This paper develops a view of the content of perceptual states that reflects the cognitive significance those states have for the subject. Perhaps the most important datum for such a theory is the intuition that experiences are ‘transparent’, an intuition promoted by philosophers as diverse as Sartre and Dretske. This paper distinguishes several different transparency theses, and considers which ones are truly supported by the phenomenological data. It is argued that the only thesis supported by the data is much weaker (...) than those typically considered in the literature, and has no obvious implications for the existence of sensory intermediaries. It does, however, have implications for the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that combining the first personal project with the transparency intuition yields an error theory of perception. The counterintuitive implications of this error theory are mitigated, however, by an account of perceptual beliefs which allows for them to be true even if the perceptual states are non-veridical. (shrink)

Few these days dispute that the knowledge argument demonstrates an epistemic gap between the physical facts and the facts about experience. It is much more contentious whether that epistemic gap can be used to demonstrate a metaphysical gap of a kind that is inconsistent with physicalism. In this paper I will explore two attempts to block the inference from an epistemic gap to a metaphysical gap – the first from the phenomenal concept strategy, the second from Russellian monism – and (...) suggest how the proponent of the knowledge argument might respond to each of these challenges. In doing so, I will draw on recent discussions of grounding and essence in the metaphysics literature. (shrink)

Co-Directors: Alexander Pruss & Tim O’Connor Committee: C. Stephen Evan’s, Todd Buras, -/- The current state of consciousness research is at an impasse. Neuroscience faces a variety of recalcitrant problems regarding the neurobiological binding together of states of consciousness. Philosophy faces the combination problem, that of holistically unifying phenomenal consciousness. In response, I argue that these problems all result from a naturalistic assumption that subjects of consciousness are built up out of distinct physical parts. I begin by developing a Husserlian (...) mereology of part-whole relations, which I apply to both an ontology of the holistic unity of the subjects of consciousness and the holistic unity of phenomenal consciousness itself. After a detailed analysis of the ontology and neuroscience of phenomenally unified consciousness, I argue against the three major naturalist views: physicalism, Russellian panpsychism, and emergentism. I develop various arguments demonstrating that these views each fail to account for the possibility of subjects of phenomenally unified consciousness. In the final chapter, I show how these arguments entail that the subject of phenomenal unity must be partless, must be a simple holistic unity. In turn, this provides a defense of substance dualism or at least something near enough. Given the widespread rejection of mind-body dualism, I answer certain neurological objections and conclude by sketching the details of an underexplored neo-Aristotelian form of substance dualism. I conclude that each of us, indeed every subject of phenomenally unified consciousness, is not made up of distinct parts. Not a brain. Not a body. Every embodied subject of phenomenally unified consciousness is a bodily soul. (shrink)

In the first part of this chapter, I summarise some of the issues in the philosophy of mind which are addressed in Kant’s Critical writings. In the second part, I chart some of the ways in which that discussion influenced twentieth-century analytic philosophy of mind and identify some of the themes which characterise Kantian approaches in the philosophy of mind.

Discussion of a metaphysical sense of 'inheritance' and cognate notions relevant to fundamentality.

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...) its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

Parsimony considerations are ubiquitous in the literature concerning the nature of mental states. Other things being equal, physicalist views are preferred over dualist accounts on the grounds of the fact that they do not posit new fundamental properties in addition to the physical ones. This paper calls into question the widespread assumption that parsimony can provide reasons for believing that physicalism is a better candidate than dualism for solving the mind–body problem. After presenting the theoretical core of physicalism and dualism, (...) I make explicit the meta-metaphysical assumptions the physicalist relies on when leveraging parsimony to support her view. In particular, the physicalist takes for granted that parsimony has an epistemic value in metaphysics. This point, however, is rather controversial. I argue that the most promising way to account for the epistemic value of parsimony is to ground it in the epistemic value of modesty, a higher-level theoretical virtue that has to do with the epistemic risk of a theory. Unfortunately for the physicalist, the modesty rationale does not ultimately favour physicalism over dualism. (shrink)

Nonreductive physicalism faces serious problems regarding causal exclusion, causal heterogeneity, and the nature of realization. In this paper I advance solutions to each of those problems. The proposed solutions all depend crucially on embracing modal counterpart theory. Hence, the paper’s thesis: counterpart theory saves nonreductive physicalism. I take as my inspiration the view that mental tokens are constituted by physical tokens in the same way statues are constituted by lumps of clay. I break from other philosophers who have pursued this (...) line, however, in that I hold that constitution is identity. Much of the value of the comparison to statues and lumps is that it calls to mind the resources used to defend constitution-as-identity, most notably that of counterpart theory. Along the way, I discuss the virtues of a trope ontology, modal objections to token identity theories, the prospects of conditional analyses of causal powers, the subset account of realization, and the grounding problem. I also endorse a novel, empirical argument in favor of counterpart theory. (shrink)

David Chalmers’ ‘conceivability’ argument against physicalism is perhaps the most widely discussed and controversial argument in contemporary philosophy of mind. Recently, several thinkers have suggested a novel response to this argument, which employs the ‘powerful qualities’ ontology of properties. In this paper, I argue that this response fails because it presupposes an implausible account of the physical/phenomenal distinction. In the course of establishing this, I discuss the so-called ‘ultimate’ argument for the claim that dispositional properties form the subject matter of (...) physics. I argue that the ultimate argument can be interpreted in a strong or a weak way, and that the strong interpretation is implausible. I argue that this undermines the powerful qualities based response to the conceivability argument. I also argue for a general conclusion: that we should not define ‘the physical’ exclusively in terms of a distinction drawn from ontology. (shrink)

Pereboom (2011) is an extremely rich investigation of some of the central questions in contemporary philosophy of mind. In the foreground are the usual suspects from the current scene, but Kant and Russell loom in the background, and footnotes elaborate connections to people as apparently remote from the normal run of things as Dilthey and Derrida. With so much covered one is inevitably forced to focus on some things, setting aside others. Here I will concentrate on two ideas contained in (...) the first part of the book: Pereboom's ‘qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis’ and his criticisms of ‘the epistemic strategy’, a strategy I have defended in a number of places (e.g. Stoljar 2006, 2009). (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a third way in debates over the scope of phenomenal consciousness, in the form of a novel synthesis of liberal and conservative introspective observations. My primary claim i...

I argue that there can be no such thing as a borderline case of the predicate ‘phenomenally conscious’: for any given creature at any given time, it cannot be vague whether that creature is phenomenally conscious at that time. I first defend the Positive Characterization Thesis, which says that for any borderline case of any predicate there is a positive characterization of that case that can show any sufficiently competent speaker what makes it a borderline case. I then appeal to (...) the familiar claim that zombies are conceivable, and I argue that this claim entails that there can be no positive characterizations of borderline cases of ‘phenomenally conscious’. By the Positive Characterization Thesis, it follows that ‘phenomenally conscious’ can not have any borderline cases. (shrink)

The Causal Exclusion Problem is raised in many domains, including in the metaphysics of macroscopic objects. If there is a complete explanation of macroscopic effects in terms of the microscopic entities that compose macroscopic objects, then the efficacy of the macroscopic will be threatened with exclusion. I argue that we can avoid the problem if we accept that macroscopic objects are ontically vague. Then, it is indeterminate which collection of microscopic entities compose them, and so information about microscopic entities is (...) insufficient to provide a complete explanation of certain properties of macroscopic objects. After outlining this solution, I consider several objections. (shrink)

Dualism holds that some mental events are fundamental and non-physical. I develop a prima facie plausible causal argument for dualism. The argument has several significant implications. First, it constitutes a new way of arguing for dualism. Second, it provides dualists with a parity response to causal arguments for physicalism. Third, it transforms the dialectical role of epiphenomenalism. Fourth, it refutes the view that causal considerations prima facie support physicalism but not dualism. After developing the causal argument for dualism and drawing (...) out these implications, I subject the argument to a battery of objections. Some prompt revisions to the argument. Others reveal limitations in scope. It falls out of the discussion that the causal argument for dualism is best used against physicalism as a keystone in a divide and conquer strategy. (shrink)

Contemporaries often reject epiphenomenalism out of hand, while Russellian Monism is regarded as worthy of further development. It is argued here that this difference of attitudes is indefensible, because the easy rejection of EPI is due to its violating a certain Causal Intuition, and RM implicitly violates that same intuition. An enriched version of RM mitigates the violation, but the same mitigation results if we make a parallel enrichment of EPI. If RM and EPI are approached on a level playing (...) field, it is not obvious which will prove to be the better view. (shrink)

In his defense of Illusionism, D. Pereboom quotes S. Shoemaker as finding it mysterious how we can represent properties that are nowhere instantiated in our world. This paper begins by detailing the problem, clarifying its relation to Illusionism, and explaining the inadequacy of Pereboom’s response. It then examines papers by K. Frankish and F. Kammerer, and finds that they face the same problem. With this background, it becomes plausible that representation of uninstantiated properties is an endemic problem for illusionism. Responding (...) by making such representation a _sui generis_ relation amounts to abandoning the physicalism that is typically cited as a reason for accepting illusionism about experiences. Appeal to quality spaces may seem to provide a way to solve the problem without admitting a _sui generis_ relation, but careful reflection reveals this to be a subtle version of the _sui generis_ response. There is thus strong reason to think that Illusionism harbors a problem to which it can give no physicalistically acceptable solution. (shrink)

This paper features Derk Pereboom’s replies to commentaries by Victor Tadros and Saul Smilansky on his non-retributive, incapacitation-focused proposal for treatment of dangerous criminals; by Michael McKenna on his manipulation argument against compatibilism about basic desert and causal determination; and by Alfred R. Mele on his disappearing agent argument against event-causal libertarianism.

ABSTRACT In Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Philip Goff argues that the case against physicalist views of consciousness turns on ‘Phenomenal Transparency’, roughly the thesis that phenomenal concepts reveal the essential nature of phenomenal properties. This paper considers the argument that Goff offers for Phenomenal Transparency. The key premise is that our introspective judgments about current conscious experience are ‘Super Justified’, in that these judgments enjoy an epistemic status comparable to that of simple mathematical judgments, and a better epistemic status than (...) run of the mill perceptual judgments. After presenting the key ideas in the ‘Super Justification Argument’, I distinguish two Super Justification theses, which vary according to the kind of introspective judgments that they take to be Super Justified. I argue that Goff’s case requires ‘Strong Super Justification’, according to which a wide range of introspective judgments about conscious experience are Super Justified. Unfortunately, it turns out that Strong Super Justification is implausible and not well-supported by examples. In contrast, a weaker Super Justification thesis does not require anything like Phenomenal Transparency and, indeed, can be explained by physicalistic accounts of phenomenal concepts. (shrink)

A prominent objection to supervenience physicalism is that a definition of physicalism in terms of supervenience allows for physicalism to be compatible with nonphysicalist outlooks, such as certain forms of emergentism. I take as my starting point a recent defense of supervenience physicalism from this objection. According to this line of thought, the subvenient base for emergent properties cannot be said to be purely physical; rather, it is “polluted” with emergent features in virtue of necessarily giving rise to them. Thus, (...) if emergentism is true, it is false that everything supervenes on physical properties. I argue that this gives way to a new challenge for supervenience physicalism. The challenge, roughly, is to distinguish the emergentist’s “polluted” base from a physical supervenience base; that is, to give conditions under which the subvenient base is not “polluted” by supervenient properties. The problem, I argue, is that it is hard to see how this can be done without collapsing supervenience physicalism into alternative approaches to physicalism. I thus argue that if the present defense of supervenience physicalism succeeds in defending the adequacy of a supervenience-based definition of physicalism, it does so by compromising its uniqueness. (shrink)

This paper considers the extent to which the notion of truthmaking can play a substantive role in defining physicalism. While a truthmaking-based approach to physicalism is prima facie attractive, there is some reason to doubt that truthmaking can do much work when it comes to understanding physicalism, and perhaps austere metaphysical frameworks in general. First, despite promising to dispense with higher-level properties and states, truthmaking appears to make little progress on issues concerning higher-level items and how they are related to (...) how things are physically. Second, it seems that truthmaking-based approaches to physicalism will have a difficult time addressing the status of truthmaking itself without, in effect, appealing to the resources of alternative ways of conceptualizing physicalism. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom has recently elaborated a formulation of non-reductive physicalism in which supervenience does not play the central role and realization plays no role at all; he calls his formulation “robust non-reductive physicalism”. This paper argues that for several reasons robust non-reductive physicalism is inadequate as a formulation of physicalism: it can only rule out fundamental laws of physical-to-mental emergence by stipulating that there are no such laws; it fails to entail the supervenience of the mental on the physical; it (...) appeals to two relations that are physicalistically unacceptable; and it rules out certain epistemically possible ways that the world might turn out to be according to current physics. This paper further argues that the difficulties faced by Pereboom’s robust non-reductive physicalism can all be avoided if physicalism is instead formulated by appeal to a carefully-defined relation of realization. (shrink)

In earlier work, I proposed and defended a formulation of physicalism that was distinctive in appealing to a carefully-defined relation of physical realization. Various philosophers (Robert Francescotti, Daniel Stoljar, Carl Gillett, and Susan Schneider) have since presented challenges to this formulation. In the present paper, I aim to show that these challenges can be overcome.

In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant presents an argument for the centrality of <motion> to our concept <matter>. This argument has long been considered either irredeemably obscure or otherwise defective. In this paper I provide an interpretation which defends the argument’s validity and clarifies the sense in which it aims to show that <motion> is fundamental to our conception of matter.

I introduce a methodology for doing the history of philosophy called philosophical modeling. I then employ this methodology to give a theory of Kant's distinction between things in themselves and appearances. This theory models Kant's distinction on the distinction between a constituting object and the object it constitutes.

Phenomenal consciousness presents a distinctive explanatory problem. Some regard this problem as ‘hard’, which has troubling implications for the science and metaphysics of consciousness. Some regard it as ‘easy’, which ignores the special explanatory difficulties that consciousness offers. Others are unable to decide between these two uncomfortable positions. All three camps assume that the problem of consciousness is either easy or hard. I argue against this disjunction and suggest that the problem may be ‘tricky’—that is, partly easy and partly hard. (...) This possibility emerges when we recognise that consciousness raises two explanatory questions. The Consciousness Question concerns why a subject is conscious rather than unconscious. The Character Question concerns why a conscious subject’s experience has the phenomenology it has rather than some other. I explore the possibility of one or other of these explanatory challenges being hard and the other easy, and consider the dialectical ramifications this has for all sides of the debate. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that an epistemic question about knowledge of our own phenomenal states encourages a certain metaphysical picture of consciousness according to which phenomenal states are reflexive mental representations. Section 1 describes and motivates the thesis that phenomenal self-knowledge is ‘receptive’: that is, the view that a subject has knowledge of their phenomenal states only insofar as they are inwardly affected by those states. In Sections 2 and 3, I argue that this model of phenomenal self-knowledge is (...) unable to accommodate knowledge of our own phenomenology or knowledge of our own awareness. In Section 4, I seek a non-receptive model of phenomenal self-knowledge. I argue that Kriegel’s Self-Representationalist theory of consciousness is uniquely equipped to show how phenomenal self-knowledge is possible. (shrink)

Kriegel’s self-representationalist theory of phenomenal consciousness pursues two projects. The first is to offer a positive account of how conscious experience arises from physical brain processes. The second is to explain why consciousness misleadingly appears to be irreducible to the physical i.e. to ‘demystify’ consciousness. This paper seeks to determine whether SR succeeds on the second project. Kriegel trades on a distinction between the subjective character and qualitative character of conscious states. Subjective character is the property of being a conscious (...) state at all, while qualitative character determines what it is like to be in that state. Kriegel claims that SR explains why subjective character misleadingly appears irreducible, thereby neutralising the apparent irreducibility of consciousness. I argue that although SR credibly demystifies subjective character, it cannot explain why qualitative character also appears irreducible. I conclude that we should pursue the possibility of a hybrid position that combines SR with an account that does explain the apparent irreducibility of qualitative character. (shrink)

We tend to think that our concepts are stable in the sense that, whilst their extensions may vary across distinct epistemic scenarios, the reference-fixing conditions by which we discover these extensions remain fixed. This paper challenges this orthodoxy. In particular, it aims to motivate the position that some concepts are unstable in that their reference-fixing conditions themselves vary across distinct epistemic scenarios. Furthermore, it aims to draw out the implications such instability has for epistemic possibility and apriority. I shall argue (...) that when unstable concepts are concerned epistemic space will be widened, which in turn will restrict our a priori knowledge; and in ways that might be salient to solving certain familiar philosophical problems. (shrink)

Despite the remarkable progress made in consciousness research during recent decades, there is still no sign of a general agreement about the location of its object. According to internalists, consciousness resides inside the brain. According to externalists, consciousness is partly constituted by elements or aspects of the environment. Internalism comports better with the existence of dreams, hallucinations and sensory imaging. Externalism seems to provide a more promising basis for understanding how we can experience the world and refer to the content (...) of our consciousness. I argue that the framework of structural realism supports internalism and helps to reveal the reasons behind the apparent explanatory success of the externalist approach. More specifically, structural realism supports the view that the structure of our consciousness is always present in our neural processes and only sometimes in an extended system that includes elements of the environment. (shrink)

In his recent paper on the meta-problem of consciousness, Chalmers :6–66, 2018) claims that illusionism is one of the best reductionist theories available and that it is not incoherent, even if it is implausible and empirically false. Our paper argues against this: strong illusionism is poorly established. The first part presents the reasoning leading to strong illusionism; i.e., it describes the initial conditions and relations among them for its establishment. The second part of the paper argues that strong illusionism is (...) not constructed in a satisfactory way and calls the flaw in establishing it the pre-illusion problem. The third part demonstrates that the existing defense of strong illusionism does not save it from the pre-illusion problem, while the fourth part of the paper outlines two strategies to fight the pre-illusion problem, concluding, however, that they fail to do so, and indicates one possible way in which illusionism might be, nevertheless, coherently established. (shrink)

This paper argues, not that physicalism is wrong, but that it is irrational. The paper defines standards of rationality, both metaphysical and epistemological, that physicalism necessarily inherits from science. Then it assesses physicalist efforts to naturalize consciousness in light of these. It concludes that physicalism allows its metaphysics to outrun its epistemology, in defiance of applicable standards, revealing a fundamental incoherence in the doctrine. The paper also briefly reviews other naturalization programs, to claim that physicalism, unlike the sciences, hasn’t proved (...) fruitful. (shrink)

‘Space does not exist fundamentally: it emerges from a more fundamental non-spatial structure.’ This intriguing claim appears in various research programs in contemporary physics. Philosophers of physics tend to believe that this claim entails either that spacetime does not exist, or that it is derivatively real. In this article, I introduce and defend a third metaphysical interpretation of the claim: reductionism about space. I argue that, as a result, there is no need to subscribe to fundamentality, layers of reality and (...) emergence in order to analyse the constitution of space by non-spatial entities. It follows that space constitution, if borne out, does not provide empirical evidence in favour of a stratified, Aristotelian in spirit, metaphysics. The view will be described in relation to two particular research programs in contemporary physics: wave function realism and loop quantum gravity. (shrink)

Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. This thesis is widely judged to be uniquely counterintuitive: the idea that consciousness is an illusion strikes most people as absurd, and seems almost impossible to contemplate in earnest. Defenders of illusionism should be able to explain the apparent absurdity of their own thesis, within their own framework. However, this is no trivial task: arguably, none of the illusionist theories currently on (...) the market is able to do this. I present a new theory of phenomenal introspection and argue that it might deal with the task at hand. (shrink)

Illusionism is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Many opponents to the thesis take it to be obviously false. They think that they can reject illusionism, even if they conceded that it is coherent and supported by strong arguments. David Chalmers has articulated this reaction to illusionism in terms of a “Moorean” argument against illusionism. This argument contends that illusionism is false, because it is obviously true that we have phenomenal experiences. I argue (...) that this argument fails by showing that its defenders cannot maintain that its crucial premise has the kind of support needed for the argument to work, without begging the question against illusionism. (shrink)

Illusionists claim that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Most debates concerning illusionism focus on whether or not it is true—whether phenomenal consciousness really is an illusion. Here I want to tackle a different question: assuming illusionism is true, what kind of illusion is the illusion of phenomenality? Is it a “rich” illusion—the cognitively impenetrable activation of an incorrect representation—or a “sparse” illusion—the cognitively impenetrable activation of an incomplete representation, which leads to drawing incorrect judgments? I (...) present this distinction and I classify the most influential illusionist theories along this line of divide. I then offer an argument against the accounts of the illusion of phenomenality in terms of sparse illusion. (shrink)

Many philosophers have tried to defend physicalism concerning phenomenal consciousness, by explaining dualist intuitions within a purely physicalist framework. One of the most common strategies to do so consists in interpreting the alleged “explanatory gap” between phenomenal states and physical states as resulting from a fallacy, or a cognitive illusion. In this paper, I argue that the explanatory gap does not rest on a fallacy or a cognitive illusion. This does not imply the falsity of physicalism, but it has consequences (...) on the kind of physicalism we should embrace. (shrink)

Illusionism about consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Embracing illusionism presents the theoretical advantage that one does not need to explain how consciousness arises from purely physical brains anymore, but only to explain why consciousness seems to exist while it does not. As Keith Frankish puts it, illusionism replaces the “hard problem of consciousness” with the “illusion problem.” However, a satisfying version of illusionism has to explain not only why the illusion (...) of consciousness arises, but also why it arises with its particular strength: Notably, why we are so deeply reluctant to recognize the illusory nature of consciousness. Explaining our strong intuitive resistance to illusionism means solving what I call the “illusion meta-problem,” which I think is a part of the illusion problem. In this paper, I argue that current versions of illusionism are unable to solve the illusion meta-problem. I focus on two of the most promising recent illusionist theories of consciousness, and I show why they fail to explain the peculiar reluctance we encounter whenever we try to accept that consciousness is an illusion. (shrink)

Why do we tend to think that phenomenal consciousness poses a hard problem? The answer seems to lie in part in the fact that we have the impression that phenomenal experiences are presented to us in a particularly immediate and revelatory way: we have a sense of acquaintance with our experiences. Recent views have offered resources to explain such persisting impression, by hypothesizing that the very design of our cognitive systems inevitably leads us to hold beliefs about our own experiences (...) with certainty. I argue against this kind of “designed certainty” views. First, I claim that it is doubtful that we really hold beliefs about our own experiences with certainty—in any sense of certainty that would make our phenomenal beliefs special. Second, I claim that, even if it were the case that we hold beliefs about experiences with certainty, this would fall short of explaining our sense of acquaintance. (shrink)

Both a priori physicalism and a posteriori physicalism combine a metaphysical and an epistemological thesis. They agree about the metaphysical thesis: our world is wholly physical. Most agree that this requires everything that there is must be necessitated by the sort of truths described by physics. If we call the conjunction of the basic truths of physics P, all physicalists agree that P entails for any truth Q. Where they disagree is whether or not this entailment can be known a (...) priori. The a priori physicalist says it can, the a posteriori physicalist says it cannot. Though a posteriori physicalism is probably the dominant view, it is really a surprising and somewhat unlikely stance. In this article, the nature of the view is discussed, and two arguments are presented that should cause us to look again at the potential of a priori physicalism. (shrink)

This article presents the knowledge argument against physicalism and objections to it. The focus is on the ways responses to that argument have tried to account for phenomenal knowledge within a physicalist picture. Various ‘phenomenal concepts’ strategies are considered, along with recent arguments against them. Also considered are attempts to explain phenomenal knowledge in terms of indexical knowledge and in terms of acquaintance.

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to make headway on a metaphysics of social construction. In recent work, I’ve argued that social construction should be understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. However, I agree with grounding skeptics like Wilson that bare claims about what grounds what are insufficient for capturing, with fine enough grain, metaphysical dependence structures. To that end, I develop a view on which the social construction of human social kinds is a kind of realization relation. Social kinds, (...) I argue, are multiply realizable kinds. I depart from the Wilson by further arguing that an appeal to grounding is not otiose when it comes to social construction. Social construction, I claim, belongs to the “big-G” Grounding genus, but it is the specific “small-g” relation of realization at work in cases of human kind social construction. (shrink)

A prominent way of explaining how race is socially constructed appeals to social positions and social structures. On this view, the construction of a person’s race is understood in terms of the person occupying a certain social position in a social structure. The aim of this paper is to give a metaphysically perspicuous account of this form of race construction. Analogous to functionalism about mental states, I develop an account of a ‘race structure’ in which various races (Black, White, Asian, (...) etc.) are functionally defined social positions. Individual persons occupy these social positions by ‘playing the role’ characteristic of those positions. The properties by which a person plays a race role, are the realizers for one’s race. I characterize the social construction of a person’s race in terms of a realization relation that satisfies a ‘subset’ condition on the social powers of raced persons. Races, on this view, are functionally defined, multiply realizable social kinds. The final section of the paper outlines some explanatory benefits of the account. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest in panpsychism in contemporary philosophy of mind. According to its supporters, panpsychism offers an attractive solution to the mind–body problem, avoiding the deep difficulties associated with the more conventional options of dualism and materialism. There has been little focus, however, on whether panpsychism can help with philosophical problems pertaining to free will. In this paper I will argue (a) that it is coherent and consistent with observation to postulate a kind of libertarian agent (...) causation at the micro-level, and (b) that if one if believes in libertarian agent causation at the macro-level, there are significant advantages in also postulating its existence at the micro-level. (shrink)

There has been a resurgence of interest in panpsychism in contemporary philosophy of mind. According to its supporters, panpsychism offers an attractive solution to the mind–body problem, avoiding the deep difficulties associated with the more conventional options of dualism and materialism. There has been little focus, however, on whether panpsychism can help with philosophical problems pertaining to free will. In this paper I will argue (a) that it is coherent and consistent with observation to postulate a kind of libertarian agent (...) causation at the micro-level, and (b) that if one if believes in libertarian agent causation at the macro-level, there are significant advantages in also postulating its existence at the micro-level. (shrink)