Physicalism Or Something Near Enough

Physicalism Or Something Near Enough Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Physicalism Or Something Near Enough book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

Physicalism, or Something Near Enough

Author : Jaegwon Kim
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2007-12-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781400840847

Get Book

Physicalism, or Something Near Enough by Jaegwon Kim Pdf

Contemporary discussions in philosophy of mind have largely been shaped by physicalism, the doctrine that all phenomena are ultimately physical. Here, Jaegwon Kim presents the most comprehensive and systematic presentation yet of his influential ideas on the mind-body problem. He seeks to determine, after half a century of debate: What kind of (or "how much") physicalism can we lay claim to? He begins by laying out mental causation and consciousness as the two principal challenges to contemporary physicalism. How can minds exercise their causal powers in a physical world? Is a physicalist account of consciousness possible? The book's starting point is the "supervenience" argument (sometimes called the "exclusion" argument), which Kim reformulates in an extended defense. This argument shows that the contemporary physicalist faces a stark choice between reductionism (the idea that mental phenomena are physically reducible) and epiphenomenalism (the view that mental phenomena are causally impotent). Along the way, Kim presents a novel argument showing that Cartesian substance dualism offers no help with mental causation. Mind-body reduction, therefore, is required to save mental causation. But are minds physically reducible? Kim argues that all but one type of mental phenomena are reducible, including intentional mental phenomena, such as beliefs and desires. The apparent exceptions are the intrinsic, felt qualities of conscious experiences ("qualia"). Kim argues, however, that certain relational properties of qualia, in particular their similarities and differences, are behaviorally manifest and hence in principle reducible, and that it is these relational properties of qualia that are central to their cognitive roles. The causal efficacy of qualia, therefore, is not entirely lost. According to Kim, then, while physicalism is not the whole truth, it is the truth near enough.

Mind in a Physical World

Author : Jaegwon Kim
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 0262611538

Get Book

Mind in a Physical World by Jaegwon Kim Pdf

This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind

Author : Jaegwon Kim
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2010-10-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191625060

Get Book

Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind by Jaegwon Kim Pdf

Jaegwon Kim presents a selection of his essays from the last two decades. The volume includes three new essays, on an agent-centered first-person account of action explanation, the concepts of realization and their bearings on the mind-body problem, and the nonexistence of laws in the special sciences. Among other topics covered are emergence and emergentism, the nature of explanation and of theories of explanation, reduction and reductive explanation, mental causation and explanatory exclusion. Kim tackles questions such as: How should we understand the concept of "emergence", and what are the prospects of emergentism as a doctrine about the status of minds? What does an agent-centered, first-person account of explanation of human actions look like? Why aren't there strict laws in the special sciences - sciences like biology, psychology, and sociology? The essays will be accessible to attentive readers without an extensive philosophical background.

Physicalism

Author : Daniel Stoljar
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2010-04-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781135149222

Get Book

Physicalism by Daniel Stoljar Pdf

Physicalism, the thesis that everything is physical, is one of the most controversial problems in philosophy. Its adherents argue that there is no more important doctrine in philosophy, whilst its opponents claim that its role is greatly exaggerated. In this superb introduction to the problem Daniel Stoljar focuses on three fundamental questions: the interpretation, truth and philosophical significance of physicalism. In answering these questions he covers the following key topics: a brief history of physicalism and its definitions what a physical property is and how physicalism meets challenges from empirical sciences ‘Hempel’s dilemma’ and the relationship between physicalism and physics physicalism and key debates in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, such as supervenience, identity and conceivability physicalism and causality. Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms, making Physicalism ideal for those coming to the problem for the first time.

Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism

Author : Derk Pereboom
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2011-03-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199877324

Get Book

Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism by Derk Pereboom Pdf

In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental intrinsic properties provide categorical bases for known physical properties and would also yield an account of consciousness. While there are non-physicalist versions of this position, some are amenable to physicalism. The book's third theme is a defense of a nonreductive account of physicalism. The type of nonreductivism endorsed departs from others in that it rejects all token identity claims for psychological and microphysical entities. The deepest relation between the mental and the microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity.

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

Author : Philip Goff
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190677022

Get Book

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality by Philip Goff Pdf

A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism, the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience, and hence that physicalism cannot be true. Unusually for an opponent of physicalism, Goff argues that there are big problems with the most well-known arguments against physicalismChalmers' zombie conceivability argument and Jackson's knowledge argumentand proposes significant modifications. The second half of the book explores and defends a recently rediscovered theory of fundamental realityor perhaps rather a grouping of such theoriesknown as 'Russellian monism.' Russellian monists draw inspiration from a couple of theses defended by Bertrand Russell in The Analysis of Matter in 1927. Russell argued that physics, for all its virtues, gives us a radically incomplete picture of the world. It tells us only about the extrinsic, mathematical features of material entities, and leaves us in the dark about their intrinsic nature, about how they are in and of themselves. Following Russell, Russellian monists suppose that it is this 'hidden' intrinsic nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Some Russellian monists adopt panpsychism, the view that the intrinsic natures of basic material entities involve consciousness; others hold that basic material entities are proto-conscious rather than conscious. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. The penultimate chapter defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.

Physicalism and Mental Causation

Author : Sven Walter,Heinz-Dieter Heckmann
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2015-11-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781845405830

Get Book

Physicalism and Mental Causation by Sven Walter,Heinz-Dieter Heckmann Pdf

Physicalism—the thesis that everything there is in the world, including our minds, is constituted by basic physical entities—has dominated the philosophy of mind during the last few decades. But although the conceptual foundations of the physicalist agenda—including a proper explication of notions such as ‘causation’, ‘determination’, ‘realization’ or even ‘physicalism’ itself—must be settled before more specific problems (e.g. the problems of mental causation and human agency) can be satisfactorily addressed, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on the relationships between the various key concepts of the debate on physicalism is yet missing. This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency, written by established and leading authors in the field.

After Physicalism

Author : Benedikt Paul Göcke
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Dualism
ISBN : 0268030006

Get Book

After Physicalism by Benedikt Paul Göcke Pdf

The contributors to After Physicalism provide powerful alternatives to the physicalist account of the human mind from a dualistic point of view.

Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness

Author : John Perry
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0262661357

Get Book

Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness by John Perry Pdf

Physicalism is the idea that if everything that goes on is physical, our consciousness and feelings must also be physical. This book defends a view called antecedent physicalism.

Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789004409965

Get Book

Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience by Anonim Pdf

Neuroscientists often consider free will to be an illusion. Contrary to this hypothesis, the contributions to this volume show that recent developments in neuroscience can also support the existence of free will. Firstly, the possibility of intentional consciousness is studied. Secondly, Libet’s experiments are discussed from this new perspective. Thirdly, the relationship between free will, causality and language is analyzed. This approach suggests that language grants the human brain a possibility to articulate a meaningful personal life. Therefore, human beings can escape strict biological determinism. Contributing author Sofia Bonicalzi has received funding from the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 754388 (LMUResearchFellows) and from LMUexcellent, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Bavaria under the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal Government and the Länder.

Metaphysical Emergence

Author : Jessica M. Wilson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2021-03-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192556974

Get Book

Metaphysical Emergence by Jessica M. Wilson Pdf

Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.

The Idea of the World

Author : Bernardo Kastrup
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2019-03-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781785357404

Get Book

The Idea of the World by Bernardo Kastrup Pdf

A rigorous case for the primacy of mind in nature, from philosophy to neuroscience, psychology and physics. The Idea of the World offers a grounded alternative to the frenzy of unrestrained abstractions and unexamined assumptions in philosophy and science today. This book examines what can be learned about the nature of reality based on conceptual parsimony, straightforward logic and empirical evidence from fields as diverse as physics and neuroscience. It compiles an overarching case for idealism - the notion that reality is essentially mental - from ten original articles the author has previously published in leading academic journals. The case begins with an exposition of the logical fallacies and internal contradictions of the reigning physicalist ontology and its popular alternatives, such as bottom-up panpsychism. It then advances a compelling formulation of idealism that elegantly makes sense of - and reconciles - classical and quantum worlds. The main objections to idealism are systematically refuted and empirical evidence is reviewed that corroborates the formulation presented here. The book closes with an analysis of the hidden psychological motivations behind mainstream physicalism and the implications of idealism for the way we relate to the world.

A Physicalist Manifesto

Author : Andrew Melnyk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2003-10-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781139442275

Get Book

A Physicalist Manifesto by Andrew Melnyk Pdf

A Physicalist Manifesto is a full treatment of the comprehensive physicalist view that, in some important sense, everything is physical. Andrew Melnyk argues that the view is best formulated by appeal to a carefully worked-out notion of realization, rather than supervenience; that, so formulated, physicalism must be importantly reductionist; that it need not repudiate causal and explanatory claims framed in non-physical language; and that it has the a posteriori epistemic status of a broad-scope scientific hypothesis. Two concluding chapters argue in detail that contemporary science provides no significant empirical evidence against physicalism and some considerable evidence for it. Written in a brisk, candid and exceptionally clear style, this 2003 book should appeal to professionals and students in philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of science.

Physicalism Deconstructed

Author : Kevin Morris
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781108472166

Get Book

Physicalism Deconstructed by Kevin Morris Pdf

Provides a philosophical and historical critique of contemporary conceptions of physicalism, especially non-reductive, levels-based approaches to physicalist metaphysics. Challenging assumptions about the mind-body problem, this accessible book will interest scholars working in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.

Idealism

Author : Tyron Goldschmidt,Kenneth L. Pearce
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198746973

Get Book

Idealism by Tyron Goldschmidt,Kenneth L. Pearce Pdf

Idealism is the view that reality is fundamentally mental. Idealism has been influential historically, but it has been neglected in contemporary metaphysical debate. This volume of 17 essays by leading philosophers rectifies the situation.