Abstract

Terry Horgan has made impressive and highly important contributions to numerous fields of philosophy ? metaphysics, philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and value theory, to mention the most prominent ones. What gives Horgan's work a powerful and clarifying unity is his deep and unflagging commitment to philosophical naturalism. In fact, Horgan himself has often invoked naturalism to motivate his positions and arguments on a number of philosophical issues. In this talk, I will discuss some questions concerning Horgan's naturalism and his philosophy of mind.Among them are such questions as these: What exactly is the naturalism that drives Horgan's philosophical thinking? Is it a reasonable and plausible form of naturalism? Exactly how does his naturalism lead to the conclusions and arguments he defends? Should "proper" naturalists follow Horgan's lead? I will discuss these questions in relation to Horgan's work on mind-body supervenience, the autonomy of psychological explanation, reductionism, mental causation, and related issues