DOCSLIB.ORG

Physicalism, Dualism and the Mind-Body Problem A

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Physicalism, Dualism and the Mind-Body Problem A PHYSICALISM, DUALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Dolores G. Morris _____________________________________ Alvin Plantinga, Director Graduate Program in Philosophy Notre Dame, Indiana December 2010 PHYSICALISM, DUALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM Abstract by Dolores G. Morris In this dissertation, I examine the implications of the problem of mental causation and what David Chalmers has dubbed the “hard problem of consciousness” for competing accounts of the mind. I begin, in Chapter One, with a critical analysis of Jaegwon Kim’s Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. (2005) There, I maintain that Kim’s ontology cannot adequately address both the problem of mental causation and the “hard problem of consciousness.” In Chapter Two, I examine the causal pairing problem for substance dualism. I demonstrate both that the substance dualist can respond to the argument at no great cost, and that the pairing problem applies, with equal force, to the irreducible qualia posited on Kim’s account. Chapters Three and Four are devoted to what I take to be the central argument against any kind of dualism: the causal exclusion argument. In Chapter Three, I examine dualistic responses to the exclusion argument that grant the causal closure of the physical world. I note that these responses, though technically adequate, are nevertheless theoretically unpalatable. In addition to requiring the dualist to adopt unconventional Dolores G. Morris attitudes towards causation, responses of this variety also have the unfortunate result of rendering libertarian freedom impossible. Finally, in Chapter Four, I turn my attention to the question of causal closure. I maintain that the causal closure of the physical world, though widely affirmed, is nevertheless extraordinarily difficult to support. In light of Hempel’s Dilemma, causal closure is either false, compatible with dualistic interaction, or unacceptably stipulative. There is, I maintain no causal closure principle up to the tasks required by the causal exclusion argument. For that reason, I conclude that the dualist ought not to worry about causal closure. CONTENTS Chapter One: Physicalism and the Mind-Body Problem: A Critical Analysis of Jaegwon Kim’s Functional Reduction………………………………….……1 §1. The Mind Body Problem(s)……………………………………………....2 §2. The Failures of Alternative Physicalist Accounts……………..………….6 §2.1 Nonreductive Physicalism…………….……………...……….…6 §2.2 Identity Theories………………………..……….………….…..10 §2.3 Reduction via Bridge Laws…………………..…….…………..15 §3.1 Reduction via Functional Definitions…………………………..………19 §3.2 Functional Definitions: The Qualia Problem…………...………………25 §4. Kim’s Functional Reductions: Tying up the Loose Ends………………..27 §5. The Question of Qualia Supervenience…...……………………………..33 §6. The Causal Exclusion Problem for Functionally Reduced Mental Properties….………………………………………………………....40 §7. The Problem of (Irreducible) Consciousness…………...……………….46 Conclusion…………………………………………...………………………50 Chapter Two: Substance Dualism and the Pairing Problem………………………....52 §1. Causal Pairing and Humean Causation…………………………………..55 §2. The Pairing Problem Stated……………….……………………………..60 §3. Responding to the Pairing Problem……………..……………………….65 §3.1 Finding, or Not Finding, a Pairing Relationship….…………….66 §3.2 Causation and Intentionality…………………………………….69 §3.3 Abandoning Cartesian Dualism……………………...…………76 §4. The Qualia Pairing Problem…………………….………………………..83 §4.1 The Problem Stated…………………………..………………….84 §4.2 Objections and Responses………………………..……………...88 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………94 Chapter Three: Substance Dualism and the Causal Exclusion Argument…...………95 §1. Background Considerations………………………………………….…...96 §1.2 The Causal Exclusion Argument Against Substance Dualism.....98 §2. Embracing Overdetermination: Eugene Mills…………………………..102 §2.2 Objections to Mills’s Overdeterminism………………………..108 ii §2.3 Final Reflections on Mills: An Analogy……………………….116 §3. Against Exclusion…………………………………………………….....118 §3.2 E.J. Lowe on Simultaneous Causation……………....…………122 §3.3 Objections to Lowe’s Simultaneity Account…………………..124 §3.4 Closure: Causal vs. Explanatory…….…………………………129 §4. Some Thoughts on Freedom………………………………...…………..131 §4.2 Freedom, Closure and Completeness…………………………..134 §5. A Third Alternative: E.J. Lowe on Fact Causation……………………...137 §5.2 Objections to Lowe’s Second Approach……………………….141 §5.3 Reflections on Lowe’s Second Alternative: Explanatory and Causal Closure Revisited…...………………………………145 Concluding Thoughts………………...……………………………………..146 Chapter Four: Choosing Not to Worry About Closure……………………………..148 §1. Closure and the Causal Exclusion Argument…………………………..149 §2. On Scientific Respectability…………………………………..………...151 §2.2 Evidence of Causal Closure: From Completeness to Closure…152 §2.3 Closure and Completeness Revisited………………………….155 §3. Hempel’s Dilemma……………………………………………………..157 §3.2 The Dilemma Applied………………………………………....160 §4. The First Horn: Andrew Melnyk’s Physicalism………………………..163 §4.2 The First Horn: Relevant Rivals………………………………166 §4.3 The First Horn: A More Relevant Rival………………………170 §5. The Second Horn……………………………………………………….173 §5.2 Giving Content to “Future Physics”………………………......175 §5.3 The First Horn Revisited………………………………………178 §5.4 The Second Horn: Innapropriate Extension………………...…179 §6. Taking Stock of Closure………………………………………………..182 §6.2 The Causal Closure of the PhysicalM………………………….184 §6.3 The Causal Closure of the PhysicalD………………………….186 §6.4 The Causal Closure of the PhysicalW…………………………191 §6.5 Final Thoughts on Closure……………………………………193 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….195 Works Cited…………………………………………….…………………………..196 iii CHAPTER ONE: PHYSICALISM AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF JAEGWON KIM’S FUNCTIONAL REDUCTION In Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim presents an account of the mind according to which most, but not all, mental properties can be reduced to physical ones via functional definitions.1 While the position at which he arrives fails, ultimately, to be a wholly physicalist account, he nevertheless maintains that it is the physicalist’s best bet when it come to resolving the mind-body problem. Furthermore, because Kim also argues for a rejection of substance dualism, he maintains that this position is really anyone’s best chance at resolving the mind body problem. In what follows, I wish to examine the first of these claims. I will begin in §1 with a statement of the mind-body problem, though as we shall see the “problem” turns out to be, instead, a collection of related problems. In §2, I will present Kim’s treatment and eventual rejection of a series of physicalist responses to the mind-body problem(s). I will offer a reconstruction of Kim’s positive account, physicalist reduction via functional definitions, in §3. The remainder of this chapter, §4-8, will 1 Jaegwon Kim Physicalism or Something Near Enough. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 1 consist of a critical analysis of Kim’s position. In §4 I will consider a series of questions that are, as of yet, unanswered on Kim’s account. I suggest that the answers to these questions will be critically important to an overall assessment of Kim’s position. In §5 I pose one additional question: namely, whether or not irreducible qualia can be said to supervene on physical properties given Kim’s ontology. §6 and §7 will be devoted to assessing the success of Kim’s account in treating both aspects of the mind-body problem for physicalism: the problem of mental causation, and the problem of consciousness. I will conclude in §8. Physicalism, or Something Near Enough presents a carefully articulated and boldly argued account of the mind. The arguments are impressive, both in scope and in clarity, and ought not to be treated lightly. Nevertheless, I wish to dispute Kim’s claim that functional reductions are the key to resolving the mind-body problem. I will argue, instead, that both the problem of mental causation and the problem of consciousness remain problematic given a functionally reductive account. Ultimately, I will suggest that a person—physicalist or otherwise—who is interested in responding to the mind-body problem ought to seek alternative means. §1. The Mind Body Problem(s) Kim begins the first chapter of Physicalism, or Something Near Enough by noting that, strictly speaking, there is no single “mind-body problem.” Instead, the so-called “mind-body problem” is best understood as: A cluster of connected problems about the relationship between mind and matter. What these problems are depends on a broader framework of philosophical and 2 scientific assumptions and presumptions within which the questions are posed and possible answer are formulated. (7) A substance dualist, for example, affirms the immateriality of the mind. Most substance dualists are also interactionist dualists, which is to say they affirm two-way causal interaction between the mind and the body. For an interactionist dualist, then, the principle mind-body problem is the problem of accounting for causal interaction between an immaterial substance and a material one. Absent some account of how an immaterial substance could act causally upon a material one, the substance dualist will face difficulties in attempting to explain mental causation. For a contemporary physicalist, however, there is no such problem. A physicalist need not explain the possibility
Load more

Recommended publications
  • From Physics to Physicalism
    FROM PHYSICS TO PHYSICALISM a version of this paper is published in Physicalism and its Discontents ed, Gillett and Loewer Cambridge University Press 2001 Introduction Hilary Putnam explains that: The appeal of materialism lies precisely in this, in its claim to be natural metaphysics within the bounds of science. That a doctrine which promises to gratify our ambition (to know the noumenal) and our caution (not to be unscientific) should have great appeal is hardly something to be wondered at. (Putnam (1983), p.210) Materialism says that all facts, in particular all mental facts, obtain in virtue of the spatio- temporal distribution, and properties, of matter. It was, as Putnam says, “metaphysics within the bounds of science”, but only so long as science was thought to say that the world is made out of matter.1 In this century physicists have learned that there is more in the world than matter and, in any case, matter isn’t quite what it seemed to be. For this reason many philosophers who think that metaphysics should be informed by science advocate physicalism in place of materialism. Physicalism claims that all facts obtain in virtue of the distribution of the fundamental entities and properties –whatever they turn out to be- of completed fundamental physics. Later I will discuss a more precise formulation. But not all contemporary philosophers embrace physicalism. Some- and though a minority not a small or un-influential one- think that physicalism is rather the metaphysics for an unjustified scientism; i.e. it is scientistic metaphysics. Those among them that think that physicalism can be clearly formulated think that it characterizes a cold, colorless, unfeeling and uninteresting world and not, they think, the world we live in.
    [Show full text]
  • Divine Idealism As Physicalism? Reflections on the Structural Definition of Physicalism
    DIVINE IDEALISM AS PHYSICALISM? REFLECTIONS ON THE STRUCTURAL DEFINITION OF PHYSICALISM Jon W. Thompson Hempel’s Dilemma remains at the center of the problem of defining phys- icalism. In brief, the dilemma asks whether physicalism should be defined by appeal to current or future physics. If defined by current physics, phys- icalism is almost certainly false. If defined by an ideal future physics, then physicalism has little determinable content. Montero and Papineau have innovatively suggested that the dilemma may be avoided by defining phys- icalism structurally. While their definition is one among many definitions, it is significant in that—if successful—it would break the impasse for defining physicalism. I argue, however, that the structural definition fails because it counts metaphysical frameworks (crucially, versions of divine idealism) as “physicalist”—an unwelcome result for physicalists. This paper thus furthers the debate on the definition of physicalism and sheds light on the relationship between physicalism and idealism. 1. Hempel’s Dilemma Physicalism is often defined as the view that all that exists is what physics studies; but many voices have raised concerns over such a definition. In- deed, the problem of defining physicalism has been with us for some time now.1 “Hempel’s Dilemma” puts the problem in exacting focus: when the physicalist claims that all that exists is physical, is she claiming that [A] All that exists is what is studied by current physics or that [B] All that exists is what is studied by some ideal, perhaps future, physics?2 If the physi- calist intends [A], then physicalism is clearly false.
    [Show full text]
  • An Immaterial Thing: the Case for Dualism Today We Turn to Our Second Big Question: What Are You?
    What am I? An immaterial thing: the case for dualism Today we turn to our second big question: What are you? We can focus this question a little bit by introducing the idea of a physical or material thing. To a first approximation, a material thing is a thing entirely composed of the sorts of things described in physics: electrons, quarks, etc. Materialism, or physicalism, in general is the claim that every thing — every thing that exists — is a material thing. There are two views opposed to materialism. One is dualism. According to dualism (as the name suggests) there are two sorts of things: material things, and immaterial things. The second opposed view is idealism. According to idealism, there are no material things, and everything that exists is immaterial. According to materialism about human beings, you are material thing. You are something which, like tables, clouds, trees, and amoebae, is entirely composed of the basic particles studied in physics. According to materialism about human beings, you are material thing. You are something which, like tables, clouds, trees, and amoebae, is entirely composed of the basic particles studied in physics. Many of the ways we ordinarily think and talk about ourselves seem to suggest that we endorse materialism about ourselves. Consider, for example, the question of whether you are currently sitting in a chair. Could an immaterial thing occupy space, and sit in a chair? But other ways that we think and talk about ourselves suggest that we think of ourselves as immaterial things. For example, many people think that it is possible for human beings to enjoy life after death, and hence to exist even after one’s body has ceased to exist; and to many it has seemed easiest to understand how this could be possible if think of ourselves, not as immaterial bodies, but as immaterial souls or minds.
    [Show full text]
  • Physicalism and the Possibility of Life After Death
    Resurrection of the Body?: Physicalism and the Possibility of Life After Death The 2012 Winifred E. Weter Faculty Award Lecture Seattle Pacific University April 17, 2012 Rebekah L.H. Rice, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences Resurrection of the Body?: Physicalism and the Possibility of Life After Death 2012 Winifred E. Weter Lecture April 17, 2012 Seattle Pacific University Rebekah L. H. Rice, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy 1 To Jeremy, Lydia, and Silas Rice (For unparalleled love, support, and bear hugs) To Ken Harrower (Who taught me that when faced with a perplexing question, one might do well to crack open a book.) To Steve Layman, Patrick McDonald, and Leland Saunders (Colleagues than which none better can be conceived!) 2 I. Introduction Christians maintain that, as a result of divine grace, human persons can survive their deaths. This occurs as a result of a remarkable divine act—something we call “resurrection.” And it constitutes an important piece of the “good news” that Christians profess. Conceptually, this is a baffling claim. How can it be that I (God willing) will exist after my bodily death? One answer is to suggest—as Rene Descartes famously did—that I am not my body, and that I am instead an immaterial mind, or “soul.” This yields the following account of post-mortem survival: Upon my bodily death, my soul persists. Since I am my soul, and not my body, I persist. Where (or in what conditions) I will persist is a matter left to divine judgment, but the fact of my persistence is owing to the fact that though my bodily processes cease and my body decays – or worse, that it is obliterated and cast into a billion pieces – my soul persists to become the occupant of a new (glorified) body, or in any case to enjoy continued existence.
    [Show full text]
  • The Relationship Between Consciousness and Intentionality
    University of Central Florida STARS HIM 1990-2015 2013 The relationship between consciousness and intentionality Jordan Bell University of Central Florida Part of the Philosophy Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIM 1990-2015 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Bell, Jordan, "The relationship between consciousness and intentionality" (2013). HIM 1990-2015. 1384. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/1384 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS AND INTENTIONALITY by JORDAN BELL A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors in the Major Program in Philosophy in the College of Arts & Humanities and in The Burnett Honors College at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2013 Thesis Chair: Dr. Mason Cash ABSTRACT Within the Philosophy of Mind two features of our mental life have been acknowledged as the most perplexing—consciousness, the phenomenal “what it is likeness” of our mental states, and intentionality, the aboutness or directedness of our mental states. As such, it has become commonplace to develop theories about these phenomena which seek to explain them naturalistically, that is, without resort to magic or miracles. Traditionally this has been done by analyzing consciousness and intentionality apart from one another. However, in more recent years the tide has turned. In contemporary theories these phenomena are typically analyzed in terms of the other.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 a REFUTATION of QUALIA-PHYSICALISM Michael
    1 To appear in M. O’Rourke and C. Washington (eds.), Situating Semantics: Essays on the Philosophy of John Perry (MIT Press) A REFUTATION OF QUALIA-PHYSICALISM Michael McKinsey Wayne State University Recent defenders of reductive physicalism such as Brian Loar (1990, 1997) and John Perry (2001) have adopted an intriguing new strategy:i (1) accept as so much common sense (nearly) everything that property-dualists want to say about sensory qualia, including the central claims that sensory qualia determine ‘what it’s like’ to have a given sense experience, and that persons are directly aware of these qualia in the having of such experiences; (2) contend that while these common sense facts about qualia may show that our ways of thinking and speaking about qualia are conceptually different from our ways of thinking and speaking about physical properties of the brain, these facts do not show that sensory qualia themselves (as opposed to our ways of thinking and speaking about them) are distinct from physical properties of the brain; (3) use this contention to turn aside the few existing arguments against reductive physicalism by such property dualists as Kripke (1972), Nagel (1974), Jackson (1982), and Chalmers (1996); and finally (4) insist that sensory qualia are in fact just identical with physical properties of the brain, so that consequently, the facts about the sensory qualities of conscious experience are nothing over and above physical facts about the brain. I will call the view that incorporates this strategy ‘qualia-physicalism’, or ‘Q-physicalism’ for short. In this paper I will argue that Q-physicalism is false.
    [Show full text]
  • Eidos Fecha De Recepción: Marzo 3 De 2011 ISSN 1692-8857 Fecha De Aceptación: Julio 28 De 2011 Issne 2011-7477
    eidos Fecha de recepción: marzo 3 de 2011 ISSN 1692-8857 Fecha de aceptación: julio 28 de 2011 ISSNe 2011-7477 IS THE PANPSYCHIST BETTER OFF AS AN IDEALIST? SOME LEIBNIZIAN REMARKS ON CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMPOSITION Michael Blamauer University of Vienna, Department of Philosophy [email protected] RESUMEN Algunos filósofos de la mente han defendido la idea de considerar la mente como otra característica fundamental de la realidad, además de las propiedades físicas. De ahí que la mayoría de ellos sean propiamente dualistas. Sin embargo, algunos de ellos son pansiquistas. En este artículo sostendré que ser propiamente un dualista implica, en esencia, ser pansiqui- sta. Incluso, si el pansiquismo aborda ciertas dificultades relacionadas con el problema de la conciencia de manera muy elegante, éstas permanecen inmodificables. Siendo partidario del carácter fundamental de la mente, de- fenderé la idea de que sólo mediante una revisión radical de la metafísica el pansiquista podrá evitar tales problemas y, en consecuencia, que debe adoptar el idealismo leibniciano. PALABRAS CLAVE Panpsiquismo, Leibniz, filosofía de la mente, dualismo, composición. ABSTRACT Some philosophers of mind have argued for considering consciousness as a further fundamental feature of reality in addition to its physical prop- erties. Hence most of them are property dualists. But some of them are panpsychists. In the present paper it will be argued that being a real prop- erty dualist essentially entails being a panpsychist. Even if panpsychism deals rather elegantly with certain problems of the puzzle of consciousness, there’s no way around the composition problem. Adhering to the funda- mentality claim of the mind, it will be shown that only a radical revision of metaphysics will allow the panpsychist to avoid these troubles, and hence that a panpsychist must adopt Leibnizian idealism.
    [Show full text]
  • Russellian Physicalism Barbara Gail Montero
    This is a draft of a paper that is to appear in an Oxford University Press anthology on Russellian Monism, edited by Torin Alter and Yujin Nagasawa. Russellian Physicalism Barbara Gail Montero According to David Chalmers (1996, 2002, 2010) the conceivability argument against physicalism is, by and large, successful. In outline, this argument asks us to first conceive of a world that, although just like ours at the level of fundamental physics, lacks consciousness. It goes on to claim that a world matching this conception is logically possible and concludes that consciousness is not physical. Most accept that if it is possible for there to be a world that duplicates the fundamental properties of physics without duplicating consciousness, then consciousness is not physical. And many accept that we can in some sense conceive of such a world. The controversial part of the argument is the move from conceivability to possibility. Yet, according to Chalmers, when we are very careful about what is to count as conceivability, this move also is valid. Physicalism about consciousness, then, says Chalmers, must be rejected. Or rather, it must almost be rejected. This qualification arises because “Russellian monism,” characterized roughly by Chalmers (2002, p. 265) as the view that “consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities” falls through a loophole in the antiphysicalist conceivability argument. For it may be, he thinks, that when we conceive of the fundamental physical world we fail to conceive of its intrinsic properties. Yet if Russellian monism is true, consciousness depends on these intrinsic properties, and because of this, a world that duplicates our fundamental physics 1 without duplicating these properties may be a world without consciousness.
    [Show full text]
  • A a a How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream Theory of Consciousness
    Draft May 2020 For G. Rabin Grounding and Consciousness (Oxford) How to Achieve the Physicalist Dream: Identity or Grounding?* Adam Pautz Brown Imagine [a picture] with a million tiny pixels. The picture and the properties reduce to the arrangement of light and dark pixels. The supervenience of mind and all else upon the arrangement of atoms in the void — or whatever replaces atoms in the void in true physics — is another case of reduction. David Lewis (1995) The reader is welcome to label ground physicalism a form of “dualism” or “emer- gentism” (or perhaps a new position entirely), so long as she recognizes that ground physicalism is built around the thesis that the mental is not fundamental but rather grounded in the physical. Jonathan Schaffer (2020) Most of nature is pretty is boring: just different arrangements of atoms in the void. But consciousness seems special. When brains reached a certain complexity, a miracle hap- pened. There appeared properties of a wholly novel type: conscious experiences. To explain this, we may have no choice but to posit special “psychophysical laws”. There are possi- ble worlds where these laws don’t obtain, the miracle doesn’t happen, and we are all zombies. This is property dualism. In “Sensations and Brain Processes”, J. C. Smart articulated just how unappealing property dualism is. It provides a complex and nonuniform picture of reality. And he put forward an alternative physicalist dream picture of reality. In sentient as well as in- sentient nature, “there is nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of physical constituents” (1959: 142).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 the Many-Worlds Theory of Consciousness Christian List* Abstract: This Paper Sketches a New and Somewhat Heterodox Metaphysica
    1 The many-worlds theory of consciousness Christian List* Discussion paper, this version posted 2 March 2021 Abstract: This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first- personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to sketch a somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. The theory seeks to give an account of how consciousness, in the sense of subjective experience, fits into the world and how it relates to other, non-subjective features. To capture the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience, the theory drops the common assumption that all conscious experiences – yours, mine, and those of everyone else – are features of one and the same world and postulates instead that different conscious subjects are associated with different “first-personally centred worlds”.
    [Show full text]
  • Consciousness-Physicalism
    Physicalism Welcome to Physics and Religion, a series of podcasts exploring the interaction between modern science and traditional religion, mostly Christianity. I am your host, Dr. A. S. We have been dealing with the legacy of Rene Descartes. Descartes held that there were two kinds of “substance,” mind and body. For obvious reasons this point of view is called dualism. The mind can exist outside the body and has no physical properties such as mass and location; it can think the body cannot. The mind can control the body, but the body can also control the mind as for example when one does something out of passion. This seemed plausible at first but we were at a loss to explain how something completely non-physical could interact with something purely physical. We are forced back, at least for the time being, to monism, the idea that there is only one kind of substance. So what will it be, mind or body? I would like to start with the less promising of the two; mind -- nothing physical exists. Reality is purely mind, in fact, my mind! My mind is all that exists; the physical world is pure illusion. You are only an illusion and all the evidence I have of your existence is illusory. This is a philosophy called solipsism. (Bertrand Russel told of a woman who wrote to him announcing that she was a solipsist and wondered why there were not more people like her.) Can you refute solipsism? I think not. Any evidence you might bring to bear on the subject is pure illusion.
    [Show full text]
  • Donald Davidson ERNEST LEPORE and KIRK LUDWIG
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVIII (2004) Donald Davidson ERNEST LEPORE AND KIRK LUDWIG avidson, Donald (Herbert) (b. 1917, d. 2003; American), Willis S. and Marion DSlusser Professor, University of California at Berkeley (1986–2003). Previ- ously Instructor then Professor in Philosophy at: Queens College New York (1947–1950), Stanford University, California (1950–1967), Princeton University (1967–1969), Rockefeller University, New York City (1970–1976), University of Chicago (1976–1981), University of California at Berkeley (1981–2003). John Locke Lecturer, University of Oxford (1970). One of the most important philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century, Donald Davidson explored a wide range of fundamental topics in meta- physics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophies of action, mind, and language. His impact on contemporary philosophy is second only to that of his teacher W. V. O. Quine, who, along with Alfred Tarski, exerted the greatest influence on him. Given the range of his contributions, his work emerges as surprisingly systematic, an expression and working out of a number of central guiding ideas. Among his most important contributions are 1. his defense of the common sense view that reasons, those beliefs and desires we cite in explaining our actions, are also causes of them [11], 2. his groundbreaking work in the theory of meaning, and his proposal, based on Tarski’s work on recursive truth definitions for formal languages, for how to formulate a compositional semantic theory for a natural language [29, 46, 47, 50, 51], 3. his development of the project of radical interpretation as a vehicle for investigating questions about meaning and the psychological attitudes involved in understanding action [7, 15, 42, 44, 48], 309 310 Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig 4.
    [Show full text]