Lok-Chi Chan

Throughout history, numerous thinkers have claimed that monism – in the form of priority monism, existence monism, monotheistic monism, or versions that posit an extra-cosmic ultimate being – theoretically surpasses pluralism, above all by positing a unified universe. This view re-emerges in recent metaphysics through what I call cosmological arguments from parsimony (CAPs) and cosmological arguments from relations (CARs). According to CAPs, monism is more ontologically parsimonious than pluralism because it posits only one fundamental entity. According to CARs, the single fundamental object in monism serves as a required metaphysical explanans for how things in the universe can form certain relations with each other. I argue that this longstanding tradition of arguments spanning Neoplatonism, early and late modern philosophy, analytic philosophy, and even some Eastern traditions fails: monistic frameworks largely fail to reduce the universe’s ontological complexity as alleged, and the remaining ones fail to show any theoretical advantage over pluralism for related reasons. Drawing on the broader materialist tradition, the article also offers a positive case for several theoretical merits of pluralism and ends with a takeaway concerning how best to inquire into the universe’s unity.

Throughout history, theistic thinkers such as Anselm (1080/1998), Aquinas (1485/1947), Descartes (1641/2003), and Plantinga (1993) have argued that our cognitive faculties are innately veridical as a divine creation. However, contemporary findings from cognitive science have exposed our vulnerability to numerous cognitive biases, which many recent authors consider as evidence against divine creation (Fales, 1996; Ramsey, 2002; Childers, 2011; Teehan, 2016; Park, 2018; Lucas, 2018; Launonen, 2021; Kvandal, 2022; contra Loke, 2022). We draw on a point of convergence between the theistic perspective and the naturalistic evolutionary perspective, namely, that we are finite, corporeal beings, and argue that there are good empirical reasons to view our cognitive biases as grounded in reasonable designs within such finitude. The upshot is that the problem lacks a solid empirical foundation. This paper can simultaneously be considered a scientifically grounded exploration on human cognitive finitudes within a theistic context.

One important challenge to J. L. Schellenberg’s divine hiddenness problem for theism does not concern its argumentative soundness. Instead, it asserts that the highlighted issue surrounding non-belief is merely one of the alleged evils or imperfections in the world, and thus, the argument, whether sound or not, fails to offer evidence against God beyond what is already addressed by the existing problem of evil. Schellenberg, throughout his career, has proposed several lines of thought concerning the relationship between the two problems facing theism. In this paper, I examine these lines of thought and argue that each faces certain shortcomings when considered a potential solution to the overlap challenge. The general lesson is that, while the divine hiddenness problem should not be regarded as merely a problem of evil in disguise, it remains difficult to formulate a hiddenness argument that is sufficiently independent of the problem of evil. The paper ends with some suggestions for how an independent hiddenness argument—and, more generally, related arguments in the philosophy of religion—might be formulated in the face of this challenge.

[This article serves as the lead article for an article symposium. A call for commentaries is currently open at the journal.] In this lead article for an article symposium, we investigate the possible intersection between metaphysical naturalism and the phenomenological tradition. Our guiding hypothesis is that nature constitutes phenomenology, whereas phenomenology constitutes our access to nature. Pace renowned phenomenologists Gallagher and Zahavi’s call to replace “classic naturalism” with “non-classic conceptions,” we reconstruct “classic naturalism” by drawing on the seminal works of Armstrong, Lewis, Jackson, Braddon-Mitchell, Ney, and others. On this basis, we argue against the common assertion that metaphysical naturalism entails scientism and methodological naturalism and demonstrate their theoretical incompatibility, and thereby contend that a properly characterized classic naturalism could, in fact, accommodate phenomenological approaches. Then, we revise contemporary phenomenologists’ notions of “mutual constraints” and “mutual enlightenment” and reframe the subtle intersection between phenomenology and the naturalistic perspective. Finally, we address standard phenomenological criticisms of naturalism, which appeal to the primacy of the experiential perspective, and explore how the perspective can, in fact, accommodate and critically inform naturalism’s core theoretical commitments. This two-way discussion, which is grounded in both traditions, results in a phenomenology-friendly naturalism and a naturalism-friendly phenomenology that critically complement one another.

In the philosophy of religion, ‘de jure objections’ is an umbrella term that covers a wide variety of arguments for the conclusion that theistic belief is rationally impermissible, whether or not God exists. What we call ‘modal Calvinism’ counters these objections by proposing that ‘if God exists, God would ensure that theistic belief is rationally compelling on a global scale’, a modal conditional that is compatible with atheism. We respond to this modal Calvinist argument by examining it through the lenses of probability, modality, and logic – particularly, we apply analytical tools such as possible world semantics, Bayesian reasoning, and paraconsistent models. After examining various forms of the argument, we argue that none can compel atheists to believe that serious theistic possibilities worth considering would involve the purported divine measure.

Religion and its related thoughts are an important aspect of human life and worldview. To this day, the analytic philosophy of religion has matured in the international academic community. There is no doubt that these debates concern many important philosophical issues, but it is challenging to see how they could be sufficiently sensitive to all philosophically relevant religious issues and how they could comprehensively cover philosophical concerns facing different cultures around the world – it is even possible that current Western society itself has slowly expanded its attention. This raises a pressing question: Is the field capable of accommodating the insights from a more diverse array of participants, including non-white, non-male, and non-Anglophone thinkers, and can it address philosophical questions that go beyond the traditional debates dominated by Anglophone intellectuals?

The Humility Thesis is a persistent thesis in contemporary metaphysics. It is known by a variety of names, including, but not limited to, Humility, Intrinsic Humility, Kantian Humility, Kantian Physicalism, Intrinsic Ignorance, Categorical Ignorance, Irremediable Ignorance, and Noumenalism. According to the thesis, we human beings, and any knowers that share our general ways of knowing, are irremediably ignorant of a certain class of properties that are intrinsic to material entities … Continue reading Humility Regarding Intrinsic Properties →

Russellian monism – an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (1927/1992) – is roughly the view that the natural sciences can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not about their categorical properties, and, moreover, that our qualia are constituted by categorical properties. Recently, Stoljar (2001a, 2001b), Strawson (2008), Montero (2010, 2015), Alter and Nagasawa (2012), and Chalmers (2015) have attempted to develop this doctrine into a version of physicalism. Russellian monism faces the so-called combination problem, according to which it is difficult to see how categorical properties could collectively constitute qualia. In this paper, I suggest that there is an insufficiently discussed aspect of the combination problem which I call the difference-maker problem. Taking the difference-maker problem into account, I argue that the combination problem – whether or not it can be solved – results in a dilemma for the project of developing Russellian physicalism. That is, Russellian monism is either physicalistically unacceptable or it is implausible; hence, Russellian monism and physicalism are incompatible.

Monism is our name for a range of views according to which the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is intimate and necessary, or on which there are no categorical bases at all. In contrast, Dualist views hold that the connection between dispositions and their categorical bases is distant and contingent. This paper is a defence of Monism against an influential conceivability argument in favour of Dualism. The argument suggests that the apparent possibility of causal behaviour coming apart from categorical bases is best explained by Dualism. We argue that Monism can explain the apparent possibility as well, if we take metaphysically alien laws — namely, laws whose metaphysical nature is alien to the actual world — into account.

The disciplinary characterisation (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticised for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this paper, I propose and defend a novel version of DC that can be called a historical paths approach. The idea is (roughly) that metaphysical naturalism can be defined with reference to the historical ideas that current scientific ideas descend from. I argue that it is not rendered implausible by the above problems, and hence that DC is more defensible and attractive than it may first appear. I then argue that the approach also provides a useful framework for the naturalisation of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology.

Alexander Bird (2001; 2002; 2007) offers a powerful argument showing that, regardless of whether necessitarianism or contingentism about laws is true, salt necessarily dissolves in water. The argument is that the same laws of nature that are necessary for the constitution of salt necessitate the solubility of salt. This paper shows that Bird’s argument faces a serious objection if the possibility of emergentism – in particular, C. D. Broad’s account – is taken into account. The idea is (roughly) that some emergent laws in some possible worlds may disrupt the solubility of salt without disrupting its constitution.

Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment: if epiphenomenalism is true—qualia are causally inefficacious—then any judgment concerning qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthorne (Philos Perspect 15:361–378, 2001), Smart (J Conscious Stud 11(2):41–50, 2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (The philosophy of mind and cognition, Blackwell, Malden, 2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers’s (The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996) and Seager’s (in: Beckermann A, McLaughlin BP (eds) The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences.

In this paper, we describe four broad ‘meta-methods’ employed in scientific and philosophical research of qualia. These are the theory-centred metamethod, the property-centred meta-method, the argument-centred meta-method, and the event-centred meta-method. Broadly speaking, the theory-centred meta-method is interested in the role of qualia as some theoretical entities picked out by our folk psychological theories; the property-centred meta-method is interested in some metaphysical properties of qualia that we immediately observe through introspection ; the argument-centred meta-method is interested in the role of qualia in some arguments for non-physicalism; the event-centred metamethod is interested in the role of qualia as some natural events whose nature is hidden and must be uncovered empirically. We will argue that the event-centred metamethod is the most promising route to a comprehensive scientific conception of qualia because of the flexibility of ontological and methodological assumptions it can provide. We also reveal the hidden influences of the different meta-methods and in doing so show why consideration of meta-methods has value for the study of consciousness.

In this paper we describe a few interrelated issues for validating theories that posit levels of consciousness. First, validating levels of consciousness requires consensus about the ordering of conscious states, which cannot be easily achieved. This problem is particularly severe if we believe conscious states can be irreducibly smeared over time. Second, the relationship between conscious states is probably sometimes intransitive, which means levels of consciousness will not be amenable to a single continuous measure. Finally, even if a multidimensional approach to levels of consciousness is adopted, we argue that there are further problems for its validation.