Physicalism is the view, roughly, that everything is physical. This thesis is often characterized in terms of a particular supervenience thesis. Central to this thesis is the idea of physical duplication. I argue that the standard way of understanding physical duplication leads—along with other claims—to a sub-optimal consequence for the physicalist. I block this consequence by shifting to an alternative sense of physical duplication. I then argue that physicalism is best characterized by a (...) supervenience thesis that employs both the new sense of physical duplication and a new class of possible worlds. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an argument for the thesis that ‘maximality is extrinsic’, on which a whole physical object is not a whole of its kind in virtue of its intrinsic properties. Theodore Sider has a number of arguments that depend on his own simple argument that maximality is extrinsic. However, Peter van Inwagen has an argument in defence of his Duplication Principle that, I will argue, can be extended to show that Sider's simple argument fails. However, (...) van Inwagen's argument fails against a more complex, sophisticated argument that maximality is extrinsic. I use van Inwagen's own commitments to various forms of causation and metaphysical possibility to argue that maximality is indeed extrinsic, although not for the mundane reasons that Sider suggests. I then argue that moral properties are extrinsic properties. Two physically identical things can have different moral properties in a physical world. This argument is a counterexample to a classical ethical supervenience idea (often attributed to G.E. Moore) that if there is identity of physical properties in a physical world, then there is identity in moral properties as well. I argue moral value is ‘border sensitive’ and extrinsic for Kantians, utilitarians, and Aristotelians. (shrink)

Suppose that a physical duplicate of me, right down to the arrangements of subatomic particles, comes into existence at the time at which I finish this sentence. Suppose that it comes into existence by chance, or at least by a causal process entirely unconnected with me. It might be so situated that it, too, is seated in front of a computer, and finishes this paragraph and paper, or a corresponding one, just as I do. (i) Would it have the (...) same thoughts I do? (ii) Would it speak my language? (iii) Would my duplicate have any thoughts or (iv) speak any language at all? To fix the interpretation of these questions, I will take ‘thought’ to cover any mental state which has a representational content, where ‘representational content’ is intended to be neutral with respect to psychological mode. By 'psychological mode' I mean what distinguishes kinds of thoughts, such as belief, visual perceptual experience, desire, etc. Representational content, or thought content, as I will also say, determines the conditions under which a thought is true or false, veridical or non-veridical, or, more broadly, is satisfied or fails to be satisfied, independently of relativization to circumstances, possible worlds, or the like. Beliefs, desires, hopes, intentions, and perceptual experiences will all count as thoughts on this usage. The question whether one person has the same (type of) thought as another is the question whether both have a mental state with the same representational content in the same psychological mode. I will not count epistemic verbs, however, as picking out or expressing a (pure) psychological mode. Thus, although knowing that the time is ripe, seeing that there is a goldfinch in the garden, and remembering that my wife’s birthday is next Tuesday are all thoughts, they do not pick out the thoughts by using a verb that expresses a psychological mode. Therefore knowing, seeing or remembering the same things is not a requirement on having the same thoughts.. (shrink)

Most attempts at defining or elucidating ’weak’ or ’strong’ supervenience introduce various forms of _physical indiscernibility_. After glancing at some definitions, I argue that they must fail if mental events are supposed to be genuinely causally efficacious and non-epiphenomenal. Then I elucidate Davidson’s account of supervenience (’D-supervenience’), first as an abstract relation between a predicate and a set of predicates (to be illustrated by uncontroversial examples), and then as applied to the mental/physical relation. I argue that Davidson must defend (...) that if two events are physically indiscernible in the light of a complete physical theory of the world then they must be identical in the Leibnizian sense (‘L-identity’): physical indiscernibility collapses into L-identity. It follows that mental differences between two numerically different events logically entail physical differences between them. I conclude by demonstrating how the Davidsonian account of the concept can explain some counterexamples to Moore’s approach to supervenience of moral on natural properties. The central tenet in this paper is that supervenience principles based on duplication create, rather than solve, problems in this problem area. (shrink)

According to the ‘conceivability argument’ [1] it’s conceivable that a conscious human being H may have a perfect physical duplicate H* who isn’t conscious, [2] whatever is conceivable is possible, therefore [3] H* may possibly exist. This paper argues that the conceivability argument can’t help in discussion of the ‘mind–body problem’ even if [2] is allowed to be true. This is not because [1] is false, but because we don’t and can’t know enough about the nature of the (...) class='Hi'>physical to know whether or not [1] is true. This follows from ‘the silence of physics’—the fact that physics neither does nor can tell us about the intrinsic non-structural nature of the physical, and the consequences of this fact for any adequate account of the meaning of the word ‘physical’. (shrink)

NRP is a family of views differing by how they understand “reduction” and “physicalism.” Following Kim I understand the non-reduction as holding that some events and properties are distinct from any physical events and properties. A necessary condition for physicalism is that mental properties, events, and laws supervene on physical ones. Kim allows various understandings of “supervenience” but I think that physicalism requires at least the claim that any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a (...) duplicate simpliciter. Some complications aside this means that true mental propositions, e.g. Jaegwon is thinking about sailing, are metaphysically entailed by true physical propositions. Kim says that supervenience is too weak to capture the root idea of physicalism that mental property instantiations depend on physical property instantiations so he adds that the mental depends on the physical. One way in which this dependance might be spelled out is that mental properties are higher order functional properties whose instantiations are realized by instantiations of physical properties. An event is an instantiation of a property by an individual and a time. A mental event is the instantiation of a mental property. Not every predicate expresses a genuine property. Kim further suggests that properties are individuated, at least partly, by nomological and causal relations. For physicalism to have content something must be said about the difficult issue of characterizing the physical. Kim’s view seems to be that the micro-physical properties of ideal physics are physical. He also counts as physical properties that are conjunctions and aggregates of micro-physical properties and higher level properties defined over lower-level physical properties.. Since these latter two classes of properties supervene on the micro-properties and laws there is no need to include them in the supervenience base. (shrink)

Some influential arguments in the metaphysics of consciousness, in particular Chalmers’ Zombie Argument, suppose that all the physical properties of composed physical systems are metaphysically necessitated by their fundamental constituents. In this paper I argue against this thesis in order to debate Chalmers’ argument. By discussing, in non-technical terms, an EPR system I try to show that there are good reasons to hold that some composed physical systems have properties which are nomologically necessitated by their fundamental constituents, (...) i.e., which emerge in the sense of the so-called ‘nomological supervenience’ views. (shrink)

NRP is a family of views differing by how they understand “reduction” and “physicalism.” Following Kim I understand the non-reduction as holding that some events and properties are distinct from any physical events and properties. A necessary condition for physicalism is that mental properties, events, and laws supervene on physical ones. Kim allows various understandings of “supervenience” but I think that physicalism requires at least the claim that any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a (...) duplicate simpliciter. Some complications aside this means that true mental propositions, e.g. Jaegwon is thinking about sailing, are metaphysically entailed by true physical propositions. Kim says that supervenience is too weak to capture the root idea of physicalism that mental property instantiations depend on physical property instantiations so he adds that the mental depends on the physical. One way in which this dependance might be spelled out is that mental properties are higher order functional properties whose instantiations are realized by instantiations of physical properties. An event is an instantiation of a property by an individual and a time. A mental event is the instantiation of a mental property. Not every predicate expresses a genuine property. Kim further suggests that properties are individuated, at least partly, by nomological and causal relations. For physicalism to have content something must be said about the difficult issue of characterizing the physical. Kim’s view seems to be that the micro-physical properties of ideal physics are physical. He also counts as physical properties that are conjunctions and aggregates of micro-physical properties and higher level properties defined over lower-level physical properties.. Since these latter two classes of properties supervene on the micro-properties and laws there is no need to include them in the supervenience base. (shrink)

In vertebrates, single cell analyses of replication timing patterns brought to light a very well controlled program suggesting a tight regulation on initiation sites. Mapping of replication origins with different methods has revealed discrete preferential sites, enriched in promoters and potential G‐quadruplex motifs, which can aggregate into initiation zones spanning several tens of kilobases (kb). Another characteristic of replication origins is a nucleosome‐free region (NFR). A modified yeast strain containing a humanized origin recognition complex (ORC) fires new origins at NFRs (...) revealing their regulatory role. In cooperation with NFRs, the histone variant H2A.Z facilitates ORC loading through di‐methylation of lysine 20 of histone H4. Recent studies using genome editing methods show that efficient initiation sites associated with transcriptional activity can synergize over several tens of kb by establishing physical contacts and lead to the formation of early domains of DNA replication demonstrating a co‐regulation between replication initiation and transcription. (shrink)

The possibility of algorithmic consciousness depends on the assumption that conscious states can be copied or repeated by sufficiently duplicating their underlying physical states, leading to a variety of paradoxes, including the problems of duplication, teleportation, simulation, self-location, the Boltzmann brain, and Wigner’s Friend. In an effort to further elucidate the physical nature of consciousness, I challenge these assumptions by analyzing the implications of special relativity on evolutions of identical copies of a mental state, particularly the divergence (...) of these evolutions due to quantum fluctuations. By assuming the supervenience of a conscious state on some sufficient underlying physical state, I show that the existence of two or more instances, whether spacelike or timelike, of the same conscious state leads to a logical contradiction, ultimately refuting the assumption that a conscious state can be physically reset to an earlier state or duplicated by any physical means. Several explanatory hypotheses and implications are addressed, particularly the relationships between consciousness, locality, physical irreversibility, and quantum no-cloning. (shrink)

MATTER AND LIGHT The New Physics By LOUIS DE BROGLIE. Originally published in 1937. TRANSLATORS NOTE: THE Author has in certain places modified the original French text for the English translation, for the sake of greater cohesion, and has also revised some passages, in order to bring them into accord with the results of later research. Occasional Translators Notes are shown in square brackets. The chapter on The Undulatory Aspects of the Electron has the special historical interest of having been (...) delivered as a Lecture on the occasion of the Authors receipt of the Nobel Award, while that on Wave Mechanics and its Interpretations was given as an Address at the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1928. I am indebted to Dr. J. E. Turner, of the University of Liver pool, for assistance with the translation and the proofs, and to Dr. C. Strachan, of the same University, I am indebted for valuable assistance in dealing with the equations and the more technical passages, as well as for reading the proofs. W. H. J. PREFACE: THE amiable insistence of my friend Andr George has induced me to collect in the present Volume a number of Studies on con temporary Physics written from both the general and the more metaphysical point of view. Each of these Studies forms an inde pendent whole, and can be read by itself. A slight degree of repeti tion which the reader is asked to overlook has been the inevi table result for on more than one occasion I have been compelled to duplicate a summary of the great fundamental stages of con temporary Physics, such as the classification of simple substances, the investigation of the photo-electric effect and the origin of the Theory of Light Quanta and of Wave Mechanics the subjects are somewhat technical, and I cannot well assume that they are common knowledge. But though the same subject is outlined in several of these Studies, I have tried to take up a different point of view in each, and have endeavoured to throw light on different aspects of the essential problems of Quantum Physics in order to facilitate a grasp of their importance. On comparing the different chapters the reader will observe that, while overlapping, they also complement one another and he will feel the fascination and greatness inherent in the vast structure of modern Physics. And while admiring the vast number and the extreme delicacy of experimental facts which laboratory physicists have succeeded in revealing, and the strange and brilliant concepts devised by theorists to explain them, he will appreciate to what a degree the methods and ideas of physicists have grown in subtlety during recent years, and how great has been the progress from the somewhat ingenuous Realism and the over-simplified Mechanics of earlier thinkers. The more deeply we descend into the minutest structures of Matter, the more clearly we see that the concepts evolved by the mind in the course of everyday experience especially those of Time and Space must fail us in an endeavour to describe the new worlds which we are entering. One feels tempted to say that the outlines of our concepts must undergo a progressive blurring, in order that they may retain some semblance of relevance to the realities of the subatomic scales. Time and Space, in other words, are too loose a dress for the elementary entities individuality becomes attenuated in the mysterious pro cesses of interaction, and even Determinism, the darling of an older generation of physicists, is forced to yield... (shrink)

Physicists Brian Greene and Max Tegmark both make variants of the claim that if the universe is infinite and matter is roughly uniformly distributed, then there are infinitely many “people with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutation of your life choices.” In this paper I argue that--while our current best theories in astrophysics may allow one to conclude that we have infinitely many duplicates whose lives are identical to our own from start (...) to finish--without either further advances in physics or advances in fields like biology, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Greene’s and Tegmark’s claims about the ways in which our duplicates lives will differ from our own are not a consequence of our best current scientific theories. Rather, I argue that Greene and Tegmark’s conclusions rely on philosophically imprecise usages of the language of “possibility.”. (shrink)

A zombie is a physical duplicates of a human being which lacks consciousness. A ghost is a phenomenal duplicate of a human being whose nature is exhausted by consciousness. Discussion of zombie arguments, that is anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of zombies, is familiar in the philosophy of mind literature, whilst ghostly arguments, that is, anti-physicalist arguments which appeal to the conceivability of ghosts, are somewhat neglected. In this paper I argue that ghostly arguments have a number (...) of dialectical advantages over zombie arguments. I go onto explain how the conceivability of ghosts is inconsistent with two kinds of a priori physicalism: analytic functionalism and the Australian physicalism of Armstrong and Lewis. (shrink)

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) identifies consciousness with having a maximum amount of integrated information. But a thing’s having the maximum amount of anything cannot be intrinsic to it, for that depends on how that thing compares to certain other things. IIT’s consciousness, then, is not intrinsic. A mereological argument elaborates this consequence: IIT implies that one physical system can be conscious while a physical duplicate of it is not conscious. Thus, by a common and reasonable conception of intrinsicality, (...) IIT’s consciousness is not intrinsic. It is then argued that to avoid the implication that consciousness is not intrinsic, IIT must abandon its Exclusion Postulate, which prohibits overlapping conscious systems. Indeed, theories of consciousness that attribute consciousness to physical systems, should embrace the view that some conscious systems overlap. A discussion of the admittedly counterintuitive nature of this solution, along with some medical and neuroscientific realities that would seem to support it, is included. (shrink)

In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects but for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such (...) that thinking about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons. (shrink)

In der Debatte zwischen Dualisten und Physikalisten spielen Zombies seit geraumer Zeit eine entscheidende Rolle – physikalische Duplikate phänomenal bewusster Lebewesen, die selbst nicht phänomenal bewusst sind. Die Vorstellbarkeit bzw. Möglichkeit von Zombies bringt, so die Standardauffassung, den Physikalismus in Schwierigkeiten: Wenn die physikalische Ausstattung der Welt die Welt in ihrer Gesamtheit determiniert, wie vom Physikalismus gefordert, dann kann es keine physikalischen Duplikate phänomenal bewusster Lebewesen geben, die nicht ebenfalls phänomenal bewusst sind. Die Arbeit argumentiert dafür, dass die Standardauffassung falsch (...) ist. Aus den üblicherweise angestellten Überlegungen ergibt sich kein zwingendes Argument gegen den Physikalismus, sondern bestenfalls die überraschende Konsequenz, dass Physikalisten wie Dualisten ihre jeweilige Position nicht als kontingent betrachten können, und schlimmstenfalls die nicht minder überraschende Konsequenz, dass der Dualismus falsch ist, wenn der Physikalismus mit der Möglichkeit von Zombies unverträglich ist.The debate between dualism and physicalism has recently been dominated by zombies—physical duplicates of phenomenally conscious beings that lack phenomenal consciousness. According to the standard view, the conceivability or possibility of zombies creates a serious problem for physicalism: If the physical make-up of the word determines the world in its entirety, as physicalism maintains, then there can be no physical duplicates of phenomenally conscious beings that are not phenomenally conscious. This paper argues that the standard view is wrong. The considerations usually appealed to do not yield a convincing argument against physicalism. At best, they result in the surprising claim that physicalists and dualists cannot understand their respective views as a contingent claim; at worst , they yield the no less surprising result that dualism is wrong if physicalism is incompatible with the possibility of zombies. (shrink)

Prospective developments in computer and nanotechnology suggest that there is some possibility—perhaps as early as this century—that we will have the technological means to attempt to duplicate people. For example, it has been speculated that the psychology of individuals might be emulated on a computer platform to create a personality duplicate—an “upload.” Physical duplicates might be created by advanced nanobots tasked with creating molecule-for-molecule copies of individuals. Such possibilities are discussed in the philosophical literature as (putative) cases of “fission”: (...) one person “splitting” into two. Many philosophers, perhaps most, reject the idea of fission, appealing to some form of a “no-branching” condition to rule out such possibilities. I argue, to the contrary, that there are good moral reasons to think that any account of personal identity that does not permit fission is deeply problematic, especially in connection with theorizing about criminal punishment. I discuss and reject David Lewis’ famous account of personal identity that invokes “multiple occupancy” to allow for branching. In contrast, I offer an account of personal identity that permits branching using the type/token distinction to help with such puzzling cases. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to offer a new view of the key relation between the content and the conscious character of visual experience. The author aims to support the following claims. First, the author rejects the qualia realist claim that conscious character is an intrinsic, nonrepresentational property of visual experience, for example, a pattern of activation of neurons. However, the author also rejects the rival widespread representationalist claim that the conscious character of visual experience is identical to, or (...) supervenes on, any specific property represented by visual experience. The positive proposal is the following. Conscious character is identical to those patterns of activation of neurons that are referentially or representationally alive. Conscious redness, for example, is a pattern of activations of neurons that is normally created only when brains of physical duplicates come in visual contact with some distal property. This pattern of activation is recruited by natural selection to represent that property. This is called meaning representationalism. (shrink)

Many well-known arguments against physicalism—e.g., Chalmers’s Zombie Argument and Kripke’s Modal Argument—contend that it is conceivable for there to be physical duplicates of ourselves that have no conscious experiences (or, conversely, for there to be disembodied minds) and also that what is conceivable is possible—and therefore, if phenomenal-physical identity statements are supposed to be necessary, then physicalism can’t be true. Physicalists typically respond to these arguments either by questioning whether such creatures can truly be conceived, or denying that (...) the conceivability of such creatures provides good evidencefor their ‘metaphysical’ possibility. An increasing number of physicalists, however, contest these arguments in a different way, namely, by suggesting that the conceivability premises in these arguments beg the question: one’s ability to conceive of the existence of zombies (or disembodied minds) depends exclusively on what one antecedently believes to be the nature of conscious experience (or the theories of consciousness one tacitly accepts)—and therefore cannot legitimately be used to draw conclusions about whether conscious experiences could be physical states or processes. My aim in this paper is to consider, and raise questions about, (various versions of) this response to the antiphysicalist arguments—and argue that physicalists have more promising ways to disarm them. (shrink)

A widely accepted theory holds that emotional experiences occur mainly in a part of the human brain called the amygdala. A different theory asserts that color sensation is located in a small subpart of the visual cortex called V4. If these theories are correct, or even approximately correct, then they are remarkable advances toward a scientific explanation of human conscious experience. Yet even understanding the claims of such theories—much less evaluating them—raises some puzzles. Conscious experience does not present itself as (...) a brain process. Indeed experience seems entirely unlike neural activity. For example, to some people it seems that an exact physical duplicate of you could have different sensations than you do, or could have no sensations at all. If so, then how is it even possible that sensations could turn out to be brain processes? (shrink)

At this point in time the two-dimensional (2D) argument against physicalism is well known (Chalmers 2009; 2010), as are the many responses to it. However there has been a recent development that has yet to be widely discussed. Some philosophers have argued that we have equally compelling reasons to think that dualism is false based on the conceivability of mere physical duplicates which enjoy conscious experience in just the way we do (Martin 1998; Sturgeon 2000; Piccinini 2006; Frankish 2007; (...) Brown 2010; Balog MS). This argument has not yet been properly understood and in this paper I aim to correct the most common misunderstandings. (shrink)

Physicalism entails that a possible world which is a minimal physical duplicate of the actual world be a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. Because what I really am is not a particular human being, there exists a minimal physical duplicate of the actual world which is not a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Perhaps all concrete phenomena obtain solely in virtue of physical phenomena. Even so, it seems that the world could have been otherwise. It seems that physicalism, if true, is contingently true. In fact, many believe that the actual truth of physicalism allows metaphysically possible worlds duplicating the actual world in all physical respects while containing immaterial extras, e.g. ghosts, spirits, or Cartesian souls, that no physicalist would believe actually exist. Here I focus on physicalism regarding mentality and argue (...) that the doctrine does not allow possible worlds that physically duplicate the actual world while differing mentally. By revealing what physicalism (regarding the mind) does not allow, this essay helps us get clear on what the view really amounts to and why it is contingent. (shrink)

Boran Berčić, in the second volume of his recent book "Filozofija" , offers two responses to David Chalmers’s conceivability or modal argument against physicalism. This latter argument aims at showing that zombies, our physical duplicates who lack consciousness, are metaphysically possible, given that they are conceivable. Berčić’s first response is based on the principle of the uniformity of nature that states that causes of a certain type will always cause effects of the same type. His second response is based (...) on the assumption that the basic statements of physicalism in philosophy of mind are or should be contingently true. I argue that if Berčić’s first defence is aimed at the conceivability of zombies, it is unsatisfactory. Moreover, I argue that a quite similar argument, offered by John Perry in his book "Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness" , is afflicted by a similar problem. Nevertheless, under a more plausible interpretation, Berčić’s argument might be taken to attack the metaphysical possibility of zombies. This version of the argument might be effective and has the merit to point out a so far overlooked link between the discussion of the Chalmers’s conceivability arguments against physicalism and the modal strength of causal links and natural laws. Then, I argue that Berčić’s second defence of physicalism, which cannot be combined consistently with his first one, in any case, should not be formulated in the terms of contingent physicalism. (shrink)

Cosmic hermeneutics is the project of ascertaining all of the facts of our world from some proper subclass of the facts of our world — some class of facts. I am concerned with a particular project of cosmic hermeneutics that presupposes that all the facts of our world are determined by the physical facts of our world. Following Frank Jackson, I formulate this thesis of physical determinism as follows: any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is (...) a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. A minimal physical duplicate of our world is a world that is exactly like our world in every physical respect and that contains nothing more than is required to be exactly like our world in every physical respect. A duplicate simpliciter of our world is a world that is exactly like our world in every respect whatsoever. I focus on the following epistemological question: if physical determinism is true, then what, in addition to the physical facts of our world, would a Laplacean demon have to know in order to predict all of the facts of our world from the physical facts? (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has proposed a fascinating epistemology, one which he considers to be completely naturalized. Critical to his epistemology is the notion of a 'design plan' which circumscribes the function of organs or systems. Ernest Sosa has objected to Plantinga by using Donald Davidson's Swampman thought experiment, according to which a bolt of lightning randomly assembles a physical duplicate of a person, including one's neurological structure. The Swampman would have no design plan and as such would constitute a counterexample (...) to Plantinga's epistemology. Plantinga responded to Sosa that the Swampman may not be metaphysically possible so he is not disturbed by it conflicting with his epistemology and, at any rate, we would still ascribe functions (and thus design plants) the Swampman's organs and systems. In this essay I will argue that 1) a stronger case can be made demonstrating that the Swampman is not metaphysically possible and 2) at any rate the Swampman is not possible in an epistemological sense; that is, it could not know anything. (shrink)

Leading cosmological theories engender a controversial puzzle which has prompted philosophers to propose competing epistemological solutions and physicists to propose methodological changes to cosmology. The puzzle arises from the prediction that every brain on Earth will eventually be vastly outnumbered by physical duplicates formed by random collisions of particles in outer space. Supposing that this prediction is correct, shouldn't you believe that your brain is probably one of these vastly more typical extraterrestrial brains, since you cannot infer your brain's (...) origin from your experiential state? But supposing that your brain is one of these extraterrestrial brains, why be confident in the cosmological theories, since you never actually received testimony supporting these theories? Proposals in the literature either deny the rationality of believing theories that make the prediction or deny the typicality of your brain among its duplicates. This paper argues that these proposals are not entirely satisfactory. Instead, one should be confident in theories making the prediction on the supposition that your brain is one of the extraterrestrial brains. The upshots include that it may be rational to believe that your brain is probably an extraterrestrial brain and that cosmologists should not alter their methodology in response to the puzzle. (shrink)

The Burge-Putnam thought experiments have generated the thesis that beliefs are not fixed by the constitution of the body. However, many philosophers have thought that if this is true then there must be another content-like property. Even if the contents of our attitudes such as the one in ‘believes that aluminum is a light metal’, do not supervene on our physical makeups, nevertheless people who are physical duplicates must be the same when it comes to evaluating their rationality (...) and explaining their actions. I argue that the considerations motivating this view are best handled with just the ordinary ‘that’-clause contents. (shrink)

The doctrine of physicalism can be roughly spelled out simply as the claim that the physical state of the world determines the total state of the world. However, since there are many forms of determination, a somewhat more precise characterization is needed. One obvious problem with the simple formulation is that the traditional doctrine of epiphenomenalism holds that the mental is determined by the physical (and epiphenomenalists need not assert that there are any properties except mental and (...) class='Hi'>physical ones, so one can freely add to epiphenomenalism the claim that everything is determined by the physical state of the world). However, the orthodox view, which seems obviously correct, is that physicalists would and should balk at the claim that epiphenomenalism is a form of physicalism. The philosophical zombie thought experiment vividly reveals exactly why epiphenomenalism is not a version of physicalism. According to traditional epiphenomenalism the determination relation in question is causation, and causal relations do not hold with full necessity. They hold with at most nomological necessity. Thus there is a possible world, w, in which the causal laws (or, if one prefers a more Humean approach, where the cosmic regularities) are different in such a way that the physical states which in the actual world cause mental states either cause no mental states at all in w (the zombie option) or cause aberrant mental states (the inverted spectrum option). Why should the physicalist care about this ‘mere possibility’? Because it shows that the mental can vary independently of the physical and there can be no better demonstration of ontological distinctness 1 than independent variation. Therefore, physicalism requires that the sort of determination at issue must exhibit maximum modal force; it must be absolutely impossible for the mental to vary without attendant, determining physical variation (let us label this relation ‘logical determination’). I think the best way to state physicalism which meets this constraint is in terms of what are called minimal physical duplicates (MPDs) of possible worlds (an approach pioneered by David Lewis, see Lewis (1983b); see also Jackson (1998) and Chalmers and Jackson (2001)).. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to offer a new view of the key relation between the content and the conscious character of visual experience. The author aims to support the following claims. First, the author rejects the qualia realist claim that conscious character is an intrinsic, nonrepresentational property of visual experience, for example, a pattern of activation of neurons. However, the author also rejects the rival widespread representationalist claim that the conscious character of visual experience is identical to, or (...) supervenes on, any specific property represented by visual experience. The positive proposal is the following. Conscious character is identical with those patterns of activation of neurons that are referentially or representationally alive. Conscious redness, for example, is a pattern of activations of neurons that is created normally only when brains of physical duplicates come in visual contact with some distal property and this pattern of activation is recruited by natural selection to represent that property. This is called meaning representationalism. (shrink)

Physicalism entails that a possible world which is a minimal physical duplicate of the actual world be a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. Because what I really am is not a particular human being, there exists a minimal physical duplicate of the actual world which is not a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Somewhat at random, I shall pick chapter 7 for a closer look. Tye distinguishes three versions of the view that colors are “mind-independent, illumination-independent properties”, which we frequently see physical objects as possessing. The first is emergentism, according to which colors are “simple qualities” that nomologically supervene on the physical facts: there is a possible world exactly like the actual world physically, but in which nothing is colored. Brute nonreductive physicalism is the same as emergentism, except that colors (...) are said to metaphysically supervene on the physical facts. Hence, on this second view, there is no physical duplicate of the actual world in which nothing is colored. The third position, reductive physicalism, simply identifies colors with physical properties. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the nature of physicalism as well as to the possibility of formulating physicalism as a supervenience thesis. First, I review the motivation for finding a supervenience thesis that characterizes physicalism. Second, I briefly survey the types of supervenience theses that have been proposed as necessary (or, in some cases, as necessary and sufficient) for physicalism. Third, I analyze the recent supervenience thesis proposed by Frank Jackson and expounded upon by Gene Witmer. Jackson claims the (...) supervenience thesis is both necessary and sufficient for physicalism; Witmer has proposed a different interpretation of one of the Jackson’s key notions and has suggested an amended supervenience thesis that is, if not sufficient, at least necessary for physicalism. However, I will argue that neither Jackson’s nor Witmer’s supervenience theses as stated are necessary for physicalism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Relativistic Content The Argument from Primitive Colors The Argument from the Inverted Spectrum The Argument from Dual Looks The Argument from Duplication Conclusion References.

We propose an approach to the question of how qualia fit into the physical world, in the context of a relational and realist completion of quantum theory, called the causal theory of views\cite{views}. This is a combination of an approach to a dynamics of discrete causal structures, called energetic causal sets, developed with M. Cortes, with a realist approach to quantum foundations, called the real ensemble formulation. In this theory, the beables are the information available at each event from (...) its causal past, such as its causal predessesors and the energy and momentum they transfer to the event. We call this the view of an event. That is, we describe a causal universe that is composed of a set of partial views of itself. We propose that conscious perceptions are aspects of some views. This addresses the problem of why consciousness always involves awareness of a bundled grouping of qualia that define a momentary self. This gives a restricted form of panpsychism defined by a physically based selection principle which selects which views have experiential aspects. We further propose that only those views which are novel, in the sense that they are not duplicates of the view of any event in the event's own causal past, are the physical correlates of conscious experience. (shrink)

Comparativism maintains that physical quantities are ultimately relational in character. For example, an object’s having 1 kg rest mass depends on the relations it stands in to other objects in the universe. Comparativism, its advocates allege, reveals that quantities are not metaphysically mysterious: Quantities are reducible to familiar relations holding among physical objects. Modal accounts of intrinsicality—such as Lewis’s duplication account or Langton and Lewis’s combinatorial account—are popular accounts preserving many of our core intuitions regarding which properties (...) are intrinsic. I argue that to endorse both comparativism and a modal account of intrinsicality, we must reject the plausible thesis that determinable properties are instantiated solely in virtue of their determinates. I call this ‘the determinacy tension’ and I suggest approaches for dissolving it. (shrink)

It is with great delight that I have accepted the unexpected invitation to edit this two part special issue of Foundations of Chemistry dedicated to the philosophical aspects and implications of the quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) (Bader 1990). This theory has been primarily the oeuvre of Richard F. W. Bader (1931–2012), one of his most significant (but not the only significant) contributions to chemistry. Bader’s contributions have been summarized in a tribute (Matta et al. 2011) that appeared (...) in a recent Festschrift of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A (2011). This special issue of Foundations is neither a duplication, a complement, or an afterthought to that Festchrift, nor is it intended as another tribute to this great scientist, as deserving as he may be, instead it serves an entirely different purpose. This issue is focused principally on the epistemology and ontology of the science of QTAIM. The sort of questions that are addressed in, or that should emerge from. (shrink)

The perfectly natural properties and relations are special—they are all and only those that "carve nature at its joints." They act as reference magnets, form a minimal supervenience base, figure in fundamental physics and in the laws of nature, and never divide duplicates within or between worlds. If the perfectly natural properties are the (metaphysically) important ones, we should expect being a perfectly natural property to itself be one of the (perfectly) natural properties. This paper argues that being a perfectly (...) natural property is not a very natural property, and examines the consequences. (shrink)

We provide a new perspective on the relation between the space of description of an object and the appearance of novelties. One of the aims of this perspective is to facilitate the interaction between mathematics and historical sciences. The definition of novelties is paradoxical: if one can define in advance the possibles, then they are not genuinely new. By analyzing the situation in set theory, we show that defining generic (i.e., shared) and specific (i.e., individual) properties of elements of a (...) set are radically different notions. As a result, generic and specific definitions of possibilities cannot be conflated. We argue that genuinely stating possibilities requires that their meaning has to be made explicit. For example, in physics, properties playing theoretical roles are generic; then, generic reasoning is sufficient to define possibilities. By contrast, in music, we argue that specific properties matter, and generic definitions become insufficient. Then, the notion of new possibilities becomes relevant and irreducible. In biology, among other examples, the generic definition of the space of DNA sequences is insufficient to state phenotypic possibilities even if we assume complete genetic determinism. The generic properties of this space are relevant for sequencing or DNA duplication, but they are inadequate to understand phenotypes. We develop a strong concept of biological novelties which justifies the notion of new possibilities and is more robust than the notion of changing description spaces. These biological novelties are not generic outcomes from an initial situation. They are specific and this specificity is associated with biological functions, that is to say, with a specific causal structure. Thus, we think that in contrast with physics, the concept of new possibilities is necessary for biology. (shrink)

In philosophical thought experiments, as in ordinary discourse, our understanding of verbal case descriptions is enriched by automatic comprehension inferences. Such inferences have us routinely infer what else is also true of the cases described. We consider how such routine inferences from polysemous words can generate zombie intuitions: intuitions that are ‘killed’ (defeated) by contextual information but kept cognitively alive by the psycholinguistic phenomenon of linguistic salience bias. Extending ‘evidentiary’ experimental philosophy, this paper examines whether the ‘zombie argument’ against materialism (...) is built on zombie intuitions. We examine the hypothesis that contextually defeated stereotypical inferences from the noun ‘zombie’ influence intuitions about ‘philosophical zombies’. We document framing effects (‘zombie’ vs ‘duplicate’) predicted by the hypothesis. Findings undermine intuitions about the conceivability of ‘philosophical zombies’ and address the philosophical ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Findings support a deflationary response: The impression that principled obstacles prevent scientific explanation of how physical processes give rise to conscious experience is generated by philosophical arguments that rely on epistemically deficient intuitions. (shrink)

Expanding on the results of previous contributions I advance several hypotheses on the interaction of physical and semiotic processes, both in organisms and in human artifacts. I then proceed to employ these ideas to formulate a general account of evolutionary processes in terms of concrete generalization, where, in analogy with conceptual generalization, novel creations retain antecedent features as special or restricted cases. I argue the following theses: 1) the main point of intersection of physical and semiotic causation is (...) the process of regulation; 2) The broadest form of regulation is a course of actions known as modulation ; 3) Modulation is a universal means of conveyance by which a form is lifted from one supporting vehicle and re-embodied into another replica. These considerations suggest viewing biological evolution as a complex generalization of semiotic evolution. Biological reproduction is then regarded as a complex generalization of sign replication. The latter is a relatively simple affair: the embodied form is external and largely independent of its indifferent supporting medium. Biological reproduction, on the contrary, is an extremely complex dynamical process in which the embodied type is duplicated from within the medium, through the subsidiary internal replication of molecular genetic records. These ideas are developed and illustrated through comparisons between the evolution of organisms and that of human artifacts. (shrink)

Porpora offers an a priori argument for the conclusion that there are infinitely many thoughts that it is physically possible for us to think. That there should be such an a priori argument is astonishing enough. That the argument should be simple enough to teach to a first-year undergraduate class in about 20 min, as Porpora’s is, is more astonishing still. Porpora’s main target is Max Tegmark’s recent argument for the claim that if current physics is right, then there are (...) mental duplicates of us in far flung regions of the Universe. His argument is directed against Tegmark’s assumption that mental facts supervene upon physical facts. So, if Porpora’s argument is sound then not only is Tegmark’s argument unsound, but physicalism is also false. So, Porpora’s argument is powerful indeed. Who would have thought that a simple a priori argument, together with the physical facts, could solve the issue of whether physicalism is true?. Not I. In this paper I take a closer look at Porpora’s argument and show that it is fallacious. I also consider the other reasons Porpora gives for thinking there are infinitely many thinkable thoughts and find them similarly lacking. (shrink)