Lynne Baker

Dennett’s has recently attempted to break the “spell” that prevents people from submitting their religious beliefs and practices to scientific investigation. But what spell is being broken? Religion is not a unified phenomenon. By supposing that it is, Dennett is led to adopt an implausible mimetic theory of religious belief, and to mistakenly assume that the presence of a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device would impugn religious belief. More troublingly, although religious beliefs and practices should be studied scientifically, it would be a mistake to treat science as the exclusive arbiter of reality. Dennett makes human beings (persons) seem like aggregates of parts. Such a view seems to have no room for human dignity, except as artifacts of an intentional stance. A plausible theory of human dignity would take people to be ontologically significant unities, who, on my view, have first-person perspectives essentially.

Peter van Inwagen recently published an essay entitled “Three Versions of the Ontological Argument” (Van Inwagen 2012). The three versions he labeled “The Meinongian Version,” “The Conceptual Version,” and “The Modal Version,” respectively. This paper proposes a fourth version, which, for want of a better label, is called ‘The Cognitive-Ability Version’. Van Inwagen says that “Anselm’s argument presupposes, and essentially presupposes, an ontology that is … Meinongian” (Van Inwagen 2012: 8). The paper argues otherwise. If it is right, Anselm’s argument in _Proslogion_ II is of the Cognitive-Ability variety, and not captured by any of van Inwagen’s versions of the ontological argument.

Both Animalism—the metaphysical thesis that “each of us is numerically identical with an animal”—and Constitutionalism—the metaphysical thesis that each of us is identical to a person and constituted by (not identical to) an animal—have argumentative support. For Animalism: (1) an argument from the evolution of the use of the word ‘I’ in animals (Snowdon); (2) an argument from the “Link thesis” that holds that there’s a link between personal identity and human-animal identity (Snowdon); (3) an argument from the “thinking animal” problem for non-Animalists (Olson); (4) an argument from a claim that a “theory of composition would tell us what we are” (Olson). For Constitutionalism: (1) an argument from biotechnological devices—neural implants, sophisticated prostheses; (2) an argument from the possibility of bodily resurrection. The chapter concludes that Constitutionalism is superior to Animalism.

Chisholm held that persons are essentially persons. The Constitution View affords a non‐Chisholmian way m defend the thesis that persons are essentially persons. The Constitution View shows how persons are constituted by‐but not identical to‐human animals. On the Constitution View, being a person determines a person's persistence conditions. On the Animalist View, being an animal determines a person's persistence conditions. Things of kind K have ontological significance if their persistence conditions are determined by their being members of K. On Chisholm's view, persons have ontological significance, but animals do not. On Animalism, animals have ontological significance, but persons do not. After explaining the notion of ontological significance, this article argues that persons do have ontological significance, and hence that Animalism is not true.

This stimulating book critically examines a wide range of physicalistic conceptions of mind in the works of Jerry A. Fodor, Stephen P. Stich, Paul M. Churchland, Daniel C. Dennett, and others. Part I argues that intentional concepts cannot be reduced to nonintentional (and nonsemantic) concepts; Part II argues that intentional concepts are nevertheless indispensable to our cognitive enterprises and thus need no foundation in physicalism. As a sustained challenge to the prevailing interpretation of cognitive science, this timely book fills a large gap in the philosophical literature. It is sure to spark controversy, yet its clarity makes it attractive as a text in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Saving Belief should be read by philosophers, psychologists, and others interested in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Baker rejects naturalistic views that exclude first-person facts. Persons are emergent, constituted entities having first-person perspectives that are ineliminable, first-personal, dispositional, multi-stage properties. Persons appear gradually with FPPs in the rudimentary stage, but are distinguished by the later, robust stage. We possess first-person perspectives essentially and thereby have first-personal persistence conditions. Transtemporal identity is unanalyzable, requiring a variant of the Simple View. All that can be said is that a person exists whenever her FPP is exemplified. The view is “not-so-simple” because it eschews substance dualism.

What is a human person, and what is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Baker's argument is based on the 'Constitution View' of persons and bodies, which aims to show what distinguishes persons from all other beings and to show how we can be fully material beings without being identical to our bodies. The Constitution View yields answers to the questions 'What am I most fundamentally?', 'What is a person?', and 'What is the relation between human persons and their bodies'? Baker argues that the complex mental property of first-person perspective enables one to conceive of one's body and mental states as one's own.

Lynne Rudder Baker presents and defends a unique account of the material world: the Constitution View. In contrast to leading metaphysical views that take everyday things to be either non-existent or reducible to micro-objects, the Constitution View construes familiar things as irreducible parts of reality. Although they are ultimately constituted by microphysical particles, everyday objects are neither identical to, nor reducible to, the aggregates of microphysical particles that constitute them. The result is genuine ontological diversity: people, bacteria, donkeys, mountains and microscopes are fundamentally different kinds of things - all constituted by, but not identical to, aggregates of particles. Baker supports her account with discussions of non-reductive causation, vagueness, mereology, artefacts, three-dimensionalism, ontological novelty, ontological levels and emergence. The upshot is a unified ontological theory of the entire material world that irreducibly contains people, as well as non-human living things and inanimate objects.

In the large recent literature on the nature of human persons, persons are usually studied in isolation from the world in which they live. What persons are most fundamentally, philosophers say, are human animals, or brains, or perhaps souls -- without any consideration of the social and physical environments without which persons would not exist. In this article, I want to compensate for such overly narrow focus. Instead of beginning with the nature of persons cut off from any environment, I shall begin with metaphysical consideration of the world of which persons are a part. I shall then briefly describe my view of persons, according to which persons are material objects like other concrete things in the world, but are unique in their first-person perspectives. Finally, I shall consider some of the special relations that persons, and only persons, have to other things in the world.

I want to raise a question for which I have no definitive answer. The question is how to understand first-personal phenomena—phenomena that that can be discerned only from a first-personal point of view. The question stems from reflection on two claims: First, the claim of scientific naturalism that all phenomena can be described and explained by science; and second, the claim of science that everything within its purview is intersubjectively accessible, and hence that all science is constructed exclusively form the third-personal point of view. Using these two claims as premises, we can construct a simple valid argument, which I’ll label ‘The Master Argument:’.

In his Confessions, Augustine lamented, “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.” In this respect, consciousness is like time. If no one asks me what consciousness is, I know. To pay attention to something is to become conscious of it. Indeed, everything with which I can be familiar ­­ from the sound of your footsteps to my own daydreams ­­ can be an object of my consciousness. Yet, if I wish to explain consciousness to one who asks, I know not. I (and, I suspect, we) have little theoretical grip on the nature of consciousness. Not for nothing did Schopenhauer call the problem of consciousness ‘the world knot.’ What, then, is consciousness?

After centuries of reflection, the issue of human freedom remains vital largely because of its connection to moral responsibility. When I ask—What is human freedom?—I mean to be asking what kind of freedom is required for moral responsibility? Questions about moral responsibility are intimately connected to questions about social policy and justice; so, the issue of moral responsibility—of desert, of whether or not anyone is ever really praiseworthy or blameworthy—has practical as well as theoretical significance.

We run into instances of material constitution everywhere we turn. Material constitution is the relation that obtains between an octagonal piece of metal and a Stop sign, between strands of DNA molecules and genes, between pieces of paper and dollar bills, between stones and monuments, between lumps of clay and statues, between human persons and their bodies—the list is endless. Although there has been a great deal of controversy recently about the nature of material constitution, I want to enter the fray by setting out and defending an explicit definition of what it is for an object x to constitute an object y at time t.

Bransen takes the first question to pose “the problem of man’s uniqueness,” and his ultimate aim is to dissolve that problem. His method of dissolving it is by way of a detailed answer to the second question, which is the most fundamental. I want to show that Bransen’s answer to the second question actually provides an answer to each of the other questions, and that instead of dissolving the problem of man’s uniqueness (posed by question #1), what he offers is really a straightforward solution—albeit a partly normative one. To see this, we must look beyond Bransen’s answer to the metaphysical presuppositions on which, I believe, it rests.

Through the ages, Christians have almost automatically been Mind-Body dualists. The Bible portrays us as spiritual beings, and one obvious way to be a spiritual being is to be (or to have) an immaterial soul. Since it is also evident that we have bodies, Christians naturally have thought of themselves as composite beings, made of two substances—a material body and a nonmaterial soul. Despite the historical weight of this position, I do not think that it is required either by Scripture or by Christian doctrine as it has developed through the ages. So, I want to argue that there is a Christian alternative to Mind-Body Dualism, and that the reasons in favor of the alternative outweigh those in favor of Mind-Body Dualism

The topics that I shall consider are these: (1) Causal Explanatoriness of the Attitudes (Dretske, Elugardo); (2) The “Brain-Explain” Thesis and Metaphysical Constraints on Explanation (Antony, Elugardo); (3) Causal Powers of Beliefs (Meyering); (4) Microreduction (Beckermann); (5) Non-Emergent, Non-Reductive Materialism (Antony); (6) The Master Argument Against the Standard View (Dretske, Antony, Elugardo); (7) Practical Realism Extended (Meijers); (8) Alternative to Both the Standard View and Practical Realism (Newen)

With all the attention given to the study of consciousness recently, the topic of self-consciousness has been relatively neglected. “It is of course [phenomenal] consciousness rather than...self-conscious that has seemed such a scientific mystery,” a prominent philosopher comments.1 Phenomenal consciousness concerns the aspect of a state that feels a certain way: roses smell like this; garlic tastes like that; middle C sounds like this, and so on. Although phenomenal consciousness is surely a fruitful area of scientific investigation, I hope to demonstrate here that investigation of selfconsciousness offers its own rewards, ontologically speaking