Grand debates over reduction and emergence are playing out across the sciences, but these debates have reached a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory on empirical grounds. In this book, Carl Gillett provides new theoretical frameworks with which to understand these debates, illuminating both the novel positions of scientific reductionists and emergentists and the recent empirical advances that drive these new views. Gillett also highlights the flaws in existing philosophical frameworks and reorients the discussion to reflect the new scientific advances (...) and issues, including the nature of 'parts' and 'wholes', the character of aggregation, and thus the continuity of nature itself. Most importantly, Gillett shows how disputes about concrete scientific cases are empirically resolvable and hence how we can break the scientific stalemate. Including a detailed glossary of key terms, this volume will be valuable for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and scientific researchers working in the area. (shrink)

This open access book is a systematic update of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the biopsychosocial model of health, disease and healthcare. First proposed by George Engel 40 years ago, the Biopsychosocial Model is much cited in healthcare settings worldwide, but has been increasingly criticised for being vague, lacking in content, and in need of reworking in the light of recent developments. The book confronts the rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy that have occurred since the (...) model was first proposed and addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence. The authors conceptualise biology and the psychosocial as in the same ontological space, interlinked by systems of communication-based regulatory control which constitute a new kind of causation. These are distinguished from physical and chemical laws, most clearly because they can break down, thus providing the basis for difference between health and disease. This work offers an urgent update to the model’s scientific and philosophical foundations, providing a new and coherent account of causal interactions between the biological, the psychological and social. (shrink)

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...) 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels. (shrink)

Physicalism, a topic that has been central to modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics, is the philosophical view that everything in the space-time world is ultimately physical. The physicalist will claim that all facts about the mind and the mental are physical facts and deny the existence of mental events and state insofar as these are thought of as independent of physical things, events and states. This collection of essays, first published in 2001, offers a series of perspectives on this (...) important doctrine and brings depth and breadth to the philosophical debate. A group of distinguished philosophers, comprising both physicalists and their critics, consider a wide range of issues including the historical genesis and present justification of physicalism, its metaphysical presuppositions and methodological role, its implications for mental causation, and the account it provides of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse how GPS-based navigation systems are transforming some of our intellectual virtues and then suggest two strategies to improve our practices regarding the use of such epistemic tools. We start by outlining the two main approaches in virtue epistemology, namely virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. We then discuss how navigation systems can undermine five epistemic virtues, namely memory, perception, attention, intellectual autonomy, and intellectual carefulness. We end by considering two possible interlinked ways of trying to remedy (...) this situation: [i] redesigning the epistemic tool to improve the epistemic virtues of memory, perception, and attention; and [ii] the cultivation of cognitive diligence for wayfinding tasks scaffolding intellectual autonomy and carefulness. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 363-387, April 2022.

An electron clearly has the property of having a charge of þ1.6 10 19 coulombs, but does it also have the property of being charged ? Philosophers have worried whether so-called ‘determinable’ predicates, such as ‘is charged’, actually refer to determinable properties in the way they are happy to say that determinate predicates, such as ‘has a charge of þ1.6 10 19 coulombs’, refer to determinate properties. The distinction between determinates and determinables is itself fairly new, dating only to its (...) definition by the Cambridge logician W. E. Johnson early in the last century.1 But despite its newly minted condition the distinction has found little currency in on-going philosophical debates. Or at least until recently. Renewed interest in realist positions about properties, and arguments that the determinable-determinate relation may hold the key to understanding mental causation, have thrust Johnson’s distinction to the fore. With this new attention has also come new ‘optimistic’ positions that endorse the existence of determinable properties. David Armstrong, Evan Fales, and Sydney Shoemaker, among others, have all defended such optimistic accounts that take determinable predicates, such as ‘is charged’, to refer to determinable properties.2 In this paper, our goal is to carefully assess optimism and to argue that a pessimistic view, which rejects the existence of determinable properties, is actually the appropriate default position. (shrink)

Biologists seems to hold two fundamental beliefs: Organisms are organized into levels and the individuals at these levels differ in their properties. Together these suggest that there will be massive multiple realization, i.e. that many human psychological properties are multiply realized at many neurobiological levels. This paper provides some documentation in support of this suggestion.

Understanding the 'making-up' relations, to put things neutrally, posited in mechanistic explanations the sciences is finally an explicit topic of debate amongst philosophers of science. In particular, there is now lively debate over the nature of the so-called 'realization' relations between properties posited in such explanations. Despite criticism (Gillett, Analysis 62: 316-323, 2002a), the most common approach continues to be that of applying machinery developed in the philosophy of mind to scientific concepts in what is known as the 'Flat' or (...) 'Subset' model of 'realization' (Kim, Mind in a physical world, 1998; Shapiro, J Philos XCVII: 635-654, 2000; Clapp, J Philos XCVIII: 111-136,2001 ; Wilson, Philos Stud 145: 149-169,2009). My primary goal in this paper is to show in still more detail that the Subset model of realization is inadequate for the descriptive task of describing the 'making-up' relations posited between properties or their instances in mechanistic explanations in the higher sciences. And my secondary goal is to highlight why this critique of the Subset view as a first-order descriptive account also shows there are deep difficulties in using the Subset account to address second-order issues in the philosophy of science as well. (shrink)

Part I -- Scientific Composition and the New Mechanism. - 1. Laura Franklin-Hall: New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints. - 2. Kenneth Aizawa: Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground. - 3. Jens Harbecke: Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution?. - 4. Derk Pereboom: Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental. Part II -- Grounding, Science, and Verticality in Nature. - 5. Jonathan Schaffer: Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson. - 6. Jessica Wilson: (...) The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding. - 7. Carl Gillett: The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement. - 8. Andrew Melnyk: Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism. - 9. Alyssa Ney: Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense. (shrink)

Psychopaths are often regarded as a scourge of contemporary society and, as such, are the focus of much public vilification and outrage. But, arguably, psychopaths are both sinned against as well as sinners. If that is true, then their status as the victims of abusive subcultures partially mitigates their moral responsibility for the harms they cause. We argue, from the neuroethics of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), that communities have a moral obligation to psychopaths as well as a case (...) against them. A reflection on the genesis and developmental epidemiology of psychopathy reveals an individualist, attribution-type error evident in much Western psychological and legal thinking—an error that obscures important moral truths about psychopaths. The resulting analysis makes us reconsider the distinction between disorders and moral failings and the ethical significance of the biological or neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning psychopathy. We claim that casting aside the deficit model (based on the presupposition that psychopaths are intrinsically unlike the rest of us) in favor of a relational and holistic view of personality potentiates a more informed and inclusive set of ethical, forensic, and therapeutic attitudes. (shrink)

In the New Mechanist literature, most attention has focused on the compositional explanation of processes/activities of wholes by processes/activities of their parts. These are sometimes called “constitutive mechanistic explanations.” In this paper, we defend moving beyond this focus to a Pluralism about compositional explanation by highlighting two additional species of such explanations. We illuminate both Analytic compositional explanations that explain a whole using a compositional relation to its parts, and also Standing compositional explanations that explain a property of a whole (...) using a compositional relation to the properties of its parts. We also highlight how adopting a Pluralism about compositional explanations justifies a more Pluralist view of the ontological posits of such explanations and opens up a range of new research questions. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between thought and language by considering the views of Kant and the later Wittgenstein along with many strands of contemporary debate in the area of mental content. Building on an analysis of the nature of concepts and conceptions of objects, Gillett provides an account of psychological explanation and the subject of experience, offers a novel perspective on mental representation and linguistic meaning, looks at the difficult topics of cognitive roles and singular thought, and concludes with (...) an outline of certain considerations relevant to skeptical arguments and the nature of perception. The resulting synthesis demonstrates interesting correlations with current work in cognitive and developmental psychology, and is directly relevant to continuing work in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology. (shrink)

Stephan Blatti claims to have a new line of reasoning using evolutionary theory that resolves arguments over our deeper natures in favor of the Animalist position that we are identical to Homo sapiens organisms. Blatti thus raises an important question about which views of what we are can take us to be evolved. However, in this response I show that Blatti’s argument using evolution is based upon a false assumption about contemporary biology. I highlight how a better understanding of evolutionary (...) theory allows us to see that the major theories of what we are, including Psychological, Brain and even Soul theories, as well as Animalism, can all accept that we are products of evolution. (shrink)

The first edition of The Mind and its Discontents was a powerful analysis of how, as a society, we view mental illness. In the ten years since the first edition, there has been growing interest in the philosophy of psychiatry, and a new edition of this text is more timely and important than ever. -/- In The Mind and its Discontents, Grant Gillett argues that an understanding of mental illness requires more than just a study of biological models of mental (...) processes and pathologies. As intensely social animals, he argues, we need to look for the causes of human mental disorders in our interactions with others; in social rule-following and its role in the organization of mental content; in the power relations embedded within social structures and cultural norms; in the way that our mental life is inscribed by a cumulative life of encounters with others. Drawing upon work from within the philosophy of mind, epistemology, post-modern continental philosophy, and philosophy of language, he tries to elucidate the nature of psychiatric phenomena involving disorders of thought, perception, emotion, moral sense, and action. Within this framework, a series of chapters analyse important psychiatric disorders such as depression, attention deficiency, autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia. Along the way, Gillett explores the nature of memory and identity; of hysteria and what constitutes rational behaviour; and of what causes us to label someone a psychopath or deviant. -/- Updated, available in paperback, and more accessible than before, the new edition of this fascinating book will provide readers with important insights into the causes and nature of psychosis. In addition, Gillett's arguments have considerable implications for the way in which we understand and treat people suffering from psychiatric disorders. The Mind and its Discontents will be read by researchers and postgraduate students in a range of academic areas, including psychiatry, bioethics, philosophy of mind, social theory, and clinical psychology. It will also be of considerable interest to practising psychiatrists. (shrink)

The human brain is subjective and reflects the life of a being-in-the-world-with-others whose identity reflects that complex engaged reality. Human subjectivity is shaped and in-formed (formed by inner processes) that are adapted to the human life-world and embody meaning and the relatedness of a human being. Questions of identity relate to this complex and dynamic reality to reflect the fact that biology, human ecology, culture, and one's historic-political situation are inscribed in one's neural network and have configured its architecture so (...) that it is a unique and irreplaceable phenomenon. So much is a human individual a relational being whose own understanding and ownership of his or her life is both situated and distinctive that neurophilosophical conceptions of identity and human activity that neglect these features of our being are quite inadequate to ground a robust neuroethics. (shrink)

Samuel Alexander was one of the foremost philosophical figures of his day and has been argued by John Passmore to be one of ‘fathers’ of Australian philosophy as well as a novel kind of physicalist. Yet Alexander is now relatively neglected, his role in the genesis of Australian philosophy if far from widely accepted and the standard interpretation takes him to be an anti-physicalist. In this paper, I carefully examine these issues and show that Alexander has been badly, although understandably, (...) misjudged by most of his contemporary critics and interpreters. Most importantly, I show that Alexander offers an ingenious, and highly original, version of physicalism at the heart of which is a strikingly different view of the nature of the microphysical properties and associated view of emergent properties. My final conclusion will be that Passmore is correct in his claims both that Alexander is significant as one of the grandfather’s of Australian philosophy and that he provides a novel physicalist position. I will also suggest that Alexander’s emergentism is important for addressing the so-called ‘problem of mental causation’ presently dogging contemporary non-reductive physicalists. (shrink)

I outline reasons for the recent popularity, and lingering suspicion, about 'emergence' by examining three distinct concepts of property emergence, their purposes and associated obligations. In Part 1, I argue 'Strong' emergence is the grail for many emergentists (and physicalists), since it frames what is needed to block the 'Argument from Realization' (AR) which moves from the truth of physicalism to the inefficacy of special science properties. I then distinguish 'Weak' and 'Ontological' emergence, in Part 2, arguing each is a (...) way one may fail to establish the possibility of Strong emergence. But I also show Weak emergence can help the full-blown reductionist and Ontological emergence helps those opposed to physicalism. Lastly, in Part 3, I argue that the Completeness of Physics (CoP) is incompatible with Strong emergence and that rejecting CoP provides hope for the possibility of Strong emergence in a physical world. The result is a notion of Strong emergence offering much to non-reductive physicalism. My final conclusion is that concepts of emergence, when properly understood, have important contributions to make to philosophical debate. (shrink)

Drawing on a range of literature, I introduce two new concepts for understanding and exploring distributed cognition: resilience engineering and degeneracy. By re-examining Ed Hutchins’ (1995) ethnographic study of the navigation team I show how a focus on the developmental acquisition of cognitive practices can draw out several crucial insights that have been overlooked. Firstly, that the way in which agents learn and acquire cognitive practices enables a form of resilience engineering: the process by which the system is able to (...) overcome and adapt to errors and the vagaries of nature. Secondly, that the best way to engineer a resilient system is through promoting degeneracy – how differing structures produce the same function – at the level of cognitive practices. These two features show that focusing on cognitive practices and developmental trajectories is important for both greater explanatory leverage; and is also useful in regard to the practicalities of designing real-world cognitive systems. (shrink)

This study adapts the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) to the behavior of fraudulent reporting on financial statements so as to examine the effects of moral reasoning and self-monitoring on intention to report fraudulently, using structural equation modeling. The paper seeks to investigate two of the red flags for financial statement fraud identified in Loebbecke et al.'s (1989) paper: client management displays a significant lack of moral fiber and client personnel exhibit strong personality anomalies. As expected, high (...) moral reasoners are more influenced than low moral reasoners by their own attitude towards the behavior. Contrary to prior research, low self-monitors are found to be more influenced than high self-monitors by subjective norms. Future research is recommended to investigate the counter-intuitive results for self-monitors, to consider the implications of group decision making as regards the promulgation of fraudulent financial statements, and to examine additional red flags for financial statement fraud. (shrink)

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title What is so special about human life? What is the relationship between flesh and blood and the human soul? Is there a kind of life that is worse than death? Can a person die and yet the human organism remain in some real sense alive? Can souls become sick? What justifies cutting into a living human body? These and other questions, writes neurosurgeon and philosopher Grant Gillett, pervade hospital wards, clinical offices, (...) and operating rooms. In Bioethics in the Clinic: Hippocratic Reflections, Gillett brings the tools of philosophy to bear on some of the most pressing issues confronting bioethicists today. Gillett draws on many schools of thought, including analytic, moral, and postmodern philosophy; utilitarianism; classical ethical theory; phenomenology; and metaphysics. He engages the reasoning of such philosophers as Aristotle, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Habermas, Levinas, and Martha Nussbaum, and offers both practical and clinical insights into such topics as the principle of "Do no harm," informed consent, confidentiality, cloning, and euthanasia. Opening with an explanation of the axioms to be traced throughout succeeding discussions, with special emphasis on Hippocratic principles, Gillett focuses on general and specific problems of clinical practice, particularly as they affect the physician-patient relationship. The author then goes on to address ethical problems related to both the end of life, including euthanasia, and the beginning of life, such as embryo and stem cell research. Rigorous and elegant, this book will be of interest to those in medical fields, to students and scholars of philosophy, and to lay readers interested in the profound ethical dramas played out in hospitals and doctors' offices every day. (shrink)

Foundationalist, Coherentist, Skeptic etc., have all been united in one respect--all accept epistemic justification cannot result from an unending, and non-repeating, chain of reasons. Peter Klein has recently challenged this minimal consensus with a defense of what he calls "Infinitism"--the position that justification can result from such a regress. Klein provides surprisingly convincing responses to most of the common objections to Infinitism, but I will argue that he fails to address a venerable metaphysical concern about a certain type of regress. (...) My conclusion will be that until Klein answers these metaphysical worries he will not have restored Infinitism as a viable option in epistemology. (shrink)

Trust is indispensable not only for interpersonal relationships and social life, but for good quality healthcare. As manifested in the increasing violence and tension in patient-physician relationships, China has been experiencing a widespread and profound crisis of patient–physician trust. And globally, the crisis of trust is an issue that every society, either developing or developed, has to face in one way or another. Yet, in spite of some pioneering works, the subject of patient-physician trust and mistrust – a crucial matter (...) in healthcare especially because there are numerous ethical implications – has largely been marginalized in bioethics as a global discourse. Drawing lessons as well as inspirations from China, this paper demonstrates the necessity of a trust-oriented bioethics and presents some key theoretical, methodological and philosophical elements of such a bioethics. A trust-oriented bioethics moves beyond the current dominant bioethical paradigms through putting the subject of trust and mistrust in the central agenda of the field, learning from the social sciences, and reviving indigenous moral resources. In order for global bioethics to claim its relevance to the things that truly matter in social life and healthcare, trust should be as vital as such central norms like autonomy and justice and can serve as a potent theoretical framework. (shrink)

We analyse the tensions in a hybrid collaboration and how these are mitigated using boundary-spanning community impact, leading to compatibility between distinctive institutional logics. Our qualitative longitudinal study undertaken during 2011–2016 involved reviewing literature and archival data, key informant interviews, workshop and focus groups. We analysed common themes within the data, relating to our two research questions concerning how and why hybrids collaborate, and how resulting tensions are mitigated. The findings suggest a viable model of service delivery termed hybridized collaboration (...) in which the inherent tensions from different institutional logics do not prevent success. Paradoxically, multiple logics are a basis for the partnership’s existence, but the ability to achieve different and occasionally conflicting aims simultaneously can be difficult, resulting in tensions. We offer two novel insights. First, we highlight how social enterprise hybrids collaborate locally and in multi-organizational relationships. We found that the initial opportunity to collaborate was catalysed by the existence of shared objectives. Pre-existing relationships between organizations, and the existence of synergistic capabilities also influence the choice of partners. Secondly, we identify how tensions arise, and are mitigated via several factors including the pre-existing relationships, allowing for regular “spaces of negotiation” between collaborators, the shared social mission, community social impact, the resulting public relations, and shared resources and knowledge. (shrink)

Pozzi provides a thought-provoking account of how machine-learning clinical prediction models (such as Prediction Drug Monitoring Programmes (PDMPs)) may exacerbate testimonial injustice.1 In this response, I generalise Pozzi’s concerns about PDMPs to traditional models of clinical practice and question the claim that inaccurate clinicians are necessarily preferential to inaccurate machine-learning models. I then explore Pozzi’s concern that such models may deprive patients of a right to ‘convey information’. I suggest that machine-learning tools may be used to enhance, rather than frustrate, (...) this right, through the perspective of hermeneutical justice. Pozzi objects to the introduction of machine-learning risk prediction tools in clinical care, due to their being ‘epistemically opaque’, often inaccurate, and a threat to patients’ testimonial justice. Through the example of psychiatry, I suggest this stance idealises traditional models of clinical practice. I propose that clinicians’ judgements are often equally vulnerable to opaque subjectivity, bias and epistemic injustice. For instance, the use of clinical observation or collateral interviewing might be conceptualised as a threat to testimonial justice, by neglecting patients’ own perspectives or voices. In practice, clinical risk prediction often follows inconsistent and somewhat subjective clinical heuristics, which are difficult to summarise or evaluate. Further, although Pozzi diminishes machine-learning …. (shrink)

The concept of futility is sometimes regarded as a cloak for medical paternalism in that it rolls together medical and value judgments. Often, despite attempts to disambiguate the concept, that is true and it can be applied in such a way as to marginalize the real interests of a patient. I suggest we replace it with a conceptual toolkit that includes physiological futility, substantial benefit (SB), and the risk of unacceptable badness (RUB) in that these concepts allow us to articulate (...) what is at stake in ethical judgments where outcomes are crucial in determining what should be done. (shrink)

By quantifying over properties we cannot create new properties any more than by quantifying over individuals we can create new individuals. Someone murdered Jones, and the murderer is either Smith or Jones or Wang. That “someone,” who murdered Jones, is not a person in addition to Smith, Jones, and Wang, and it would be absurd to posit a disjunctive person, Smith‐or‐Jones‐or‐Wang, with whom to identify the murderer. The same goes for second‐order properties and their realizers. (Kim 1997a, 201).

Neuroscience and technological medicine in general increasingly faces us with the imminent reality of cyborgs—integrated part human and part machine complexes.If my brain functions in a way that is supported by and exploits intelligent technology both external and implantable, then how should I be treated and what is my moral status—am I a machine or am I a person? I explore a number of scenarios where the balance between human and humanoid machine shifts, and ask questions about the moral status (...) of the individuals concerned. The position taken is very much in accordance with the Aristotelian idea that our moral behaviour is of a piece with our social and personal skills and forms a reactive and reflective component of those skills. (shrink)

This book uses a neo-Aristotelian framework to examine human subjectivity as an embodied being. It examines the varieties of reductionism that affect philosophical writing about human origins and identity, and explores the nature of rational subjectivity as emergent from our neurobiological constitution. This allows a consideration of the effect of neurological interventions such as psychosurgery, neuroimplantation, and the promise of cyborgs on the image of the human. It then examines multiple personality disorder and its implications for narrative theories of the (...) self, and explores the idea of human spirituality as an essential aspect of embodied human subjectivity. (shrink)

The Cognitive Integration (henceforth CI) framework posits the existence of integrated cognitive systems (henceforth ICS). In this chapter we outline the nature of ICS and their phylogenetic history. We shall argue that phylogenetically earlier forms of cognition are built upon by more recent cultural innovations. Many of the phylogenetically earlier components are forms of sensorimotor interactions with the environment (Menary 2007a, 2010a, 2016). These sensorimotor interactions are redeployed (or retrained) to service more recent cultural innovations (Dehaene & Cohen 2007). The (...) main aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the CI framework in terms of phylogenetically ancient embodied interactions with the environment and the more recent culturally evolved practices that redeploy our primitive capacities for sensorimotor interactions and manipulations of tools, objects and, in a very recent innovation, public systems of representation. In doing so, we provide a case for the enculturation of our bodies and brains. (shrink)

Foundationalist, Coherentist. Skeptic etc., have all been united in one respect—all accept epistemic justification cannot result from an unending, and non‐repeating. chain of reasons. Peter Klein has recently challenged this minimal consensus with a defense of what he calls “Intinitism”—the position that justification can result from such a regress. Klein provides surprisingly convincing responses to most of the common objections to Infinitism, but I will argue that he fails to address a venerable metaphysical concern about a certain type of regress. (...) My conclusion will be that until Klein answers these metaphysical worries he will not have restored Infinitism as a viable option in epistemology. (shrink)

Iaegwon Kim, and others, have recently posed a powerful challen,ge to both emergentism cmd ncm-reductIve physicalism lyy providing arguments that these positums are cornmitted to an untenabie combmation of both `upwarcit and 'clouniwardi determmation. In secuon 1, I illuminate how the nature of the realiza:0n relatzon underlies such sicepucal arguments However, tn secuon 2, I suggest that such conclusicrns involve a confusion between the implications of physicahsm and those of a related thesis the Vompleteness of Physics' (Co?) I show tht (...) the truth of Co? poses a very senous obstacle to realized properues beeng efficacrous in a physicalut =verse cmd sikwest that abandonmg Co? offers hope for defending non- reducuve physicalism. (shrink)

The first edition of The Mind and its Discontents was a powerful analysis of how, as a society, we view mental illness, looking beyond just biological models of mental pathologies. In the ten years since, there has been growing interest in the philosophy of psychiatry, and a new edition of this text is more timely and important than ever.

In his “New Consensus” on explanation, Wesley Salmon (1989) famously argued that there are two kinds of scientific explanation: global, derivational, and unifying explanations, and then local, ontic explanations backed by causal relations. Following Salmon’s New Consensus, the dominant view in philosophy of science is what I term “neo-Causalism” which assumes that all ontic explanations of singular fact/event are causal explanations backed by causal relations, and that scientists only search for causal patterns or relations and only offer causal explanations of (...) singular facts/events. I argue that there are foundational, and fatal, flaws in the neo-Causal picture. The relations backing constitutive mechanistic explanations of activities of wholes using activities of parts, as well as other species of compositional explanation, cannot be causal relations. Treating them as causal or causation-like is therefore plausibly a category mistake. Compositional explanations in the sciences represent instead a sui generis kind of ontic explanation of singular fact/event backed by sui generis compositional relations. We thus need a pluralistic revision of Salmon’s New Consensus on explanation to reflect these findings. (shrink)

Grant Gillett argues that it is consciousness which makes a human or other being the 'locus of ethical value'. Since cortical functioning is, in Gillett's view, necessary for conscious activity, an individual whose neocortex is permanently non-functional is no longer a locus of ethical value and cannot be benefited or harmed in a morally relevant sense. This means that there is no obligation to continue treating those who have suffered neocortical death.

Jaegwon Kim, and others, have recently posed a powerful challenge to both emergentism and nom-reductive physicalism by providing arguments that these positions are committed to an untenable combination of both ‘upward’ and ‘dounward’ determination. In section 1, I illuminate how the nature of the realization relation underlies such skeptical arguments However, in section 2, I suggest that such conclusions involve a confusion between the implications of physicalism and those of a related thesis the ‘Completeness of Physics' (Co?) I show that (...) the truth of CoP poses a very serious obstacle to realized properties being efficacious in a physicalist universe and suggest that abandoning CoP offers hope for defending non-reductive physicalism. I then formulate a schema for a physicalist metaphysics, in section 3, which rejects CoP. This scenario is one where microphysical properties have a few conditional powers that they contribute to individuals when they realize certain properties In such a situation, I argue, though physicalism holds true there is still plausibly both ‘upward’ and ‘downward’ determination, where the latter is crucially an underappreciated form of determination I temn 'non- causal'. Ultimately, I conclude that this metaphysical schema offers a coherent account of Strongly emergent properties that preserves the truth of NRP albeit, in a form that is purged of any commitment to CoP. Finally, in section: 4, I carefully explore which of Kim's assumptions and arguments this metaphysics undermines. (shrink)

Concepts are basic elements of thought. Piaget has a conception of the nature of concepts as informational or computational operations performed in an inner milieu and enabling the child to understand the world in which it lives and acts. Concepts are, however, not merely logico?mathematical but are also conceptually linked to the mastery of language which itself involves the appropriate use of words in social and interpersonal settings. In the light of Vygotsky's work on the social and interactive nature of (...) children's thinking and the nature of language as an essentially public currency of rule?governed signs, we are led to reconstrue conceptual mastery as the acquisition of an interactive and interpersonal repertoire of tools which introduces the child to the world of those who educate it. In this way we come to see the elements of mind as constitutively involving that activity in which the determinants of meaning constrain and direct the child's linguistic development. (shrink)