One of several problems concerning the possibility of mental causation is that the causal potential of a supervenient property seems to be absorbed by its supervenience base if that base and the supervenient property are not identical. If the causal powers of the supervenient property are a proper subset of the causal powers of the supervenience base then, according to the causal individuation of properties, the supervenience base seems to do all the causal work and the supervenient property appears to (...) be futile. Against this consequence it is possible to argue, first, that the relevant properties of causes must be in some sense proportional to the relevant properties of their effects and, second, that the principle of causal closure serving as a premise in the supervenience argument is probably false. The constraint that the relevant properties of causes should be proportional to the relevant properties of their effects together with the falsity of the closure principle leads to a restoration of the causal efficacy of supervenient properties. (shrink)

This paper tries to show that Kim's strategy of preventing the problem of generalization of mental causation is not successful and that his original supervenience argument can be applied to cases of nonmental macrolevel causation, with the effect that nonmental macroproperties which only supervene on, but are not identical with, configurations of microproperties turn out to be epiphenomenal after all.

Martin Davies' criterion for the knowledge of implicit rules, viz. the causal systematicity of cognitive processes, is first exposed. Then the inference from causal systematicity of a process to syntactic properties of the input states is examined. It is argued that Davies' notion of a syntactic property is too weak to bear the conclusion that causal systematicity implies a language of thought as far as the input states are concerned. Next, it is shown that Davies' criterion leads to a counterintuitive (...) consequence: it groups together distributed connectionist systems with look-up tables. To avoid this consequence, a modified construal of causal systematicity is proposed and Davies' argument for the causal systematicity of thought is shown to be question-begging. It is briefly sketched how the modified construal links up with multiple dispositions of the same categorical base. Finally, the question of the causal efficacy of single rules is distinguished from the question of their psychological reality: implicit rules might be psychologically real without being causally efficacious. (shrink)

This paper makes a comparison between naturalist and non-naturalist theories of consciousness with respect to their explanatory merits. It focuses on David Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory, arguing that the motives for higher-order theories are based on a confusion of three distinct meanings of the term 'intrinsic'. The explanatory power of HOT theories is compared with that of an alternative nonrepresentational theory, offered as an example of a naturalistic account. The latter is found overall to have more virtues and less shortcomings (...) that the higher-order theory. (shrink)

Millikan's proposal of a common structure of substance concepts does not explain certain conspicuous findings in the psychological literature such as typicality effects, the context sensitivity of these effects, and slips of the tongue. Moreover, it is unclear how antidescriptionism could be relevant to psychological theorizing. Finally, it does not seem to be true that concepts of individuals, stuff, and real kinds have a common structure in older children and in adults.

Does Physicalism lead to absurd results? Franz von Kutschera argued in his book „Grundfragender Erkenntnistheorie” that the weakest version of physicalism, i. e. the thesis that physical facts determine all the facts there are, leads to the absurd result that events in a remote future determine the present brain states of a person. It is shown that the argument is flawed in several respects and that the absurd result is not a consequence of physicalism but of an auxiliary premiss of (...) Kutschera's. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine the plausibility of Robert Kirk’s strict implication thesis as an explication of physicalism and its relation to Jackson and Chalmer’s notion of application conditionals, to the notion of global supervenience and to a posteriori identities. It is argued that the strict implication thesis is subject to the same objection that affects the notion of global supervenience. Furthermore, reference to an idealised physics in the formulation of strict implication threatens to make the thesis (...) vacuous. Third, Kirk’s claim that the strict implication thesis does not entail reduction of the mental to the physical (excluding phenomenal properties) is untenable if a functional model of reduction is preferred over Nagel’s classical model. Finally, Kirk’s claim that the physical facts entail in an a priori way the fact that certain brain states feel somehow seems to be unfounded. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine the plausibility of Robert Kirk's strict implication thesis as an explication of physicalism and its relation to Jackson and Chalmer's notion of application conditionals, to the notion of global supervenience and to a posteriori identities. It is argued that the strict implication thesis is subject to the same objection that affects the notion of global supervenience. Furthermore, reference to an idealised physics in the formulation of strict implication threatens to make the thesis (...) vacuous. Third, Kirk's claim that the strict implication thesis does not entail reduction of the mental to the physical (excluding phenomenal properties) is untenable if a functional model of reduction is preferred over Nagel's classical model. Finally, Kirk's claim that the physical facts entail in an a priori way the fact that certain brain states feel somehow seems to be unfounded. (shrink)

Qualia and Physicalism. It is assumed that the following three relations exhaust the possibilities for a physicalist account of qualia: 1. determination, 2. identity, 3. realization. The first relation is immediately rejected because it does not exclude property dualism. The second faces the problem that it is probably impossible to discriminate empirically between the identity thesis and the epiphenomenalist position. The third cannot handle qualia adequately, for qualia are not functional properties and the realization relation is only plausible as a (...) relation between physical realizers and functional properties. Finally, if one attempts to replace multiple realization by multiple identities it is shown that the notion of multiple property identities is unintelligible. The upshot is that if these three relations exhaust the possibilities of a physicalist construal of qualia then physicalism is wrong. (shrink)

Summary Searle claims that for a machine to have intentional states it is not sufficient that a formal programme be instantiated. Various types of objections to this claim have been brought up by Searle's critics. Searle's replies to some of these objections are analysed. It turns out that it is more to these objections than Searle wants to make us believe. What is crucial, however, is that Searle's „Gedankenexperiment results in a dilemma. At the outset of the dilemma there are (...) two ways of not understanding. According to one of these ways a person (Searle's homunculus) does not understand something without knowing that s/he does not understand. While in the other mode the person knows that s/he doesn't understand. In the first case the inference from facts about the homunculus to facts about the computer is not valid whereas in the second case one would attribute mental states to the computer. Thereby Searle's claim turns out to be unfounded. (shrink)

Searle's (1990) argument for the seems to rest on a confusion between ontological and epistemological claims. The potential consciousness of a mental state does not yield the same effect as does its actual consciousness, namely, the preservation of aspectual shape. Searle's distinction between the consciousness of an intentional object and that of a mental state, which is meant to counter the objection that deep unconscious rules cease to be deep once they become conscious, fails to do its appointed task.