Abstract: In his The Construction of Social Reality, Searle presents an account of rights, responsibilities, obligations, duties, and similar entities in terms of the formula X counts as Y in context C, where "X" refers in the simplest case to some physical object or event and "Y " to the result of imposing upon X some deontic power or func- tion. Smith attempts to show the limitations of this formula, focusing especially on the examples of contested property rights (where C is not uniquely defined), and of money in bank accounts and other phe- nomena (where no physical X-term is available). Searle responds to these criticisms, above all by pointing to the fact that some of the problems Smith raises are to be addressed not by an ontological analy- sis of social reality but rather through legal or political means.

Abstract: Why should wait for some days to get or receive the physicalism and mental causation book that you order? Why should you take it if you can get the faster one? You can find the same book that you order right here. This is it the book that you can receive directly after purchasing. This physicalism and mental causation is well known book in the world, of course many people will try to own it. Why don't you become the first? Still confused with the way?

Abstract: Traditional religious teachings about the nature of the person, especially body-soul dualism, influence majority views of the self. Following a historical overview, it is argued that a purely physicalist account of human nature is equally compatible with contemporary science and with Christian thought. However, an account that reduces higher human capacities to neurobiology is unacceptable from a theological perspective.

Abstract: Two arguments are famously held to support the conclusion that consciousness cannot be explained in purely physical or functional terms – hence, that physicalism is false: the modal argument and the knowledge argument. While anti-physicalists appeal to both arguments, this paper argues there is a methodological incoherence in jointly maintaining them: the modal argument supports the possibility of zombies; but the possibility of zombies undercuts the knowledge argument. At best, this leaves anti-physicalists in a considerably weakened rhetorical position. At worst, it shows that commonsense intuitions on which anti-physicalists rely mislead us about the true nature of conscious experience.

Abstract: A well-known ``overdetermination''argument aims to show that the possibility of mental causes of physical events in a causally closed physical world and the possibility of causally relevant mental properties are both problematic. In the first part of this paper, I extend an identity reply that has been given to the first problem to a property-instance account of causal relata. In the second, I argue that mental types are composed of physical types and, as a consequence, both mental and physical types may be causally relevant with respect to the same physical effect, contrary to the overdetermination argument. In further sections, I argue that mental types have causal powers, consider some objections and reject an alternative version of part-whole physicalism. Throughout I assume that causal relata are tropes and property types are classes of tropes.

Abstract: Preface. Introduction: I. A brief history. II. The five problems of mental causation. III. A look forward. I: Ontology. 1. Particulars, properties and relations. 2. Physicalism. 3. A layered world. II: Causality. 4. A duality in the concept of causality. 5. Causal dependence. 6. Causal connection. 7. Unifying dependence and connection. 8. Causation and natural law. 9. The problem of causal relata. 10. Getting events wrong. 11. Getting events right. 12. Relations as causal relata. 13. Causal efficiency. 14. Causal efficacy. III: Mind. 15. The concept of mind. 16. Against the computational theory. 17. Against the theory theory. 18. Against internalism. 19. Against reductionism. 20. Against token physicalism. Conclusion: 21. The five problems once again. References. Name Index. Subject Index.

Abstract: One diagnosis of what is wrong with the Knowledge Argument rests on the Ability Hypothesis This couples an ability analysis of knowing what an experience is like together with a denial that phenomenal propositions exist I argue against both components I consider three arguments against the existence of phenomenal propositions and find them wanting Nevertheless I deny that knowing phenomenal propositions is part of knowing what an experience is like I provide a hybrid account of knowing what an experience is like which is the coherent expression of a single idea: knowing what an experience is like is knowing what it would be like to have the phenomenal content of the experience as the content of an experience one is currently having I explain how my conclusions indicate that the focus of discussion should be on the alleged explanatory gap between phenomenal facts and physical facts and not on the Knowledge Argument The latter is a poor expression of the difficulty Physicalists face

Abstract: This paper investigates the thesis of token physicalism by examining what kinds of particulars there are and what it is for such particulars to be physical. It concludes that there is no coherent thesis of token physicalism that is strictly stronger than substance physicalism and strictly weaker than property physicalism on one or another of its interpretations, and spells out the implications of this for the project of defining minimal physicalism. In the course of the discussion the paper offers interpretations of the views of Davidson and Fodor and argues for an asymmetry between the concepts of the mental and the physical.

Abstract: In this paper I examine Thomas Nagel's familiar challenge to physicalism. Nagel famously uses his vivid example about the sensory apparatus of bats to illustrate the difficulty of providing a purely physical characterization of phenomenal experience. Adapting Thomas Aquinas's principle regarding the nature of divine omnipotence, I argue that the fact that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat does not threaten physicalism.

Abstract: Jaegwon Kim argues that nonreductive physicalism entails the causal irrelevance of mental features both to mental and physical effects. 1 My focus will be on Kim's reasons for denying the causal relevance of mental properties to physical phenomena, particularly the behaviour of human bodies. Also, my focus will be on intentional states (e.g. beliefs and desires) rather than qualia. Suppose that we are trying to explain some bodily movement, for example, why Ed's right arm went up. We answer by referring to his desire to wave to a friend. According to Kim, while this appeal to one of Ed's mental properties seems to account for Ed's behaviour, we should be able to explain the same behaviour solely by appeal to physical features, if any brand of physicalism is true. This is because every good physicalist endorses the principle of closure, according to which it is possible to trace the causal ancestry (if there is one) of each physical event or state without having to leave the physical event has a cause at t, it has a physical cause at t. " (Kim 1993c, 360.) Thus, since the motion of an arm is a physical occurrence, it should be possible to explain it in purely physical terms without having to refer to the (allegedly) nonphysical property of desiring to wave. Of course, there would be no problem if this mental property could be identified with a physical feature after all, but nonreductive physicalists rule this out. They maintain that while the particular instance in Ed of the desire to wave is identical with some particular physical state-token (e.g., a brain state), there can be no reduction of

Abstract: Two criticisms of Davidson's argument for monism are presented. The first is that there is no obvious way for the anomalism of the mental to do any work in his argument. Certain implicit premises, on the other hand, entail monism independently of the anomalism of the mental, but they are question-begging. The second criticism is that even if Davidson's argument is sound, the variety of monism that emerges is extremely weak at best. I show that by constructing ontologically ``hybrid'' events that are consistent with the premises and assumptions of Davidson's argument, but entail ontological dualism. My guess is thatif you want to get a lot of physicalism out [ofDavidson's argument], you're going to have to put a lot of physicalism in.Jerry Fodor 1989, 159

Abstract: David Lewis (1979) has argued that according to his possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals, "backtracking" counterfactuals of the form "If event A were to happen at tA, then event B would happen at tB" where tB precedes tA, are usually false if B does not actually happen at tB. On the other hand, there are plenty of such counterfactuals true with tA preceding tB; for instance it is true that were I to drop the glass now, it would hit the ground at some point in the future, even if in fact it does not do so. Assuming some contingent facts about the arrangement and laws of our universe, this time-reversal asymmetry, Lewis claims, follows from a possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals despite the fact that this analysis of counterfactuals is entirely time symmetric. Lewis argues, further, that this asymmetry gives meaning to the common notion of the future as "open" and the past as "closed", even if determinism both of the future by the past and of the past by the future is true, which for the purposes of the analysis he assumes it to be and in which assumption I will follow him in this paper. With Lewis, and also contrary to my own views, I will assume physicalism. Much of the argument of Lewis's (1979) paper is a reply to an objection that had been raised by Fine and others against his analysis of counterfactuals. I shall argue that Lewis's reply succeeds in some interesting special cases but fails in others to demonstrate the asymmetry he seeks. But even more seriously, I shall show that the asymmetry Lewis finds, if there actually is one to be found there, is grounded in the fact that there is a time-reversal asymmetric preselection in the kinds of events that figure as antecedents of ordinary language counterfactuals. We do not in practice ask: "What would happen if p held?" for every proposition p, but only for some. I argue that this preselection of some antecedents of counterfactuals but not others in everyday counterfactuals is based in part on the commonsensical notion that generally it is past events that are the causes of future

Abstract: Abstract The problem of mental causation is at the heart of the mind-body problem. And for physicalist or materialist views of mind, the key to solving the problem of mental causation is getting a satisfactory understanding of how the mental is realized in the physical. Recent discussions of physicalism have focused on the notion of supervenience; but I think that the focus should instead be on the notion of realization. Supervenience comes in a variety of forms - and the form we need to understand, in order to understand mental causation, is that in which the properties in the supervenience base can be said to realize the properties that supervene on them. Any physicalist theory, whether or not it is a functionalist theory, needs to maintain that the mental is realized in the physical, and so needs an account of realization. But my main focus will be on the realization of functional properties.

Abstract: A favoured argument of many of the eighteenth-century Deists was that the concept of miracle is inconsistent with the supposed perfection of God and thus the occurrence of miracles would constitute evidence against, rather than for, God. In the latter part of the twentieth century we meet very similar arguments in the writings of Christine Overall and James Keller who claim that the occurrence of miracles would imply an arbitrariness and caprice unworthy of a divine agent.' In the present article, I examine Christine Overall's formulation of this argument as developed in her two articles \"Miracles as Evidence against the Existence of God\" (Overall 1985) and \"Miracles and God: A Reply to Robert A. H. Larmer\" (1997). In the earlier of the two, she argued that the occurrence of miracles would constitute evidence against the existence of the Judaeo-Christian God on the grounds that miracles are properly denned as violations of natural law or as permanently inexplicable events and that such events would be inconsistent with the supposed purposes of God. In Water into Wine?, I argued that the definition she employs of miracles as violations of natural law or permanently inexplicable events is inadequate and that her argument fails once a more accurate definition is adopted (Larmer 1988, pp. 76-82,115-21). Subsequently, in \"Miracles and

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction: are we just machines? 2. Is there something extra? 3. Physicalism 4. Some objections to physicalism 5. Behaviourism 6. Functionalism 7. More about thinking 8. More about feeling 9. Conclusion Websites References Index

Abstract: Three questions are addressed. First, concerning the definition of naturalism, I accept the characterization by Rem Edwards (1972) but insist on a materialist or physicalist interpretation of these features. Second, the distinctive characteristic of my religious naturalism is an argument that although a theological position Based on a physicalist ontology is constrained by physicalism, the ontology itself does not dictate theological content. Theological content can break free of ontology if this content is valuational rather than ontological. Such a valuational theism becomes possible when Rudolf Bultmann's and Fritz Buri's method of existentialist interpretation is wedded to Henry Nelson Wieman's naturalist conception of God. The knowledge of God in events of grace, therefore, is rooted in moments of creative transformation that are themselves always transformative. This approach makes possible a better approach to the problem of objectivity than Bultmann could achieve. Third, concerning the chief issues facing religious naturalism today, I argue that religious naturalists should more forthrightly confront the issue of ontological materialism and that the most pressing issue concerns thinking out more fully the religious or theological content to be ascribed to such a position after the nature of naturalism is resolved.

Abstract: Can humanity tweak itself into a new existence?... No, if it happens it will only be through desire. Desire is the condition of evolution (Massumi, 2002, p. 123). Despite its ambivalence about the possibility or desirability of the development of ‘no longer humans’, Massumi's recent collection of essays proposes a kind of neo-psychology that constructs an idealist notion of the human that seeks to move beyond current psychological conceptualizations of people as experiencing organisms, integrated socially and ecologically via their sensory organs and their unique capacity for linguistically abstract thought. Parables ambitiously tries to invent a psychology that highlights ‘affect’, the ‘virtual’, ‘movement’ and ‘sensation’ which the author believes will oblige theorists to transcend (or to alter at least) the banal and reductionist physicalism and hedonistic psychogenesis of empirical psychology (roughly, experimental psychology, from Fechner and Wundt, through the last century). In this (largely un-stat...

Abstract: There are two lines of thought that lead to the thesis that the subject matter of chemistry is dependent in some way on the subject matter of physics. Each connects the thesis directly with its main source of empirical support, the sciences, and in particular their methods, their theories and inter-relations among them. The first is mereological: properties of wholes depend in some way on (and may even be “nothing more than”) the properties of their parts. If physics studies the parts of the kinds of things that chemistry studies, the dependence claim follows. And this makes physics basic to the explanatory aims of chemistry itself, for chemistry, so the argument goes, is explanatorily analytical: to explain what things do, it looks to their parts. The second line of thought is that the science of physics aims at full coverage. Physical laws cover everything, but the laws of other sciences, including chemistry, are of restricted scope: their truth does not require their full generality. Since physical laws cover everything, including chemical systems and their parts, if possession of a chemical property confers genuine causal powers, this must be in virtue of some relationship that that chemical property bears to some property that falls under a physical law. But the mereological claim has bite only if determination can only flow upwards that is, if the completeness claim is true. Hence this paper is concerned with this second line of thought. In what follows I will first explore the role of the completeness claim in contemporary physicalism, and then examine some of the arguments offered in its support. A good way to examine a thesis is to consider a position which denies it. Hence emergentism which is committed to the existence of downward causation will occupy Section 2. In Section 3 I will apply C. D. Broad’s characterization of downward causation to quantum chemistry, arguing that the molecular Hamiltonians standardly cited in spectroscopic explanations fit Broad’s account of physical explanation rather than the physicalists’.

Abstract: This paper argues for a physicalistic interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein's general conception of world and language analysis is interpreted and exemplified in relation to the historical background of the psychophysical analysis of sense data and, in particular, color analysis. Three of his main principles of analysis—the principle of independence, the context principle and the principle of atomism—are interpreted and justified on the background of physicalism. From his proof of color exclusion in the Tractatus, it is shown that Wittgenstein had a detailed conception of how philosophy should fulfil the task of distinguishing between sense and nonsense using physicalistic presuppositions.

Abstract: Why do some people have life-changing experiences when reading sacred texts, and what makes them so differently significant readings as opposed to reading the newspaper or any kind of book? Exploring a set of metaphors used in the literature of mysticism, and in particular in the canonical literature of world religions, I use the instruments provided by conceptual integration and empirical data of the neurosciences to offer a hermeneutic model of the higher level understanding construed during on-line reading by devotees of their respective sacred literature. Constructivists of the past two decades have considered the mystical experience as a form of "reconditioning of consciousness," (the concepts condition a priori the experience), arguing that there are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences. I believe cognitive science helps prove that the description of the experience is contingent and not necessary; the language used in devotional literature to describe mystical experience influences the way of living the experience, but it is also motivated by its representing reality. Ultimately I will look at the model of erotic relationship in mystical literature and how it serves as evidence of non-reductive physicalism, seeing the human being as a multilevel psychosomatic unity.

Abstract: The Knowledge Argument is misconstructed. Knowing that it is ‘just obvious’ that Mary will learn something new on leaving her black and white room, we nevertheless assume she can acquire a complete knowledge of the physical inside it – thereby predetermining the outcome of the thought experiment in favour of a refutation of physicalism. If we reformulate the argument to leave the question of what she can learn in the room open, it becomes clear, not only that physicalism can survive the Knowledge Argument, but also that there is only one perspective on the relationship between qualia and the physical that will permit it to do so. If physicalism is true, this perspective must be the correct view of the qualia-physical relationship – the solution to the mind-body problem, a conclusion supported by its ability to resolve a number of associated difficulties, including Kripke’s problem for proposed identities and Chalmers’ Hard Problem.

Abstract: Consciousness seems, at one and the same time, to be both the most obvious characteristic of human existence and yet also the most mysterious. If you were not now conscious, you would be asleep or in a coma, and certainly not aware of the meaning conveyed by the words on this page. Yet we live in a world dominated by a belief in physicalism - roughly, the doctrine that the ultimate constituents of the universe, and thus the 'building blocks' of all entities both conscious (us) and non-conscious (this page, your chair), are purely physical particles-the kinds of 'stuff' studied by physicists. From the point of view of physicalism, it seems thoroughly surprising that there are objects (creatures) in this world that experience qualitative states-states that it feels like something to be in. We have made great progress in understanding how certain organisations of matter can 'give rise to' what we call life.