David Papineau

My first university was in my home town, Durban, in the mid-1960s. I was doing a mathematics degree but most of my friends were doing arts subjects. Sartre and Marx were the thinkers of the moment and my friends would press their (mostly illegal) writings on me. Ideologically I was entirely sympathetic, but intellectually they didn’t do much for me—too obscure, too difficult, too dogmatic. In my final year I chanced on Ayer’s The Problem of Knowledge. It wasn’t exactly relevant to apartheid South Africa, but I consumed it eagerly. Through Ayer I was led to Russell’s logical atomism. What appealed to me in both these authors was the sense of solving fundamental problems through careful logical analysis. Of course, in retrospect we can see that their limpid style concealed many doubtful assumptions. Yet you could always see exactly what they were claiming and how the argument was supposed to go. I still think that this is the best way to do philosophy.

Galen Strawson (2006) thinks it is 'obviously' false that 'the terms of physics can fully capture the nature or essence of experience' (p. 4). He also describes this view as 'crazy' (p. 7). I think that he has been carried away by first impressions. It is certainly true that 'physicSalism', as he dubs this view, is strongly counterintuitive. But at the same time there are compelling arguments in its favour. I think that these arguments are sound and that the contrary intuitions are misbegotten. In the first two sections of my remarks I would like to spend a little time defending physicSalism, or 'straightforward' physicalism, as I shall call it ('S' for 'straightforward', if you like). I realize that the main topic of Strawson's paper is panpsychism rather than his rejection of straightforward physicalism. But the latter is relevant as his arguments for panpsychism depend on his rejection of straightforward physicalism, in ways I shall explain below.

This paper argues that all apparently special forces characteristically reduce to a few fundamental physical forces which conserve energy and operate throughout nature. Consequently, there are probably no special mental forces originating from souls and acting upon bodies and brains in addition to the basic, energy-conserving physical forces. Moreover, physiological and biochemical research have failed to uncover any evidence of forces over and above the basic physical forces acting on living bodies. It is as if all organic processes can be fully accounted for in terms of normal physical forces—that is, as if there are no souls or ethereal doubles interacting with living bodies. 1. The Argument from Fundamental Forces -- 2. The Argument from Physiology -- 3. Conclusion

By way of an example, Lewis imagines your being invited to join Schrödinger’s cat in its box for an hour. This box will either fill up with deadly poison fumes or not, depending on whether or not some radioactive atom decays, the probability of decay within an hour being 50%. The invitation is accompanied with some further incentive to comply (Lewis sets it up so there is a significant chance of some pretty bad but not life-threatening punishment if you don’t get in the box). Lewis argues that the many minds theory implies that you should get in the box with the cat, despite this making it 50% likely you will die.

Consciousness has suddenly become an extremely fashionable topic in certain scientific circles. Many thinkers are now touting consciousness as the last unconquered region of science, and theorists from many different disciplines are racing to find a "theory of consciousness" which will unlock this final secret of nature. I am suspicious about all this enthusiasm. I think that much of the brouhaha is generated by philosophical confusion. In the end, I fear, there is no special secret of consciousness, and no special key needed to unlock it.

It is widely supposed that the Everettian account of quantum mechanics has difficulties with probability. In this paper I shall argue that those who argue against the Everettian interpretation on this basis are employing a double standard. It is certainly true that there are philosophical puzzles about probability within the Everettian theory. But I shall show that orthodox metaphysics has even worse problems with probability than Everettianism. From this perspective, orthodox metaphysicians who criticise Everettians about probability are a classic case of a pot calling the kettle black.

The empirical evidence often justifies belief in scientific theories. For instance, the great wealth of chemical and other relevant data leaves us with no real alternative to believing that matter is made of atoms. Similarly, the natural history of past and present organisms makes it irrational to deny that life on earth has evolved from a common ancestry. Again, the character and epidemiology of infectious diseases effectively establishes that they are caused by microbes. Peter Lipton did much to illuminate the logic of these and many similar inferences. Often the observed facts admit of only one good theoretical explanation. Rationality therefore dictates that we infer the truth of this explanation.

I am lucky to have two such penetrating commentators as Robert Kirk and Andrew Melnyk. It is also fortunate that they come at me from different directions, and so cover different aspects of my book. Robert Kirk has doubts about the overall structure of my enterprise, and in particular about my central commitment to a distinctive species of phenomenal concepts. Andrew Melnyk, by contrast, offers no objections to my general brand of materialism. Instead he focuses specifically on my discussion of the anti-materialist 'intuition of distinctness', raising questions about my attempt to explain this intuition away, and offering alternative suggestions of his own.

This paper defends scientific realism from the pessimistic meta-induction from past reference failure. It allows that a descriptive theory of reference implies that scientific terms characteristically fail of determinate reference. But it argues that a descriptive theory of reference also implies an equivalence between scientific theories and quantificational claims in the style of Ramsey. Since these quantificational claims do not use any of the referentially suspect scientific terms, they can be approximately true even when those terms fail to refer determinately.Keywords: Science; Realism; Ramsey sentences; Approximate truth; Reference.