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Robert Francescotti [33]Robert M. Francescotti [6]Robert Michael Francescotti [2]
  1. How to define intrinsic properties.Robert Francescotti - 1999 - Noûs 33 (4):590-609.
    An intrinsic property, according to one important account, is a property that is had by all of one's duplicates. Instead, one might choose to characterize intrinsic properties as those that can be had in the absence of all distinct individuals. After reviewing the problems with these earlier accounts, the author presents a less problematic analysis. The goal is to clarify the rough idea that an intrinsic property is a special sort of non-relational property; having the property does not consist in (...)
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  2. Who are “we”?: Animalism and conjoined twins.Robert Francescotti - 2023 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (4):422-442.
    Various cases of conjoined twinning have been presented as problems for the animalist view that we are animals. In some actual and possible cases of human dicephalus that have been discussed in the literature, it is arguable that there are two persons but only one human animal. It is also tempting to believe that there are two persons and one animal in possible instances of craniopagus parasiticus that have been described. Here it is argued that the animalist can admit that (...)
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  3.  93
    Companion to Intrinsic Properties.Robert M. Francescotti (ed.) - 2014 - Boston: De Gruyter.
    What makes a property intrinsic? What exactly does the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction rest upon, and how can we reasonably justify this distinction? These questions bear great importance on central debates in such diverse philosophical fields as ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science - to only name a few. Given the central relevance of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction to philosophical research, a collection of pertinent essays on the topic is an essential addition to the literature. It helps to identify more (...)
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  4. Intrinsic/Extrinsic: A Relational Account Defended.Robert Francescotti - 2014 - In Robert M. Francescotti (ed.), Companion to Intrinsic Properties. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 175-198.
    In "How to Define Intrinsic Properties" I offered a relational account of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction. The basic idea is that F is an intrinsic property of an item x just in case x’s having F consists entirely in x’s having certain internal properties, where an internal property is one whose instantiation does not consist in one’s relation to any distinct items (items other than oneself and one’s proper parts). I still think that this relational analysis is largely correct, and here (...)
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  5. Maximality, Function, and the Many.Robert Francescotti - 2019 - Metaphysica 20 (2):175-193.
    In the region where some cat sits, there are many very cat-like items that are proper parts of the cat (or otherwise mereologically overlap the cat) , but which we are inclined to think are not themselves cats, e.g. all of Tibbles minus the tail. The question is, how can something be so cat-like without itself being a cat. Some have tried to answer this “Problem of the Many” (a problem that arises for many different kinds of things we regularly (...)
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  6.  47
    The problem of animal pain and suffering.Robert Francescotti - 2014 - In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil. Wiley. pp. 113-127.
    Here I discuss some theistic responses to the problem of animal pain and suffering with special attention to Michael Murray’s presentation in Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. The neo-Cartesian defenses he describes are reviewed, along with the appeal to nomic regularity and Murray’s emphasis on the progression of the universe from chaos to order. It is argued that despite these efforts to prove otherwise the problem of animal suffering remains a serious threat to the belief that an all-powerful, all-knowing, (...)
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  7. Emergence.Robert Michael Francescotti - 2007 - Erkenntnis 67 (1):47 - 63.
    Here I offer a precise analysis of what it takes for a property to count as emergent. The features widely considered crucial to emergence include novelty, unpredictability, supervenience, relationality, and downward causal influence. By acknowledging each of these distinctive features, the definition provided below captures an important sense in which the whole can be more than the sum of its parts.
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  8. Mere Cambridge Properties.Robert Francescotti - 1999 - American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (4):295-308.
    The predicates 'is outgrown by Theaetetus,' 'is 300 miles west of a lemur,' and 'is such that 9 is odd' denote properties, but there is a sense in which these properties are not genuine features of the objects that have them. The fact that we find these mere-Cambridge properties odd has something to do with their relational character. But relationality in itself is not an adequate criterion for property-genuineness for there are many relational properties that do not qualify as mere-Cambridge. (...)
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  9. Even: The conventional implicature approach reconsidered.Robert Francescotti - 1995 - Linguistics and Philosophy 18 (2):153 - 173.
    Like Bennett's account of ‘even’, my analysis incorporates the following plausible and widespread intuitions. (a) The word ‘even’ does not make a truth-functional difference; it makes a difference only in conventional implicature. In particular, ‘even’ functions neither as a universal quantifier, nor a most or many quantifier. The only quantified statement that ‘Even A is F’ implies is the existential claim ‘There is an x (namely, A) that is F’, but this implication is nothing more than what the Equivalence Thesis (...)
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  10. The problem of extras and the contingency of physicalism.Robert Francescotti - 2014 - Philosophical Explorations 17 (2):241-254.
    Perhaps all concrete phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. Even so, it seems that the world could have been otherwise. It seems that physicalism, if true, is contingently true. In fact, many believe that the actual truth of physicalism allows metaphysically possible worlds duplicating the actual world in all physical respects while containing immaterial extras, e.g. ghosts, spirits, or Cartesian souls, that no physicalist would believe actually exist. Here I focus on physicalism regarding mentality and argue that the (...)
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  11. Realization and Physicalism.Robert Francescotti - 2010 - Philosophical Psychology 23 (5):601-616.
    Melnyk provides a rigorous analysis of the notion of realization with the aim of defining Physicalism. It is argued here that contrary to Melnyk's Realization Physicalism, the idea that mental phenomena are realized by physical phenomena fails to capture the physicalist belief that the former obtain in virtue of the latter. The conclusion is not that Physicalism is false, but that its truth is best explained with some notion other than realization in Melnyk's sense. I also argue that the problems (...)
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  12. Property dualism without substance dualism?Robert Francescotti - 2001 - Philosophical Papers 30 (2):93-116.
    Substance dualism is widely rejected by philosophers of mind, but many continue to accept some form of property dualism. The assumption here is that one can consistently believe that (1) mental properties are not physical properties, while denying that (2) mental particulars are not physical particulars. But is this assumption true? This paper considers several analyses of what makes something a physical particular (as opposed to a non-physical particular), and it is argued that on any plausible analysis, accepting (1) requires (...)
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  13. All manner of mind.Robert Francescotti - 2023 - Metascience 32 (2):289-292.
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  14. Physicalism and the Mind.Robert Francescotti - 2014 - Dordrecht: Springer.
    This book addresses a tightly knit cluster of questions in the philosophy of mind. There is the question: Are mental properties identical with physical properties? An affirmative answer would seem to secure the truth of physicalism regarding the mind, i.e., the belief that all mental phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. If the answer is negative, then the question arises: Can this solely in virtue of relation be understood as some kind of dependence short of identity? And answering (...)
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  15. Psychological Continuity, Fission, and the Non-Branching Constraint.Robert Francescotti - 2008 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (1):21-31.
    Abstract: Those who endorse the Psychological Continuity Approach (PCA) to analyzing personal identity need to impose a non-branching constraint to get the intuitively correct result that in the case of fission, one person becomes two. With the help of Brueckner's (2005) discussion, it is shown here that the sort of non-branching clause that allows proponents of PCA to provide sufficient conditions for being the same person actually runs contrary to the very spirit of their theory. The problem is first presented (...)
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  16.  24
    Intention, Action, and De Se Indexicality.Robert Francescotti - forthcoming - Acta Analytica:1-16.
    The view that first-person (de se) mental content is essential to the explanation of action in general is a strong essential indexicality thesis. A weaker essential indexicality claim is that de se mental content is an essential ingredient of intentional action. An argument by Bermúdez for the former thesis and an argument from Babb in support of the latter are discussed in Section 2, and for reasons presented there it seems that both arguments are unsound and the conclusions are false (...)
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  17. The Non-Reductionist's Troubles with Supervenience.Robert M. Francescotti - 1998 - Philosophical Studies 89 (1):105-124.
    I argue that there is a tension between three popular views in the philosophy of mind: (1) mental properties are not identical with physical properties (a version of nonreductionism), but (2) mental properties are had solely by virtue of physical properties (physicalism regarding the mind), which requires that (3) mental properties supervene on physical properties. To earn the title "physicalist," one must hold a sufficiently strong version of the supervenience thesis. But this, I argue, will be a version that undermines (...)
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  18. Animalism with Psychology.Robert Francescotti - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    Here I develop an account of our persistence that accommodates each of the following compelling intuitions: (i) that we are animals, (ii) that we existed prior to the onset of whatever psychological capacities are necessary for personhood, and we can continue to exist with the loss of those and other psychological capacities, (iii) that with suitable psychological continuity, the person goes with the brain/cerebrum in remnant person and brain/cerebrum transplant cases, and (iv) that it is possible for us to survive (...)
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  19. Surviving death: how to refute termination theses.Robert Francescotti - 2018 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (2):178-197.
    When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals, I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they die. (...)
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  20. What multiple realizability does not show.Robert Francescotti - 1997 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 18 (1):13-28.
    It is widely held that psychological theories cannot be reduced to those of the natural sciences. Perhaps the most common reason for rejecting psycho-physical reduction is the belief that mental properties are multiply realizable--i.e., that events of different physical types might realize the same mental property. While the multiple realizability argument has had its share of criticism, its major flaw has been overlooked. I aim to show the real reason why the argument fails and why multiple realizability is compatible with (...)
     
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  21. Ontological physicalism and property pluralism: Why they are incompatible.Robert Francescotti - 2000 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (4):349-362.
    To earn the title “ontological physicalist,” one must endorse an entailment thesis of the following sort: the physical properties that are had, together with the causal laws, determine which higher-level properties are had. I argue that if this thesis is to capture all that is essential to physicalist intuitions, the relevant set of causal laws must be restricted to purely physical laws. But then it follows that higher-level properties are physical properties. The conclusion is that one cannot consistently be an (...)
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  22. Psychological Continuity and the Necessity of Identity.Robert Francescotti - 2010 - American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (4):337-349.
  23. Mental Excess and the Constitution View of Persons.Robert Francescotti - 2017 - Philosophical Papers 46 (2):211-243.
    Constitution theorists have argued that due to a difference in persistence conditions, persons are not identical with the animals or the bodies that constitute them. A popular line of objection to the view that persons are not identical with the animals/bodies that constitute them is that the view commits one to undesirable overpopulation, with too many minds and too many thinkers. Constitution theorists are well aware of these overpopulation concerns and have gone a long way toward answering them. However, there (...)
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  24. Animal Mind and Animal Ethics: An Introduction.Robert Francescotti - 2007 - The Journal of Ethics 11 (3):239-252.
  25. Externalism and Marr's theory of vision.Robert M. Francescotti - 1991 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (June):227-38.
    According to one brand of 'externalism', cognitive theories should individuate mental content 'widely'--that is, partly in terms of environmental features. David Marr's theory of vision is often cited in support of this view. Many philosophers (most notably, Tyler Burge) regard it as a prime example of a fruitful cognitive theory that widely individuates the representations it posits. I argue that, contrary to popular belief, Marr's theory does not presuppose an externalist view of mental content.
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  26. Fetuses, corpses and the psychological approach to personal identity.Robert Francescotti - 2005 - Philosophical Explorations 8 (1):69-81.
    Olson (1997a) tries to refute the Psychological Approach to personal identity with his Fetus Argument, and Mackie (1999) aims to do the same with the Death Argument. With the help of a suggestion made by Baker (1999), the following discussion shows that these arguments fail. In the process of defending the Psychological Approach, it is made clear exactly what one is and is not committed to as a proponent of the theory.
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  27. Constitution and the Necessity of Identity.Robert Francescotti - 2005 - Logique Et Analyse 48 (192):311-321.
    It is tempting to think that in the case of complete spatio-temporal coincidence, the statue is identical with the constituent lump of clay. However, some philosophers have thought that accepting constitution as identity in this type of case forces one to reject the necessity of identity. I show that there is no conflict here. By distinguishing between an object's being necessarily an F and an object's being necessity identical with an F, we can see that accepting the necessity of identity (...)
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  28.  61
    Qualitative beliefs, wide content, and wide behavior.Robert M. Francescotti - 1994 - Noûs 28 (3):396-404.
  29. Subjectivity.Robert Francescotti - 1996 - In Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal. New York: Routledge.
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  30. Understanding the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction: Vera Hoffmann-Kolss: The metaphysics of extrinsic properties. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2010, 222pp, €89.00 HB.Robert Francescotti - 2011 - Metascience 21 (1):91-94.
    Understanding the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9549-x Authors Robert Francescotti, Department of Philosophy, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-6044, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
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  31. Subjective experience and points of view.Robert M. Francescotti - 1993 - Journal of Philosophical Research 18:25-36.
    Thomas Nagel contends that facts regarding the qualitative character of conscious experience can be grasped from only a single point of view. This feature, he claims, is what renders conscious experience subjective in character, and it is what makes facts about the qualitative experience subjective facts. While much has been written regarding the ontological implications of the ‘point of view account’ relatively Iittle has been said on whether the account itself successfully defines the subjectivity of the mental. In this paper, (...)
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  32. Behavior and Mental Content.Robert Michael Francescotti - 1991 - Dissertation, Syracuse University
    Behaviorism is dead! Or so claim the majority of philosophers today. I aim to show that they are wrong. ;I defend philosophical behaviorism as an account of our ordinary, pretheoretical concepts pertaining to the intentional aspects of mind. The theory purports to explain in purely behavioral terms what it is for a mental state to be a belief, a desire or a thought, and what it is about the state that gives it its content. Like Rylean behaviorism, it does not (...)
     
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  33. Defining "physicalism".Robert Francescotti - 1998 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 19 (1):51-64.
    To earn the title “ontological physicalist,” one must endorse an entailment thesis of the following sort: the physical properties that are had, together with the causal laws, determine which higher-level properties are had. I argue that if this thesis is to capture all that is essential to physicalist intuitions, the relevant set of causal laws must be restricted to purely physical laws. But then it follows that higher-level properties are physical properties. The conclusion is that one cannot consistently be an (...)
     
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  34.  69
    Higher-order thoughts and conscious experience.Robert Francescotti - 1995 - Philosophical Psychology 8 (3):239-254.
    For nearly a decade, David Rosenthal has proposed that a mental state M of a creature C is conscious just in case C has a suitable higher-order thought directed toward M. While this theory has had its share of criticism in recent years, I believe that the real difficulties have been ignored. In this essay, I show that the presence of a higher order is insufficient for conscious experience, even if we suppose that the thought satisfies the constraints that Rosenthal (...)
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  35. Introspection and qualia: A defense of infallibility.Robert Francescotti - 2000 - Communication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal 33 (3-4):161-173.
  36. Supervenience and Mind.Robert Francescotti - 2011 - In James Fieser & Bradley Dowden (eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge.
  37. Statues and Their Constituents: Whether Constitution is Identity.Robert Francescotti - 2003 - Metaphysica 4 (2):59-77.
    This paper examines two popular arguments for the nonidentity of the statue and its constituent material. An essentialist response is provided to one of the arguments; that response is then shown to undermine the other argument as well. It is also shown that even if we accept these arguments and concede nonidentity, we can still avoid the further conclusion that constitution is not identity. These ideas are then extended to other applications of the arguments for nonidentity (specifically, their application to (...)
     
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  38. Understanding physical realization (and what it does not entail).Robert Francescotti - 2002 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 23 (3):279-292.
    The notion of realization is defined so that we can better understand what it means to say that mentality is physically realized. It is generally thought that physical properties realize mental properties (thesis PR). The definitions provided here support this belief, but they also reveal that mental properties can be viewed as realizing physical properties. This consequence questions the value of PR in helping us capture the idea that mental phenomena are dependent upon (i.e., obtain by virtue of) physical phenomena. (...)
     
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  39.  47
    (1 other version)Whether mentality is "higher-level".Robert Francescotti - 2002 - Philosophical Inquiry 24 (3-4):65-76.
  40.  87
    Endurance and Discernibility.Robert Francescotti - 2008 - Metaphysica 9 (2):193-204.
    How can an object remain the same, numerically identical, while undergoing change? This is a worry for endurantists, who hold that for any stages, x and y, of a persisting object, x is numerically identical with y. Endurantists might try to avoid the problem of change by insisting that all properties are temporally anchored. It is argued here that while this strategy helps in many cases, it does not help in all. A type of case is presented in which a (...)
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