William Seager

This thesis divides into two main sections. The first is an attempt to show that the Psycho-physical Identity Theory is false, and is so even if we grant that human behaviour is in principle completely explicable in purely physical terms . This section is a sustained criticism of a staight-forward argument in favour of the Identity Theory, namely: Mental items cause behaviour. All behaviour is caused by physical items. So mental items are physical items. ;This section is also divisible into two main parts, both of which present arugments against the Identity Theory. ;The first argument presented is originally from Davidson's paper "Mental Events" . The claim I am interested in is that no systematic correlations can be found between mental and physical events. I explicate and defend this claim which is based, roughly, on the contrast between the conditions of ascription of mental states such as belief and physical states. The former are ascribed so as to form a system within which behaviour appears rational, the latter are not. Since certain forms of the identity theory demand such correlations they are undercut by Davidson's claim. ;The second argument presented is that the Identity Theory fails because of the content of our concepts of the mental. The problem here is that of identifying entities from different theories for I take our common sense mentalistic explanations to be part of a theory. If both theories say a lot about what sort of thing the entities they mention are identification across the theories will be impossible, even if the entities in question are thought to play similar causal roles. For example, the content of "phlogiston theory" and "oxygen theory" is sufficient to preclude identifying phlogiston and oxygen despite the basically similar role they are supposed to play. I bring forth several features of our mentalistic explanations in an attempt to show the extensiveness of the content of our mentalistic theory. ;The failure of the Identity Theory does not imply the failure of Materialism, for one can still espouse an "eliminative" form of Materialism. This doctrine has appeared implausible, though, because of the seemingly direct or immediate awareness we have of at least some mental items. I believe this appearance can be removed only by developing a materialistically acceptable theory of behaviour in which the phenomena of direct awareness can be explained. ;The second half of the thesis is thus devoted to outlining such a theory. The central notion deployed is that of an "internal representation" of the world which guides behaviour. The representational nature of internal states arises solely from their place in the logical structure of these states and their role in the production of behaviour. Beginning with extremely simple behaviour I investigate the additional capabilities which the representational system must have to explain such activities as perception, goal seeking, the representation of causal and/or logical sequences, and the representation of the entity's own abilities to alter the world around it. ;The basic theory of internal representation is then applied to the problem of introspection and direct awareness. I argue that any complex conceptualization of aspects of the world demands a representational medium in which to be carried out. Our so-called direct awareness is in fact the application of a complicated representational schema. As such it is in essence no more priveleged than any other schema which could be applied to these phenomena. Thus our direct awareness cannot be taken as an infallible guide to the nature or existence of the phenomenal qualities of mental states, and this in turn leaves the door open for some sort of eliminative materialism.

Leibniz argumentiert in der Monadologie, daß das Bewußtsein nicht auf rein mechanische und materielle Prozesse reduziert werden kann. Diesem wohlbekannten Argument wird bisweilen ein elementarer Trugschluß der Zusammensetzung vorgeworfen. Meiner Meinung nach hingegen weist dieses Argument eher auf ein grundlegendes Problem in unserem physikalischen Verständnis des menschlichen Geistes hin, einem Verständnis, das auch heute noch akzeptiert wird. Ich zeige jedoch weiterhin, daß Leibniz nicht erkannt hat, daß sein Argument die Möglichkeit offen läßt, daß es unsere begrifflichen Grenzen sind, die uns daran hindern, das Bewußtsein durch materielle Prozesse zu verstehen

Reception of the Bohm-Hiley interpretation of quantum mechanics has a curiously Janus faced quality. On the one hand, it is frequently derided as a conservative throwback to outdated classical patterns of thought. On the other hand, it is equally often taken to task for encouraging a wild quantum mysticism, often regarded as anti-scientific. I will argue that there are reasons for this reception, but that a proper appreciation of the dual scientific and philosophical aspects of the view reveals a powerful and extremely interesting metaphysical view of the world. This view is akin to that of Russellian Monism, in which the empirical world studied by science is restricted to relational features that stand in need of some background intrinsic properties to ground their reality. This allows for a theory that can embrace a world which exhibits a reasonable and plausible sort of emergence (especially of domains that fall under classical concepts) while also making room for distinctive and scientifically intransigent properties such as consciousness

Charles Siewert presents a series of thought experiment based arguments against a wide range of current theories of phenomenal consciousness which I believe achieves a considerable measure of success. One topic which I think gets insufficient attention is the discussion of functionalism and I address this here. Before that I consider the intriguing issue, which is seldom considered but figures prominently at the close of Siewert's book, of the value of consciousness. In particular, I broach the question of whether the value of consciousness has any impact on our theoretical understanding of consciousness

A paradox is a situation in which two seemingly equally rational lines of thought lead to contradictory conclusions. A moral paradox is a situation where the employment of diverse moral principles, each of which is at least intuitively acceptable to roughly the same degree, leads to radically different moral assessments of one and the same action. In his “Some Paradoxes of Deterrence” Gregory Kavka argues that such moral paradoxes lurk in the concept of deterrence and further that the present world situation of mutual nuclear deterrence may well provide a concrete illustration of these paradoxes. That deterrence can involve paradox may well be true, but what I wish to consider here is whether the case of nuclear deterrence is in fact an instance of “paradoxical deterrence”.

One of the most vivid aspects of consciousness is the experience of emotion, yet this topic is given relatively little attention within consciousness studies. Emotions are crucial, for they provide quick and motivating assessments of value, without which action would be misdirected or absent. Emotions also involve linkages between phenomenal and intentional consciousness. This paper examines emotional consciousness from the standpoint of the representational theory of consciousness . Two interesting developments spring from this. The first is the need for the representation of value, which is distinctive of emotional experience. The second is an extension of RTC’s theory of introspection to emotional states, revealing why emotional consciousness is so often introspective even though introspective abilities are not needed to experience emotions, and also explaining why introspection of emotional states is so much less reliable than that of other states of consciousness

Whitehead’s philosophy is of perennial scholarly interest as one of the relatively few really serious attempts at a systematic metaphysics. But unlike almost all major ‘philosophical systems’ it is not merely an historical curiosity, but retains contemporary supporters actively deploying Whitehead’s viewpoint in discussion of a variety of live philosophical problems. Furthermore, Whitehead’s metaphysics is the sole example of a comprehensive philosophical system which aims to take into account the radical transformation of science which occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics, developments with which Whitehead was, as a first rate mathematician, highly familiar

The spectacular success of the scientific enterprise over the last four hundred years has led to the promise of an all encompassing vision of the natural world. In this elegant picture, everything we observe is based upon just a few fundamental processes and entities. The almost infinite variety and complexity of the world is thus the product of emergence. But the concept of emergence is fraught with controversy and confusion. This book ponders the question of how emergence should be understood within the scientific picture, and whether a complete vision of the world can be attained that includes consciousness.

The doctrine of physicalism can be roughly spelled out simply as the claim that the physical state of the world determines the total state of the world. However, since there are many forms of determination, a somewhat more precise characterization is needed. One obvious problem with the simple formulation is that the traditional doctrine of epiphenomenalism holds that the mental is determined by the physical (and epiphenomenalists need not assert that there are any properties except mental and physical ones, so one can freely add to epiphenomenalism the claim that everything is determined by the physical state of the world). However, the orthodox view, which seems obviously correct, is that physicalists would and should balk at the claim that epiphenomenalism is a form of physicalism. The philosophical zombie thought experiment vividly reveals exactly why epiphenomenalism is not a version of physicalism. According to traditional epiphenomenalism the determination relation in question is causation, and causal relations do not hold with full necessity. They hold with at most nomological necessity. Thus there is a possible world, w, in which the causal laws (or, if one prefers a more Humean approach, where the cosmic regularities) are different in such a way that the physical states which in the actual world cause mental states either cause no mental states at all in w (the zombie option) or cause aberrant mental states (the inverted spectrum option). Why should the physicalist care about this ‘mere possibility’? Because it shows that the mental can vary independently of the physical and there can be no better demonstration of ontological distinctness 1 than independent variation. Therefore, physicalism requires that the sort of determination at issue must exhibit maximum modal force; it must be absolutely impossible for the mental to vary without attendant, determining physical variation (let us label this relation ‘logical determination’). I think the best way to state physicalism which meets this constraint is in terms of what are called minimal physical duplicates (MPDs) of possible worlds (an approach pioneered by David Lewis, see Lewis (1983b); see also Jackson (1998) and Chalmers and Jackson (2001))..

It has been argued that Psychological Externalism is irrelevant to psychology. The grounds for this are that PE fails to individuate intentional states in accord with causal power, and that psychology is primarily interested in the causal roles of psychological states. It is also claimed that one can individuate psychological states via their syntactic structure in some internal "language of thought". This syntactic structure is an internal feature of psychological states and thus provides a key to their causal powers. I argue that in fact any syntactic structure deserving the name will require an external individuation no less than the semantic features of psychological states

Jerry Fodor has recently proposed a new entry into the list of information based approaches to semantic content aimed at explicating the general notion of representation for both mental states and linguistic tokens. The basic idea is that a token means what causes its production. The burden of the theory is to select the proper cause from the sea of causal influences which aid in generating any token while at the same time avoiding the absurdity of everything's being literally meaningful (since everything has a cause). I argue that a detailed examination of the theory reveals that neither burden can be successfully shouldered

Roger Penrose is justly famous for his work in physics and mathematics but he is _notorious_ for his endorsement of the Gödel argument (see his 1989, 1994, 1997). This argument, first advanced by J. R. Lucas (in 1961), attempts to show that Gödel’s (first) incompleteness theorem can be seen to reveal that the human mind transcends all algorithmic models of it¹. Penrose's version of the argument has been seen to fall victim to the original objections raised against Lucas (see Boolos (1990) and for a particularly intemperate review, Putnam (1994)). Yet I believe that more can and should be said about the argument. Only a brief review is necessary here although I wish to present the argument in a somewhat peculiar form.

The metaphysical relation of supervenience has seen most of its service in the fields of the philosophy of mind and ethics. Although not repaying all of the hopes some initially invested in it – the mind-body problem remains stubbornly unsolved, ethics not satisfactorily naturalized – the use of the notion of supervenience has certainly clarified the nature and the commitments of so- called non-reductive materialism, especially with regard to the questions of whether explanations of supervenience relations are required and whether such explanations must amount to a kind of reduction

The goal of standard semantics is to provide truth conditions for the sentences of a given language. Probabilistic Semantics does not share this aim; it might be said instead, if rather cryptically, that Probabilistic Semantics aims to provide belief conditions.The central and guiding idea of Probabilistic Semantics is that each rational individual has ‘within’ him or her a personal subjective probability function. The output of the function when given a certain sentence as input represents the degree of likelihood which the individual would assign to that sentence. One can characterize these functions via a set of axioms, and in the terms of this defined structure develop probabilistic analogues of all important semantical notions. Then, dealing with ‘being given probability 1’ instead of ‘truth,’ one can proceed to give a completely adequate semantics for the particular language under consideration. The axioms delimiting the class of probability functions are, in fact, chosen with this goal and language in mind.