Robert Francescotti

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 recent “hybrid” animalist 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.

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.

For nearly a decade, David Rosenthal has proposed that a mental state M of a creature C is conscious just in case C has a suitable higher-order thought directed toward M. While this theory has had its share of criticism in recent years, I believe that the real difficulties have been ignored. In this essay, I show that the presence of a higher order is insufficient for conscious experience, even if we suppose that the thought satisfies the constraints that Rosenthal lists . The only way Rosenthal's view could possibly yield sufficient conditions is by requiring that the higher-order thought be suitably causally related to its object. Yet, as I also show, the only causal constraint strong enough to do the job is not only ill-motivated but probably false

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.

Substance dualism is widely rejected by philosophers of mind, but many continue to accept some form of property dualism. The assumption here is that one can consistently believe that (1) mental properties are not physical properties, while denying that (2) mental particulars are not physical particulars. But is this assumption true? This paper considers several analyses of what makes something a physical particular (as opposed to a non-physical particular), and it is argued that on any plausible analysis, accepting (1) requires accepting (2) as well

According to one brand of 'externalism', cognitive theories should individuate mental content 'widely'--that is, partly in terms of environmental features. David Marr's theory of vision is often cited in support of this view. Many philosophers (most notably, Tyler Burge) regard it as a prime example of a fruitful cognitive theory that widely individuates the representations it posits. I argue that, contrary to popular belief, Marr's theory does not presuppose an externalist view of mental content.

Abstract: Those who endorse the Psychological Continuity Approach (PCA) to analyzing personal identity need to impose a non-branching constraint to get the intuitively correct result that in the case of fission, one person becomes two. With the help of Brueckner's (2005) discussion, it is shown here that the sort of non-branching clause that allows proponents of PCA to provide sufficient conditions for being the same person actually runs contrary to the very spirit of their theory. The problem is first presented in connection with perdurantist versions of PCA. The difficulty is then shown to apply to endurantist versions as well.

How can an object remain the same, numerically identical, while undergoing change? This is a worry for endurantists, who hold that for any stages, x and y, of a persisting object, x is numerically identical with y. Endurantists might try to avoid the problem of change by insisting that all properties are temporally anchored. It is argued here that while this strategy helps in many cases, it does not help in all. A type of case is presented in which a property is time-indexed but the property is one that an object exemplifies at only one time in its career. The choice between the A theory and the B theory of time (in particular, presentism versus eternalism), and how that bears on the problem presented here, is also considered. It is argued that regardless of our views about the nature of time, so long as objects persist through time while undergoing change, the risk of violating the Indiscernibility of Identicals remains a serious threat to endurantism

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.

An intrinsic property, according to one important account, is a property that is had by all of one's duplicates. Instead, one might choose to characterize intrinsic properties as those that can be had in the absence of all distinct individuals. After reviewing the problems with these earlier accounts, the author presents a less problematic analysis. The goal is to clarify the rough idea that an intrinsic property is a special sort of non-relational property; having the property does not consist in any relation one bears to distinct individuals.

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.

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.

Like Bennett's account of ‘even’, my analysis incorporates the following plausible and widespread intuitions. (a) The word ‘even’ does not make a truth-functional difference; it makes a difference only in conventional implicature. In particular, ‘even’ functions neither as a universal quantifier, nor a most or many quantifier. The only quantified statement that ‘Even A is F’ implies is the existential claim ‘There is an x (namely, A) that is F’, but this implication is nothing more than what the Equivalence Thesis already demands. (b) ‘Even’ is epistemic in character, implying some type of unexpectedness, surprise, or unlikelihood. Moreover, despite Kay's arguments to the contrary, this implication is part of the meaning of ‘even’. (c) ‘Even’ is a scalar term, since unexpectedness comes in degrees. And, finally, (d) the felicity of an ‘even’-sentence S requires that S* be sufficiently surprising in comparison to its true neighbors. However,pace Bennett, being more surprising than just one true neighbor will not suffice. At the same time, being more surprising than all true neighbors is unnecessary. Suffice it that S* is more surprising than most true neighbors.

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).