this paper is provide a reassessment of Nonreductive Physicalism (NP) as a position in philosophy of mind in view of influential critiques of some of its central assumptions and implications. First, I undertake to explicate NP’s foundational concepts and metaphysical commitments in the attempt to establish NP’s internal coherence. Second, I defend NP against an attempt to discredit its theoretical plausibility by responding to what is perhaps the most powerful argument against NP, namely, Jaegwon Kim’s argument to the effect that the very principles of NP commit NP to epiphenomenalism.

The Evolution of Suffering, Epiphenomenalism, and the Phenomena of Life: Evidential Problems for Naturalists

Paul Draper argues that the central issue in the debate over the problem of suffering is not whether the theist can offer a probable explanation of suffering, but whether theism or naturalism can give a better explanation for the facts regarding the distribution of pain as we find them. He likewise maintains a comparison of relative probabilities considering the facts of suffering; atheological naturalism is to be preferred. This essay proceeds in two phases: (a) It will be argued that mainstream positions in naturalistic philosophy of mind make it difficult to take pain as anything but epiphenomenal and therefore not subject to evolutionary explanation. While the distribution of suffering is a difficulty for the theist, the naturalist has equal difficulty explaining the fact that there is any suffering at all in the first place. Thus, the facts of suffering offer no advantage to the atheist. (b) Phenomenologists suggest that there is an intrinsic connection between animal life, pain, and normativity (including a summum bonum). The mere occurrence of life and normativity are, at least prima facie, more likely on the assumption of theism than atheism, so the theist may have a probabilistic advantage relative to the atheist. Phases (a) and (b) together support the overall conclusion that the facts of pain as we find them in the world (including that there is any pain at all) are at least as great, if not greater, a challenge for the atheist as they are the theist.

Phenomenology-first versus third-person approaches in the science of consciousness: the case of the integrated information theory and the unfolding argument

Assessing the scientific status of theories of consciousness is often a difficult task. In this paper, I explore the dialectic between the Integrated Information Theory (Oizumi et al. PLoS Comput Biol, 10(5), e1003588, 2014; Tononi et al. Nat Rev Neurosci, 17(7), 450-61 , 2016) and a recently proposed criticism of that theory: the ‘unfolding argument’ (Doerig et al. Consciousness and Cognition, 72, 49-59 , 2019). I show that the phenomenology-first approach in consciousness research can lead to valid scientific theories of consciousness. I do this by highlighting the two reasons why the unfolding argument fails: first, phenomenology-first theories are grounded, not circular. Second, falsificationism does not provide an adequate demarcation criterion in philosophy of science. I conclude that this specific debate has significance for how, in general, consciousness researchers test and criticize theories of consciousness, and how dismissing the phenomenology-first methodology in favour of a third person-based methodology means endorsing a position in philosophy of mind that has already been challenged.

Eliminating Eliminative Materialism

Eliminative materialism is a bold position in philosophy of mind: proponents of it hold that folk psychology is a primitive theory of human behavior, and like most primitive theories, it is, unfortunately, false. The alarming implications of this are that mental states don’t actually exist—humans don’t actually believe anything. In this paper I try to show that several central claims of eliminative materialism (specifically Paul Churchland’s version) are mistaken and, further, that it is, in fact, false. I first argue that folk psychology is not a theory, and that a proper understanding of the nature of basic beliefs, nonbasic beliefs, and theories makes this clear; next, I claim that the eliminative materialist response to the charge of incoherence is inadequate as it misunderstands what mental states are; finally, I offer an argument for the falsity of eliminative materialism on common sense grounds, while undercutting objections to the argument by way of scientific anti-realism.

New Wave Pluralism

The aim of this paper is to develop a pluralist interpretation of the phenomenal concept strategy (PCS). My starting point is Horgan and Tienson's deconstructive argument according to which proponents of PCS face the following dilemma: either phenomenal concepts or physical concepts allow us to conceive phenomenal states as they are in themselves. If phenomenal concepts allow us to conceive phenomenal states as they are in themselves, then phenomenal states are non-physical states and physicalism is wrong. If physical concepts allow us to conceive phenomenal states as they are in themselves, then phenomenal concepts are derivative and PCS is wrong. While Horgan and Tienson assume that their argument shows that PCS leads to dualism, I argue that one can also adopt an ‘epistemic pluralism’ that rejects the idea of only one fundamental way of conceiving phenomenal states as they are in themselves. However, I also argue that epistemic pluralism eventually leads to a position that is compatible neither with dualism nor physicalism. Instead of justifying a non-reductive ‘new wave materialism’, PCS may therefore lead to a ‘new wave pluralism’ that is at odds with all mainstream positions in philosophy of mind.

Self-knowledge, Normativity, and Construction

He tried to look into her face, to find out what she thought, but she was smelling the lilac and the lilies of the valley and did not know herself what she was thinking—what she ought to say or do.OblomovMuch of modern and contemporary philosophy of mind in the ‘analytic’ tradition has presupposed, since Descartes, what might be called a realist view about the mind and the mental. According to this view there are independently existing, determinate items (states, events, dispositions or relations) that are the truth-conferrers of our ascriptions of mental predicates. The view is also a cognitivist one insofar as it holds that when we correctly ascribe such a predicate to an individual the correctness consists in the discovery of a determinate fact of the matter about the state the individual is in—a state which is somehow cognized by the ascriber. Disputes have arisen about the nature of the truth-conferrers (e.g., whether they are physical or not) and about the status and the nature of the individual's own authority about the state he is in. A dissenting position in philosophy of mind would have to be handled carefully. It would, most importantly, need to allow for the objectivity of ascriptions of mental predicates at least insofar as it made sense to reject some and accept others on appropriate grounds. Perhaps such a position in the philosophy of mind can be likened in at least one way to what David Wiggins has characterized as a doctrine of ‘cognitive underdetermination’ about moral or practical judgments.

Kim On Reduction

In Mind in a Physical World (1998), Jaegwon Kim has recently extended his ongoing critique of `non-reductive materialist' positions in philosophy of mind by arguing that Nagel's model of reduction is the wrong paradigm in terms of which to contest the issue of psychophysical reduction, and that an altogether different model of scientific reduction – a functional model of reduction – is needed. In this paper I argue, first, that Kim's conception of the Nagelian model is substantially impoverished and potentially misleading; second, that his own functional model is problematic in several respects; and, third, that the basic idea underlying his functional model can well be accommodated within a properly reinterpreted Nagelian model. I conclude with some reflections on the issue of psychophysical reduction.

Simple Mindedness: In Defense of Naive Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind.

Book synopsis: How is our conception of what there is affected by our counting ourselves as inhabitants of the natural world? How do our actions fit into a world that is altered through our agency? And how do we accommodate our understanding of one another as fellow subjects of experience—as beings with thoughts and wants and hopes and fears? These questions provide the impetus for the detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation presented in this book. The answers offer a distinctive view of questions about “the mind’s place in nature,” and they argue for a particular position in philosophy of mind: naive naturalism. This position opposes the whole drift of the last thirty or forty years’ philosophy of mind in the English-speaking world. Jennifer Hornsby sets naive naturalism against dualism, but without advancing the claims of “materialism,” “physicalism,” or “naturalism” as these have come to be known. She shows how we can, and why we should, abandon the view that thoughts and actions, to be seen as real, must be subject to scientific explanation.

From Supervenience to Superdupervenience: Meeting the Demands of a Material World

The concept of supervenience has been employed for a variety of purposes in philosophy, a rather dominant tendency since the early 1970’s has been to invoke it in efforts to articulate a broadly materialistic, or physicalistic, position in philosophy of mind or in metaphysics generally. British emergentism will be instructive to begin by considering supervenience in relation to an account of the special sciences that has been dubbed “British emergentism” in a splendid and fascinating paper, McLaughlin. The British emergentists were not substance-dualists; they held that all particulars are physical entities wholly constituted out of physical entities as their parts. But they were not full-fledged materialists either, because they denied that physics is a causally complete science. The term “supervenient” was employed by Morgan in contexts where synchronic inter-level relations among properties were under consideration.