This book is a defence of the philosophy of common sense in the spirit of Thomas Reid and G.E. Moore, drawing on the work of Aristotle, evolutionary biology and psychology, and historical studies on the origins of early modern philosophy. It defines and explores common sense beliefs, and defends them from challenges from prominent philosophers.

Depuis fort longtemps le matérialisme – ou, si l'on veut, la physique – se présente comme la théorie universelle, celle qui dévoile la vraie nature de toute chose et est done capable de tout expliquer. Cette prétention grandiose s'est toujours butée contre certains phénomènes psychiques qu'il paraissait invraisemblable de croire réductibles à la simple matière. Mais au cours de ce siècle un grand nombre de ces phénomènes psychiques ont été conquis par le matérialisme. Ainsi labiologie moléculairea intégré la vie à (...) la physique; linformatiquenous a montré que la simple matière peut être capable de faire des ealculs rationnels et lacybernétiquela dote de comportements finalisés. Ce sont là des progrès importants et qui s'accélèrent: la victoire du matérialisme semble assurée. (shrink)

Theories that combine physicalism with phenomenal concepts abandon the phenomenal irrealism characteristic of 1950s physicalism, thereby leaving physicalists trying to reconcile themselves to concepts appropriate only to dualism. Physicalists should instead abandon phenomenal concepts and try to develop our concepts of conscious states. Employing an account of concepts as structured mental representations, and motivating a model of conceptual development with semantic externalist considerations, I suggest that phenomenal concepts misrepresent their referents, such that if our conception of consciousness incorporates them, it (...) needs development. I then argue that the ?phenomenal concept strategy? (PCS) of a purely cognitive account of the distinction between phenomenal and physical concepts combines physicalism with phenomenal concepts only by misrepresenting physical properties. This is because phenomenal concepts carry ontological commitment, and I present an argument to show the tension between this commitment and granting ontological authority to physical concepts only. In the final section, I show why phenomenal concepts are more ontologically committed than PCS theorists can allow, revive U.T. Place's notion of a ?phenomenological fallacy? to explain their enduring appeal, and then suggest some advantages of functional analyses of concepts of conscious states over the phenomenal alternative. (shrink)

The principal differences between the contemporary philosophic traditions which have come to be known loosely as analytic philosophy and phenomenology are all related to the central issue of the interplay between predication and perception. Frege's critique of psychologism has led to the conviction within the analytic tradition that philosophy may best defend rationality from relativism by detaching logic and semantics from all dependence on subjective intuitions. On this interpretation, logical analysis must account for the relationship of sense to reference without (...) having recourse to a description of how we identify particulars through their perceived features. Husserl' s emphasis on the priority and objective import of perception, and on the continuity between predicative articulations and perceptual discriminations, has yielded the conviction within the phenomenological tradition that logical analysis should always be comple mented by description of pre-predicative intuitions. These methodological differences are related to broader differences in the philosophic projects of analysis and phenomenology. The two traditions have adopted markedly divergent positions in reaction to the critique of ancient and medieval philosophy initiated by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes at the beginning of the modern era. The analytic approach generally endorses the modern preference for calculative rationality and remains suspicious of pre-modern categories, such as formal causality and eidetic intuition. Its goal is to give an account of human intelligence that is compatible with the modern interpretation of nature as an ensemble of quantifiable entities and relations. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)

The late 19th-century Ignorabimus controversy over the limits of scientific knowledge has often been characterized as proclaiming the end of intellectual progress, and by implication, as plunging Germany into a crisis of pessimism from which Liberalism never recovered. My research supports the opposite interpretation. The initiator of the Ignorabimus controversy, Emil du Bois-Reymond, was a physiologist who worked his whole life against the forces of obscurantism, whether they came from the Catholic and Conservative Right or the scientistic and millenarian Left. (...) Du Bois-Reymond’s doubt that scientists would ever elucidate consciousness must therefore be seen as an endorsement, and not a rejection, of his faith in reason. (shrink)

The contemporary philosophy of mind and neuroethics are two of the liveliest fields of interdisciplinary reflection which deal with the everlasting topic: what/who we essentially are. One of the many questions that can be tackled in order to go deep in this knowledge is: why man is naturally inclined towards specific tiers for survival which constitute his/her teleological project of flourishing? Two different, but complementary, answers are brought to light in this work. The author argues for an apparently obvious, but (...) relatively underexplored view of the classical hylomorphic concept of form, not just as the information that characterizes the organization of human body, but also as the intrinsic final reason why, through a specific type of bodily structure, the human being develops his/her natural inclinations and behaves according to them. The author advances the argument in terms of an upward comparison between the threefold levels of Thomas Aquinas’ natural human inclinations according to Summa Theologiae I-II, question 94, article 2, and the pioneering structural and functional “Triune Brain” model developed from 1949 to 1952 by Paul MacLean. The hylomorphic view sketched is profoundly different from a purely materialistic conception of teleological processes of human behavior, and it is a plausible explanation that motivates and invites further considerations and research. (shrink)

Many analytic philosophers of mind take for granted a certain conception of causality. Assumptions deriving from that conception are in place when they problematize what they call mental causation or argue for physicalism in respect of the mental. I claim that a different conception of causality is needed for understanding many ordinary causal truths about things which act, including truths about human, minded beings — sc. rational beings who lead lives.

My dissertation explores some issues of Aristotle’s philosophy, regarding the functionalist interpretation developed by Hilary Putnam and Martha C. Nussbaum as a valuable starting point. In Chapter One, I analyze some families of interpretations of Aristotle’s “psuchology” proposed in the second half of the 20th century in the context of the philosophy of mind. I show how some aspects of Aristotle’s thought, which are correctly grasped by the dualistic as well as by the physicalist interpretation, are later resumed and harmonized (...) by functionalism into a coherent doctrine. In Chapter Two it is worth to set out an analysis of Aristotle’s hylomorphism. I take into account homonymy, which is traditionally conceived as being in conflict with hylomorphism. I show not only how homonymy is rather a consequence of hylomorphism, but also how it allows to highlight that hylomorphism, if properly conceived, should be regarded as an ontological thesis with predicative consequences. In this regard, I suggest my own definition of hylomorphism. In Chapter Three, I take into account Aristotle’s final causation, comparing it with contemporary naturalism. I hold that teleology demonstrates Aristotle’s anti-reductionism and, in particular, the fact that he attributes causal efficacy to natural forms and ends. I criticize functionalism for having regarded Aristotle’s formal and final causes as being just explanatory, whereas, on the contrary, Aristotle conceives such explanatory character to derive from their genuine causal role. I formulate my own position, which I label as “logical compatibilism”. I hint at how the functional analysis of living organism may establish some points of contact between Aristotle’s and Darwin’s analysis. I recognize that functionalism correctly grasps the functional roles Aristotle attributes to matter and form and that it translates such an account in a valuable philosophical doctrine. Nevertheless, functionalism confines itself within the framework of contemporary philosophy of mind and fails to comprehend Aristotle’s anti-reductionist naturalism as regards biological life and nature in general. (shrink)