Mahdi Zakeri

Panpsychism, as opposed to physicalism and dualism, offers a third way to explain consciousness. According to panpsychism, some fundamental physical entities have conscious states. One of the important arguments for this view is the refutation of the emergence of consciousness. According to emergentism about consciousness, the consciousness of human beings and other beings is a property that emerges at the non-fundamental physical level from the fundamental physical nonconscious level. In the contemporary era, Galen Strawson first argued in detail for panpsychism through the refutation of the emergence of consciousness. Strawson divides emergentism into two types, true and inexplicable emergentism; he takes the true emergence of consciousness to be impossible, and inexplicable emergence to be fundamentally incoherent. The claim of this paper is that according to the historical background of emergentism, it turns out that a third type of emergentism can be assumed, which is, firstly, coherent and, secondly, the emergence of consciousness based on it is possible. In this type, the emergent property is only partially dependent upon the fundamental level. The dependence of the emergent property upon the fundamental level is nomological, and the laws of nature are fundamental (nomism), not reducible to powers (powerism). IntroductionAccording to emergentism, the consciousness is a property that emerges at the non-fundamental physical level from the fundamental physical nonconscious level. In the contemporary era, Galen Strawson first argued in detail for panpsychism through the refutation of the emergence of consciousness. His argument is a dilemma. According to it, emergence is either true or brute. The aim of this paper is to critically assess Strawson’s argument. We show that according to the historical background of emergentism, it turns out that a third type of emergentism can be assumed, which is, firstly, coherent and, secondly, the emergence of consciousness based on it is possible. We conclude that Strawson’s argument does not work. Strawson’s argument Strawson argues that the emergence of consciousness is either true or brute. In true emergence, the emergent property is wholly dependent upon the fundamental level and is explainable by it (in other words, knowledge of the emergent property is deducible from complete knowledge of the fundamental level). In brute emergence, although the emergent property is wholly dependent upon the fundamental level, it is unexplainable by it. Therefore, the main feature of the emergence in Strawson’s definition is the whole dependence of the emergent property upon the fundamental level. Because of this feature, Strawson considers brute emergence in general (it doesn’t matter whether it is about consciousness or not) as impossible, for the assumption of the whole dependence of the emergent property upon the fundamental level is inconsistent with the assumption that it is not deducible from the fundamental level (even in the case of complete knowledge of the fundamental level). Strawson also takes the true emergence of consciousness to be impossible; because if the emergence of consciousness is true emergence, then the existence of consciousness must be explainable in terms of the fundamental nonconscious level. But this explanation intuitively is as impossible as an explanation of extended things in terms of non-extended things. Therefore, neither true emergence of consciousness from the nonconscious fundamental level nor the brute one is possible. So, Strawson concludes that the only reasonable and naturalistic explanation of the existence of consciousness at the non-fundamental physical level (such as in humans) is panpsychism.Ontological emergenceWe offer a comprehensive conceptual framework for emergentism that includes the views of most contemporary emergentists. The main features of emergentism are hierarchical ontology, supervenience of higher levels on lower levels, the novelty and unpredictability of the emergent, and inexplicability and irreducibility of the emergent. So, one may consider a version of emergentism in which the emergent mental properties are nomically supervenient on the basic properties and thus are wholly dependent on the basic biological bases according to the laws of the current world. Why Strawson’s argument does not workThe offered conceptual framework for emergentism shows that one can assume another type of emergence besides the true and brute types. In this type, the emergent property is only partially dependent upon the fundamental level. In other words, the dependence of the emergent property upon the fundamental level is nomological. So, in a world with different relevant laws of nature, the emergent property does not exist, even if exactly the same fundamental level exists. This third type of emergence can be found in Broad’s view, the most famous British emergentist. Broad divides laws of nature into intra-ordinal laws and trans-ordinal laws. He believes that the existence of a fundamental level with the laws of nature within it (intra-order laws) is not enough for emergence unless the relevant trans-ordinal law also holds. Then, to avoid Strawson’s dilemma, we need to determine the ontological status of laws of nature (specifically, trans-ordinal laws). In other words, we need to decide whether the laws of nature are fundamental (nomism) or reducible to powers, counterfactual conditionals, or the Humean Mosaic. It seems that Strawson’s argument presumes a certain ontological status of laws of nature, i.e., powerism. According to powerism, the truths of powers are fundamental and truths of laws of nature are reducible to them. So, the trans-ordinal laws of nature are reducible the to truths of powers at the fundamental level. It concludes that the emergent property is wholly dependent upon the fundamental level. But on the contrary, Broad avoids Strawson’s dilemma by assuming a different ontological status of trans-ordinal laws, i.e., nomism. ConclusionThe historical background of emergentism (Broad’s view) shows that Strawson’s dilemma is not enough to deny the emergence of consciousness and to defend panpsychism; Because, by assuming the whole dependence of the emergent only on its base, Strawson has assumed only two types of correct and brute emergence. On the one hand, he has considered brute emergence to be incoherent, and on the other hand, he has considered correct emergence to be impossible. But according to an emergentist such as Broad, the dependence of emergent properties, including mental properties, on the basic properties is not whole dependence, even considering intra-order laws of the basic level; On the contrary, the emergent properties are totally dependent on the basic level (basic level properties and intra-order laws), considering trans-ordinal laws.

This article aims at disambiguation or better say, decontradiction of the concept of ideology by referring to Ricoeur's opinions about ideology. Ricoeur calls his method of studying ideology phenomenological. Why phenomenology? Because the term ideology, when placed in a polemical framework, will suffer from both "bad use" and "abuse". Only with a serious semantic approach and a correct explanation of the conditions that this concept depends on, can we put an end to this abuse. Such a task is possible in the light of an approach that Ricoeur calls "developmental phenomenology", "a rising analysis of the concept" and "an attempt to explore the subsurface of the obvious meaning of ideology to reach its fundamental meanings". The attempt is to disambiguate this concept, which is at first glance polemical and controversial, so that a clearer and fairer definition of it would be presented. Based on Paul Ricoeur's work titled Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, which was delivered at the University of Chicago in 1975, and his other articles and works on ideology and phenomenology, this article has tried to answer the two main questions of this field together with Ricoeur: a) Who were the main theorists of the concept of ideology? b) How many major definitions can be extracted from the phenomenological study of ideology? The extract of the intertwined answer to the two mentioned questions is that Ricoeur, while examining the works of people such as Marx, Althusser, Mannheim, Weber, Habermas and Geertz, questions the common and negative perceptions of ideology, and based on a detailed and deep examination of the works of the mentioned thinkers, comes to three major and specific definitions, or in other words, three stages or functions of ideology; the first one based on Marx's definition, the second one based on Weber's attitude and the last one based on Geertz's views about this term. Ricoeur calls these three definitions, stages or functions respectively, ideology as "ambiguity of reality", ideology as source of "power legitimacy", and finally ideology as source of "social cohesion". Based on such an analysis of ideology, in the second part of the article, the different functions of utopia have been discussed, and while emphasizing the positive aspects of utopia, it has been concluded in conformity with Ricoeur that a society without utopia is a dead society.

Many ordinary things are made up of material things. For example, the statue of Ferdousi in the University of Tehran is made up of a particular piece of bronze. Calling the relation between the statue of Ferdousi and that piece of bronze material constitution, many philosophers have claimed that this relation between a material thing and the thing that it constitutes is identity. Baker, in contrast, believes that these things have genuine unity without necessary identity. In this article, I first illustrate the principles of Baker’s theory and his explanation of this relation. Then I will assess the theory against objections. I will conclude that this theory can successfully explain relation between many of material things, but concerning things belonging to human beings, the theory fails to introduce a criterion for constitution.

According to Donald Davidson’s causal theory of actions, an action is an event that an agent performs for reasons, and thus explanation by appeal to the agent’s reasons is a rational explanation as well as a causal explanation. Against Davidson’s theory there have been raised a number of objections, one of which is called “normativity”. The roots of this objection are that, on one hand, causal account is relative to things existing outside the mind but, on the other hand, normative things are things existing in the realm of mind; therefore we can not use causal explanation to mental things. The present article first refers the basic concepts of Davidson’s theory; then, it accounts his theory of action; and finally it deals in detail with the objection “normativity”.

One of the issues of Philosophy of Mind is the intentionality of the mind. The topic of this article is the study of the two related aspects of this issue, i.e. the possibility of intentionality and how mind content is determined in the Teleological Theory of Mental Content. According to this theory, the natural evolution of a living organism and the teleological functions based on this determines mental content and one can present a natural and physical explanation of intentionality and mental content with help from that. In this article, after explaining the foundations of this theory, i.e. realism in regards to intentionality, naturalism and the principle of natural evolution of species, we will first address two main versions of this theory, i.e. Dretske’s Indicator Semantics and Millikan Consumer Semantics and then evaluate them. The most important problem of this theory is that it cannot explain the content and meaning of philosophical and logical concepts nor non-existence concepts and therefore, it faces issues concerning the above concepts.

Philosophy of action includes several main issues. The first issue is a conceptual issue, that is, what is an action and what is the best criterion for distinguishing it from mere physical movement. Another field of discussion related to the ontology of action discusses the differentiation of action with its different descriptions. In other words, the issue is that when the agent performs an action that is characterized by different descriptions, is there an event and action here that accepts different descriptions, or are there actions on the number of these descriptions? The third area of the philosophy of action is related to the explanation of action by appealing to the motivational and cognitive elements of the agent; Like desire, intention and belief. In this field, the discussion is about how the agent's motivational and cognitive elements explain the agent's action. Is this explanation causal or not, and if it is causal, is it nomological or anomalous? The focus of the fourth field is the issue of freedom. What is the nature of free action? If the determination of causation is true, can we still speak of free action and moral responsibility of actions or not? Among the issues of practical philosophy, the issue of free will requires a detailed discussion and an independent book; Therefore, the present book deals with only three issues among the debates of philosophers, that is, definition, individuation and explanation of action. The topic of the first chapter is the definition of action, the second chapter is the individuation of action, and the third chapter is the explanation of action. In the fourth chapter, which is dedicated to Islamic philosophy, the most important discussion of Muslim philosophers about action, i.e., the principles of voluntary action, has been raised. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to provide a coherent picture of Muslim philosophers' views on the principles of action. For this work, Ibn Sina's works have been used as a basis and the missing details have been provided from the works of other philosophers, and finally, the difference between the views of other philosophers, including Mulla Sadra, and Ibn Sina's view has been noted.