Robert Francescotti

Here I develop an account of what makes something a part of the body. The account presented is not an analysis of parthood generally, but an analysis of parthood specifically for what we are inclined to call a “body,” including but not limited to the bodies of human and nonhuman organisms. Drawing on influential accounts of parthood in the philosophical literature, with an emphasis on the core idea that something is a part in virtue of its contribution to the whole, I develop an analysis of bodily parthood that identifies what contribution to a body is necessary and sufficient for being a part of that body.

What makes a property intrinsic? What exactly does the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction rest upon, and how can we reasonably justify this distinction? These questions bear great importance on central debates in such diverse philosophical fields as ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science - to only name a few. Given the central relevance of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction to philosophical research, a collection of pertinent essays on the topic is an essential addition to the literature. It helps to identify more clearly the problems and arguments that are at stake. The anthology provides a comprehensive overview of central facets of the debates, including both crucial earlier and important new contributions by leading philosophers. As such it constitutes an indispensable component of any serious study of the topic.

Here I present an analysis of what it is for an x and a y to be the same F. Unlike the Fregean Analysis (FRE), according to which ‘x is the same F as y’ is equivalent to ‘x is an F, y is an F, and x = y’, the analysis presented and defended here allows that there are possible cases in which x and y are the same F1 but not the same F2 even though x is an F2 and y is an F2. The analysis offered here, FRE+, retains the conditions that FRE deems are necessary for being the same F while adding a further condition to allow that the same F1 can be a different F2. Although FRE+ is compatible with there being such cases, FRE+ shares with FRE that the identity mentioned in the analysis is nothing other than absolute identity. Thus, FRE+ offers a way to allow that the same F1 can be a different F2 while avoiding conflict with the traditionally accepted logic of identity, and I argue without conflict with the Indiscernibility of Identicals in particular.

The view that first-person (de se) mental content is essential to the explanation of action in general is a strong essential indexicality thesis. A weaker essential indexicality claim is that de se mental content is an essential ingredient of intentional action. An argument by Bermúdez for the former thesis and an argument from Babb in support of the latter are discussed in Section 2, and for reasons presented there it seems that both arguments are unsound and the conclusions are false as well. However, the discussion of their arguments helps us identify a certain class of intentional action, and an apparently very large class, the members of which are guaranteed to have de se origin. This class of intentional action is identified in Sections 3 and 4 and it is shown that necessarily, any member of this class has its origin in indexical, specifically, de se mental content.

Thomas Nagel contends that facts regarding the qualitative character of conscious experience can be grasped from only a single point of view. This feature, he claims, is what renders conscious experience subjective in character, and it is what makes facts about the qualitative experience subjective facts. While much has been written regarding the ontological implications of the ‘point of view account’ relatively Iittle has been said on whether the account itself successfully defines the subjectivity of the mental. In this paper, I show that considerations of what can be grasped from only a single point of view provide neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for subjective experience

Here I develop an account of our persistence that accommodates each of the following compelling intuitions: (i) that we are animals, (ii) that we existed prior to the onset of whatever psychological capacities are necessary for personhood, and we can continue to exist with the loss of those and other psychological capacities, (iii) that with suitable psychological continuity, the person goes with the brain/cerebrum in remnant person and brain/cerebrum transplant cases, and (iv) that it is possible for us to survive gradual large-scale replacement of organic with inorganic parts. With the help of a couple of well-known “hybrid” accounts, I develop an analysis of our persistence that entails (ii)–(iv) while being consistent with (i).

Various cases of conjoined twinning have been presented as problems for the animalist view that we are animals. In some actual and possible cases of human dicephalus that have been discussed in the literature, it is arguable that there are two persons but only one human animal. It is also tempting to believe that there are two persons and one animal in possible instances of craniopagus parasiticus that have been described. Here it is argued that the animalist can admit that these are cases in which human persons are not animals, without forfeiting the title “animalist.” It is also shown that this is not only an option but also a well-motivated and plausible option for the animalist. Seeing this requires getting clear on what the word “we” should be thought to include in the animalist's claim that we are animals. Here animalism is defended against twinning objections by figuring out how to view the scope of the animalist's identity claim.

In the region where some cat sits, there are many very cat-like items that are proper parts of the cat (or otherwise mereologically overlap the cat) , but which we are inclined to think are not themselves cats, e.g. all of Tibbles minus the tail. The question is, how can something be so cat-like without itself being a cat. Some have tried to answer this “Problem of the Many” (a problem that arises for many different kinds of things we regularly encounter, including desks, persons, rocks, and clouds) by relying on a mereological maximality principle, according to which, something cannot be a member of a kind K if it is a large proper part of, or otherwise greatly mereologically overlaps, a K. It has been shown, however, that a maximality constraint of this type, i.e. one that restricts mereological overlap, is open to strong objections. Inspired by the insights of, especially, Sutton and Madden, I develop a type of functional-maximality principle that avoids these objections (and has other merits), and thereby provides a better answer to the Problem of the Many.

Behaviorism is dead! Or so claim the majority of philosophers today. I aim to show that they are wrong. ;I defend philosophical behaviorism as an account of our ordinary, pretheoretical concepts pertaining to the intentional aspects of mind. The theory purports to explain in purely behavioral terms what it is for a mental state to be a belief, a desire or a thought, and what it is about the state that gives it its content. Like Rylean behaviorism, it does not seek to characterize intentional states in isolation from one another. It thereby honors the obvious fact that how we behaviorally manifest our beliefs depends upon our desires, and vice versa. Still, the theory is reductionistic in that it ultimately characterizes intentionality solely in terms of behavioral facts which can be expressed in a purely non-mentalistic vocabulary. ;Over the years, behaviorism has been the target of vigorous attack. In what follows, I consider some of the most popular objections that have been raised. These include: putative counterexamples involving paralytics, deceivers, martians and robots which are designed to show that behavioral criteria provide neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for intentionality, the claim mental content is underdetermined by how one is disposed to behave, the intuition that mental states are internal and causally efficacious and, the worry that since qualitative states can't be reduced to behavior, neither can beliefs about those states. I argue that all of these worries can be successfully handled by a theory which remains completely--or, at least, predominantly--behavioristic. ;Although I am largely concerned with counter-arguments, my dissertation is not entirely defensive. In order to bring out the merits of behaviorism, I show how it compares favorably with some alternative attempts to characterize intentionality purely physically--most notably, popular varieties of Functionalism. I am thereby able to conclude that behaviorism not only remains a viable account of mental content, but is perhaps the most viable

This book addresses a tightly knit cluster of questions in the philosophy of mind. There is the question: Are mental properties identical with physical properties? An affirmative answer would seem to secure the truth of physicalism regarding the mind, i.e., the belief that all mental phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. If the answer is negative, then the question arises: Can this solely in virtue of relation be understood as some kind of dependence short of identity? And answering this requires answering two further questions. Exactly what sort of dependence on the physical does physicalism require, and what is needed for a property or phenomenon to qualify as physical? It is argued that multiple realizability still provides irresistible proof (especially with the possibility of immaterial realizers) that mental properties are not identical with any properties of physics, chemistry, or biology. After refuting various attempts to formulate nonreductive physicalism with the notion of realization, a new definition of physicalism is offered. This definition shows how it could be that the mental depends solely on the physical even if mental properties are not identical with those of the natural sciences. Yet, it is also argued that the sort of psychophysical dependence described is robust enough that if it were to obtain, then in a plausible and robust sense of ‘physical’, mental properties would still qualify as physical properties.

Constitution theorists have argued that due to a difference in persistence conditions, persons are not identical with the animals or the bodies that constitute them. A popular line of objection to the view that persons are not identical with the animals/bodies that constitute them is that the view commits one to undesirable overpopulation, with too many minds and too many thinkers. Constitution theorists are well aware of these overpopulation concerns and have gone a long way toward answering them. However, there is one mental excess worry that remains especially problematic. It is argued here that the worry about too many thoughts, or too many instantiations of mentality in general, remains a serious threat to the constitution view of persons. What exactly the threat is and how it arises is described in detail in Section III. It is then shown that attempts to allay the concern are unsuccessful. I argue, in particular, that appealing to the distinction between derivative and non-derivative instantiation fails to solve the problem.

When deciding how ‘death’ should be defined, it is helpful to consider cases in which vital functions are restored to an organism long after those vital functions have ceased. Here I consider whether such restoration cases can be used to refute termination theses. Focusing largely on the termination thesis applied to human animals, I develop a line of argument from the possibility of human restoration to the conclusion that in many actual cases, human animals continue to exist after they die. The line of reasoning developed here can be extended to show that other organisms survive death in many actual cases. This line of reasoning improves on other arguments that have been offered against termination theses. And if my argument regarding human animals surviving death is successful, then assuming that human persons are animals, we can also conclude that human persons in many actual cases continue to exist after death.

To earn the title “ontological physicalist,” one must endorse an entailment thesis of the following sort: the physical properties that are had, together with the causal laws, determine which higher-level properties are had. I argue that if this thesis is to capture all that is essential to physicalist intuitions, the relevant set of causal laws must be restricted to purely physical laws. But then it follows that higher-level properties are physical properties. The conclusion is that one cannot consistently be an ontological physicalist while endorsing property pluralism

It is tempting to think that in the case of complete spatio-temporal coincidence, the statue is identical with the constituent lump of clay. However, some philosophers have thought that accepting constitution as identity in this type of case forces one to reject the necessity of identity. I show that there is no conflict here. By distinguishing between an object's being necessarily an F and an object's being necessity identical with an F, we can see that accepting the necessity of identity does not, and should not, compel one to reject constitution as identity.

It is widely held that psychological theories cannot be reduced to those of the natural sciences. Perhaps the most common reason for rejecting psycho-physical reduction is the belief that mental properties are multiply realizable--i.e., that events of different physical types might realize the same mental property. While the multiple realizability argument has had its share of criticism, its major flaw has been overlooked. I aim to show the real reason why the argument fails and why multiple realizability is compatible with even the strongest varieties of reduction.

Melnyk provides a rigorous analysis of the notion of realization with the aim of defining Physicalism. It is argued here that contrary to Melnyk's Realization Physicalism, the idea that mental phenomena are realized by physical phenomena fails to capture the physicalist belief that the former obtain in virtue of the latter. The conclusion is not that Physicalism is false, but that its truth is best explained with some notion other than realization in Melnyk's sense. I also argue that the problems with Melnyk's brand of Realization Physicalism generalize to other potential attempts to express Physicalism in terms of realization. The burden of proof is on the Realization Physicalist to show that physicalist intuitions can be adequately captured with the notion of realization

This paper examines two popular arguments for the nonidentity of the statue and its constituent material. An essentialist response is provided to one of the arguments; that response is then shown to undermine the other argument as well. It is also shown that even if we accept these arguments and concede nonidentity, we can still avoid the further conclusion that constitution is not identity. These ideas are then extended to other applications of the arguments for nonidentity (specifically, their application to a person and the constituent body, and to a mental event and its constituent neural event).

The notion of realization is defined so that we can better understand what it means to say that mentality is physically realized. It is generally thought that physical properties realize mental properties (thesis PR). The definitions provided here support this belief, but they also reveal that mental properties can be viewed as realizing physical properties. This consequence questions the value of PR in helping us capture the idea that mental phenomena are dependent upon (i.e., obtain by virtue of) physical phenomena. In particular, Kim's functional model of reduction and Melnyk's functional definition of physicalism are refuted.

To earn the title “ontological physicalist,” one must endorse an entailment thesis of the following sort: the physical properties that are had, together with the causal laws, determine which higher-level properties are had. I argue that if this thesis is to capture all that is essential to physicalist intuitions, the relevant set of causal laws must be restricted to purely physical laws. But then it follows that higher-level properties are physical properties. The conclusion is that one cannot consistently be an ontological physicalist while endorsing property pluralism.

In "How to Define Intrinsic Properties" I offered a relational account of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction. The basic idea is that F is an intrinsic property of an item x just in case x’s having F consists entirely in x’s having certain internal properties, where an internal property is one whose instantiation does not consist in one’s relation to any distinct items (items other than oneself and one’s proper parts). I still think that this relational analysis is largely correct, and here I provide additional support for it and defend it against some objections that have been raised. In the process I aim to make the account somewhat more precise, especially by contrasting it with a grounding approach to defining the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction.