This paper presents a position called Scheme-based Alethic Realism, which reconciles a realist position on the nature of truth with a pluralistic Kantian perspective that allows for multiple environments in which truthmaking relationships are established. We argue that truthmaking functions are constrained by a stable phenomenal world and a stable cognitive architecture. This account takes truth as normatively distinct from epistemic justification while relativizing the truth conditions of our statements to what we call Frameworks. The pluralistic aspect allows that these (...) stable elements, while constraining representational and linguistic schemes, do not define a single framework for truthmaking relations. We strengthen this position by considering themes on situated rational agency from cognitive science and artificial intelligence, arguing that whatever enables or supports rational action within a particular environment must figure into some account of truth and truthmaking, and vice versa. (shrink)

This paper defends an idealist form of non-reductivism in the philosophy of mind. I refer to it as a kind of conceptual dualism without substance dualism. I contrast this idealist alternative with the two most widespread forms of non-reductivism: multiple realisability functionalism and anomalous monism. I argue first, that functionalism fails to challenge seriously the claim for methodological unity since it is quite comfortable with the idea that it is possible to articulate a descriptive theory of the mind. Second, that (...) as an attempt to graft conceptual mind-body dualism onto a monistic metaphysics, the idealist alternative bears some similarities to anomalous monism, but that it is superior to it because it is not vulnerable to the charge of epiphenomenalism. I conclude that this idealist alternative should be given serious consideration by those who remain unconvinced that a successful defence of the non-reducibility of the mental is compatible with the pursuit of a naturalistic agenda. (shrink)

A World for Us aims to refute physical realism and establish in its place a form of idealism. Physical realism, in the sense in which John Foster understands it, takes the physical world to be something whose existence is both logically independent of the human mind and metaphysically fundamental. Foster identifies a number of problems for this realist view, but his main objection is that it does not accord the world the requisite empirical immanence. The form of idealism that he (...) tries to establish in its place rejects the realist view in both its aspects. It takes the world to be something whose existence is ultimately constituted by facts about human sensory experience, or by some richer complex of non-physical facts in which such experiential facts centrally feature. Foster calls this phenomenalistic idealism. He tries to establish a specific version of such phenomenalistic idealism, in which the experiential facts that centrally feature in the constitutive creation of the world are ones that concern the organization of human sensory experience. The basic idea of this version is that, in the context of certain other constitutively relevant factors, this sensory organization creates the physical world by disposing things to appear systematically world-wise at the human empirical viewpoint. Chief among these other relevant factors is the role of God as the one who is responsible for the sensory organization and ordains the system of appearance it yields. It is this that gives the idealistically created world its objectivity and allows it to qualify as a real world. (shrink)

The winning entry in David Stove's Competition to Find the Worst Argument in the World was: “We can know things only as they are related to us/insofar as they fall under our conceptual schemes, etc., so, we cannot know things as they are in themselves.” That argument underpins many recent relativisms, including postmodernism, post-Kuhnian sociological philosophy of science, cultural relativism, sociobiological versions of ethical relativism, and so on. All such arguments have the same form as ‘We have eyes, therefore we (...) cannot see’, and are equally invalid. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes three conceptual problems that attend philosophical ac- counts of consciousness. The first concerns the problem of properly characterizing the nature of consciousness itself, the second is the problem of making intelligible the relation between consciousness and the.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) put forward a doctrine of mental monism, claiming that reality is fundamentally mental, and the physical world is a derived construct. This paper puts forward a defence of this theory, using a version of Berkeley.

The philosophical mind-body problem, which Chalmers has named the 'Hard Problem', concerns the nature of the mind and the body. Physicalist approaches have been explored intensively in recent years but have brought us no consensual solution. Dualistic approaches have also been scrutinised since Descartes, but without consensual success. Mentalism has received little attention, yet it offers an elegantly simple solution to the hard problem.

The remainder of thi8 work will have a different object from that of the four preceding books, which were contained in the first volume. ...

The idealist attitude followed in this paper is based on the assumption that only conscious experience in the Now is real. Conscious experience in the Now is supposed to be known directly or intuitively, it can not be explained. I think it constitutes t he basis of all ontology. Consciousness is conceived as the total of conscious experience in the Now, the ontology of consciousness is thus derived directly from the basis. The ontology of nature is derived more indirectly from (...) the basis. Science is regar ded as a catalog of selected conscious experiences (observations), acknowledged to be scientific and structured by means of concepts and theories (also regarded as conscious experiences). Material objects are regarded as heuristic concepts constructed fr o m the immediate experiences in the Now and useful for expressing observations within a certain domain with some of their mutual relations. History is also regarded as a construct from conscious experiences in the Now. Concepts of worlds without an ego a re seen to be in harmony with immediate egoless experiences. Worlds including spirituality are conceived as based on immediate spiritual experiences together with other immediate experiences. Idealist or immaterial philosophies have been criticized for im pl ying solipsism or "solipsism of the present moment". This critique is countered by emphasizing the importance of intersubjectivity for science and by introducing the more precise concepts of collective conscious experience and collective conscious expe rie nce across time. Comprehensive evidence supporting the heuristic value of these concepts is related. I conclude that the idealist approach leads to a coherent comprehension of natural science including mind-brain relations, while the mainstream materi alis t approach entails contradictions.and other problems for a coherent understanding. The idealist approach and the notion of collective conscious experience also facilitates cross-cultural studies and the underestanding of intersubjectivity. K. (shrink)