Philosophy of mind

A more general approach adopted by many philosophers is called physicalism. This does not entail reduction of the theoretical or epistemological kind but is a question of whether the physical determines the chemical. Physicalism has been invoked in philosophy of mind to argue that there is a dependence relationship between mental events and physical goings on in the brain. This is clearly a weaker form of reductive claim that epistemological reduction discussed earlier in this article. 

The worry about whether the dependence relationship may be symmetrical or whether it is driven from top to bottom has come mainly from philosophers working in the area of philosophy of mind. Here is one example, which has often been discussed. Let us suppose I am working on an article for publication and that I decide that I need to visit the research library at the other end of campus. If I follow this intuition a whole number of subsequent steps are put... 

Psychosemantics The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, Mass. The... 

A philosophy of life comprises the philosophy of the organism and the philosophy of mind. This is itself a first proposition of the philosophy of life, in fact its hypothesis, which it must make good in the course of its execution. For the statement of scope expresses no less than the contention that the organic even in its lowest form prefigures mind, and that mind even on its highest reaches remains part of the organic. (Jonas 1966, p. 1)... 

Every discipline has particular problems with some philosophical coloring. Those in quantum theory are famous those in psychology seem endless those in biology and economics seem more sparse and esoteric. If, for whatever reason, one s concern is the conceptual or theoretical problems of a particular science, there is no substitute for that science, and chemistry is just one among others. Certain sciences naturally touch on substantive areas of traditional philosophical concern quantum theory on metaphysics, for example, psychology on the philosophy of mind, and economics and statistics on theories of rationality. In these cases, there is a special interest in particular sciences because they may reform prior philosophical theories or recast philosophical issues or, conversely, because philosophy may inform these subjects in fundamental ways. That is not true, in any obvious way, of chemistry. 

Since the 1980s talk of reduction has been replaced by talk of supervenience, not just in the philosophy of mind but also in the philosophy of science. The most common claim is that one level or domain or description or discourse, S, supervenes on another level, B, if, in some sense of necessary,... 

Gutenplan, S. 1994. "Natural Kind." Entry in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind. Eds. Guten-plan. Oxford Blackwell, (pp. 449-450). 

Austen Clark (1993) expounds this at length, and makes an excellent case for the usefulness of MDS s results to the philosophy of mind. 

Kim, J. 1997. Supervenience, Emergence and Realization in the Philosophy of Mind. In Carrier, M. and Machamer, P.K. (eds.), Mindscapes Philosophy, Science, and the Mind. Konstanz Universitatsverlag Konstanz, 271-293. 

P.M. Churchland. Matter and Consciousness a Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, 1988. 

Finally, I discuss some consequences of my views. What impact might this view have on the fields of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science How would the truth of this view affect what we might say about other philosophers and their views on these and related issues What are the large-scale consequences of this view And finally, how might this view inform the fields of philosophy of mind and philosophy of science ... 

It seems to me that a theory of mind that allows for higher-level mental causation is consistent with, and maybe even a necessary consequence of, what good philosophy of science tells us. Furthermore, using similar methodologies to those in real science when studying mental causation makes philosophy of mind an area of study worthy of real progress based on empirical facts. 

Philosophy of Mind. Boulder, Colorado Westview Press, Inc. 

The phrase explanatory gap is from Joe Levine (1983), but the point that there is a problem with understanding how physical phenomena can constitute consciousness is as old as the philosophy of mind. 

An interesting example of a possible common cause situation has come up in the philosophy of mind concerning the relationship between the conscious decision to act in a certain way and doing the act. There is evidence that at least in some cases the decision and the act are related as... 

I shall call those philosophers who hold that phenomenal character supervenes on internal constitution (where the term phenomenal character is understood as explained earlier) phenomenal internalists. On this view, it is metaphysically impossible for intrinsic duplicates to differ with respect to the phenomenal character of their internal states. Until recently, phenomenal internalism was almost universally accepted in the philosophy of mind. With the rise of representationalism, however, the view has begun to feel some pressure (Byrne, 2001 Dretske, 1995 Jackson, 2002b Lycan, 1996 Tye, 1995, 2000). For if the phenomenal character of a state is (or supervenes on) its representational content (or a representational content the state has that meets certain further conditions, e.g., with respect to the functional role it plays) and content brings in external factors, then prima facie it is metaphysically possible for intrinsic duplicates to differ phenomenally. 

According to Ned Block, the split over whether conscious experiences have qualitative properties going beyond their intentional features is the greatest chasm in the philosophy of mind. See Ned Block (1995, pp. 19-49). 

Horgan, T. and Tiensen, J. (2002). The phenomenology of intentionaUty and the intentionaUty of phenomenology. In D. Chalmers, ed.. Philosophy of Mind Classical and Contemporary Reading. Oxford University Press. 

Kim, J. (1998a). The mind-body problem after fifty years. In A. O Hear, ed.. Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-21. Kim, J. (1998b). Mind in a Physical World An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. MIT Press. 

Kim,J. lOO y). Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton University Press. Kim, J. (2006). Philosophy of Mind, 2nd edn. Westview Press. 

Loewer, B. (2007b). Mental causation, or something near enough. In B. P. McLaughlin and J. D. Cohen, eds.. Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. 

Rey, G. (1997). Contemporary Philosophy of Mind A Contentiously Classical Approach. Blackwell. 

How does mind fit into nature Philosophy has long been concerned with this question. No contemporary philosopher has done more to clarify it than Jaegwon Kim, a distinguished analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. With new contributions from an outstanding lineup of eminent scholars, this volume focuses on issues raised in Kim s work. The chapters cluster around two themes first, exclusion, supervenience, and reduction, with attention to the causal exclusion argument for which Kim is widely celebrated, and, second, phenomenal consciousness and qualia, with attention to the prospects for a functionalist account of the mental. This volume is sure to become a major focus of attention and research in the disciplines of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. 

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This book is about the notion of reduction, about the question of how an appropriate explication of this notion should look like, and about its history, i.e. its role especially in the philosophy of science and in the philosophy of mind. The following slogan gives a first, rough idea of how the term reduction will be understood here The concept of reduction is supposed to reconcile diversity and directionality with unity, without relying on elimination. If water reduces to H2O then there is just one thing rather than two - thus we get unity. Unity does not come at the price of elimination - claiming that water reduces to H2O, we do not thereby claim that there is no water. But what about diversity and directionality Intuitively, there should be a difference between water and H2O, such that we get diversity. This is required for there to be directionality in a sense, if water reduces to H2O, then H2O is prior to, or more basic than water. At least, if water reduces to H2O, then H2O does not reduce to water. And this is where trouble starts ... 

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