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Mental Causation

Mental Causation PDF Author: Thomas Kroedel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487149
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.

Mental Causation

Mental Causation PDF Author: Thomas Kroedel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487149
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.

Physicalism and Mental Causation

Physicalism and Mental Causation PDF Author: Sven Walter
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845405838
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
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.

Mental Causation and Ontology

Mental Causation and Ontology PDF Author: S. C. Gibb
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199603774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
This book demonstrates the importance of ontology for a central debate in philosophy of mind. Mental causation seems an obvious aspect of the world. But it is hard to understand how it can happen unless we get clear about what the entities involved in the process are. An international team of contributors presents new work on this problem.

The Causal Exclusion Problem

The Causal Exclusion Problem PDF Author: Dwayne Moore
Publisher: American University Studies
ISBN: 9781433122675
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In The Causal Exclusion Problem, the popular strategy of abandoning any one of the principles constituting the causal exclusion problem is considered, but ultimately rejected. The metaphysical foundations undergirding the causal exclusion problem are then explored, revealing that the causal exclusion problem cannot be dislodged by undermining its metaphysical foundations - as some are in the habit of doing. Finally, the significant difficulties associated with the bevy of contemporary nonreductive solutions, from supervenience to emergentism, are expanded upon. While conducting this survey of contemporary options, however, two novel approaches are introduced, both of which may resolve the causal exclusion problem from within a nonreductive physicalist paradigm. The Causal Exclusion Problem, which relentlessly motivates the vexing causal exclusion problem and exhaustively surveys its metaphysical assumptions and contemporary responses, is ideal for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in the philosophy of mind.

Mind in a Physical World

Mind in a Physical World PDF Author: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262611534
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
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.

Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism

Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism PDF Author: Derk Pereboom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199877327
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Book Description
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.

Causal Powers

Causal Powers PDF Author: Jonathan D. Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198796579
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
We use concepts of causal powers and their relatives-dispositions, capacities, and abilities-to describe the world around us, both in everyday life and in scientific practice. This volume presents new work on the nature of causal powers, and their connections with other phenomena within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind.

Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity

Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity PDF Author: Robert J. Howell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199654662
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

Mental Causation

Mental Causation PDF Author: Anthony Dardis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231144164
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Two thousand years ago, Lucretius said that everything is atoms in the void; it's physics all the way down. Contemporary physicalism agrees. But if that's so how can we--how can our thoughts, emotions, our values--make anything happen in the physical world? This conceptual knot, the mental causation problem, is the core of the mind-body problem, closely connected to the problems of free will, consciousness, and intentionality. Anthony Dardis shows how to unravel the knot. He traces its early appearance in the history of philosophical inquiry, specifically in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and T. H. Huxley. He then develops a metaphysical framework for a theory of causation, laws of nature, and the causal relevance of properties. Using this framework, Dardis explains how macro, or higher level, properties can be causally relevant in the same way that microphysical properties are causally relevant: by their relationship with the laws of nature. Smelling an orange, choosing the orange rather than the cheesecake, reaching for the one on the left instead of the one on the right-mental properties such as these take their place alongside the physical "motor of the world" in making things happen.

Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough

Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough PDF Author: Chae-gwŏn Kim
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780691113753
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Book Description
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.