Abstract:In this essay, I respond to Chris Voparil’s reconstruction of Richard Rorty’s engagement with Josiah Royce’s pragmatism in chapter 4 of Reconstructing Pragmatism. I first express my thoughts about Voparil’s three main claims about Rorty’s reconstruction of Royce’s pragmatism. I then mention what I took to be the least interesting part of this chapter. Finally, I propose that Alain Locke’s pragmatism, and more specifically his approach to resolving conflicting loyalties and his appropriation of Royce’s concept of wise provincialism, could function (...) as a bridge between Royce’s absolute pragmatism and Rorty’s pragmatism. Readers should take the last part of this essay as a prolegomenon to a study of Locke’s appropriation of Royce’s concept of wise provincialism. (shrink)

This paper aims to sever the tie between Josiah Royce's ethico-religious insight and his idiosyncratic absolutistic idealism. The first section of this paper sets the stage for this severance by explaining what it is that Royce's ethico-religious insight needs to be separated from: his absolutistic idealism and its conception of God. This explanation will consist mainly of a concise description of Royce's phenomenology of concept formation in chapter nine of his Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885) and a critical exegesis of (...) his 1895 Berkeley lecture, "The Conception of God." The second section of this paper actually severs the tie between Royce's ethico-religious insight and his absolutistic conception of God via a Marcellian critique of Royce's conception of God. The third section of this paper places Royce's ethico-religious insight in a more hospitable environment — namely, the philosophical orbit of a Marcellian existential phenomenology. (shrink)

Josiah Royce’s The Problem of Christianity has been studied in numerous ways since its publication in 1913. The most common approaches to studying PC among historians of classical American philosophy and Royce scholars are to regard it as a contribution to the psychology of religion, as a contribution to philosophy of religion, or as an application of Royce’s logical theory to the study of religion. Scholars who study PC as a contribution to the psychology of religion often emphasize such things (...) as the continuity between Royce’s phenomenological description of a range of religious insights in The Sources of Religious Insight and his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:La Métaphysique de Royce, avec un appendice de texts, publiée et préfacée par Miklos VetöDwayne Alexander TunstallGabriel Marcel La Métaphysique de Royce, avec un appendice de texts, publiée et préfacée par Miklos Vetö Paris L'Hartmattan, 2005xix + 250 pp.Gabriel Marcel's La Métaphysique de Royce (MR) is the most influential Continental interpretation of Josiah Royce's philosophy. Moreover, Marcel's monograph-length study of Royce's metaphysics remains the only significant work on (...) Royce's philosophy written in French. MR was originally published as a series of four articles in La Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (May-June 1918 and January-April 1919) and published, in a slightly edited form, as a monograph by Aubier in 1945. The L'Hartmattan edition of Marcel's MR is, to my knowledge, the first edition of Marcel's MR to be published in any language since the publication of the English translation of MR in 1956 under the title, Royce's Metaphysics.1Because an English translation of MR is already available, this review will not examine Marcel's actual monograph in any significant detail. Rather, it will describe Vetö's preface and the texts comprising this book's appendices.Vetö's preface seeks to fulfill two aims: (1) to situate MR in its own historical context and (2) to convey its insights to a contemporary audience. Vetö fulfills the first aim by situating Royce's thought within the milieu of late nineteenth-century Anglo-American idealism and its reception of German idealism (pp. vii-viii). He also fulfills this aim by explaining how a young Marcel could have devoted an entire monograph to Royce's thought. As for fulfilling the second aim, Vetö admits that doing so will be difficult, since Royce's thought "attracts only very modest attention from philosophers and historians of philosophy outside of America" (p. vii). It seems that Vetö attempts to fulfill the second aim by concentrating on how Royce's thought influenced the development of Marcel's thought. Due to space constraints, I will describe only a few of the more insightful observations Vetö makes about Marcel's MR in his preface.One such insightful observation is Vetö's recognition that, unlike most formulations of the principle of individuation in the Western philosophic tradition, Royce's principle of individuation is essentially volitional. Following Marcel, Vetö explains how Royce does not think that an individual is definable, ontologically speaking, by its empirical qualities or by some logical designation of class membership. Royce thought that an individual cannot be defined apart from the communal and moral interests of the one who recognizes that individual (p. xi). In fact, the act of recognizing an individual is an act of love for Royce. What Royce regards as love is different than the common definitions of the term, however. Vetö reminds the reader that Roycean love involves the exclusive selection of an individual to be the object of one's attention. This means that whenever one exclusively attends to someone or something in the world, that someone or something becomes a genuine individual.2 [End Page 582]Another insightful observation is Vetö's recognition that Royce's conception of God as fellow-sufferer, indeed as the One who experiences our sufferings more intensely and meaningfully than we do, seems to anticipate Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and, to a greater extent, Charles Hartshorne's process theology (p. xiv).A third insightful observation is Vetö's description of how Royce's thought influenced the development of Marcel's thought. While Marcel writes that Royce's thought had only a negligible influence on the formation of his mature position on intersubjectivity in his author's preface to the English translation of his monograph in 1956, Vetö contends that Royce obviously played an important role in Marcel's early insights into the nature of intersubjectivity. This is especially true of Marcel's insights into intersubjectivity as they are articulated in the second part of his Metaphysical Journal (1927).3 In that work, Marcel notes how his own nascent existentialism, e.g., his distinction between being and having... (shrink)

This has been an excellent opportunity for me to get a sense of what scholars in fields other than my own (viz., theological social ethics) think I am trying to do, and whether there might be some sense in it. But in all honesty, I must say that the experience of reading and pondering the articles by Lewis Baldwin and Dwayne Tunstall in this issue of The Pluralist has been both enlightening and a joy, inasmuch as it has been (...) an opportunity for me to find out what I have been doing in the academy for the last twenty-five years and where might be some of the limitations as well as promise in my work.When I read these articles, I recalled an experience that second-generation personalist Francis J. McConnell reported .. (shrink)

The healthcare systems of the United States and United Kingdom are vastly different. The former relies primarily on private sector incentives and market forces to allocate medical care services, while the latter is a centrally planned system funded almost entirely by the public sector. Therefore, each nation represents divergent views on the relative efficacy of the market or government in achieving social objectives in the area of medical care policy. Since its inception in 1948, the National Health Services of the (...) United Kingdom has consistently emphasized equity in the allocation of medical services. It has done so by creating a system whereby services are universally free of charge at the point of entry. Conversely, the United States has relied upon the evolution of a perplexing array of public and private sector insurance schemes centered more around consumer choice than equity in allocation. (shrink)

Philosophizing the Americas establishes the field of inter-American philosophy. Bringing together contributors who work in Africana Philosophy, Afro-Caribbean philosophy, Latin American philosophy, Afro-Latin philosophy, decolonial theory, and African American philosophy, the volume examines the full range of traditions that have, separately and in conversation with each other, worked through how philosophy in both establishes itself in the Americas and engages with the world from which it emerges. The book traces a range of questions, from the history of philosophy in the (...) Americas to philosophical questions of race, feminism, racial eliminativism, creolization, epistemology, coloniality, aesthetics, and literature. The essays place an impressive range of philosophical traditions and figures into dialogue with one another: some familiar, such as José Martí, Sylvia Wynter, Martin R. Delany, José Vasconcelos, Alain Locke, as well as such less familiar thinkers as Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hilda Hilst, and George Lamming. In each chapter, the contributors find fascinating and productive matrices of tension or convergence in works throughout the Americas. The result is an original and important contribution to knowledge that introduces readers from various disciplines to unfamiliar yet compelling ideas and considers familiar texts from novel and prescient perspectives. Philosophizing the Americas stands alone as a representation of current scholarly debates in the field of inter-American philosophy. Contributors: Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Jacoby Adeshei Carter, Nadia Celis, Tommy J. Curry, Hernando A. Estévez, Daniel Fryer, James B. Haile III, Chike Jeffers, Lee A. McBride III, Michael Monahan, Adriana Novoa, Susana Nuccetelli, Andrea J. Pitts, Dwayne A. Tunstall, and Alejandro A. Vallega. (shrink)

This paper sought to test whether student demographics (gender, age, religion, type of degree and number of courses done containing ethics) influenced the likelihood of engaging in unethical business practices. The study involved the use of a questionnaire being administered to a sample of 231 undergraduate students in Barbados. It was found that gender, religiousness, type of degree and number of courses taken containing ethics significantly impacted on the intentions to engage in unethical behaviour. It was also found that the (...) impact of age was not conclusive. The study has several limitations including low generalisability due to the use of a non-probability sampling method, and the possibility of social desirability bias. The study informs educators about the need to integrate ethics into the curriculum as an essential component of professional training for future managers and business people. This study makes an important contribution to the ethics literature on small island developing states, since the study was done in the country of Barbados. (shrink)

In a series of writings, James Sterba introduces several novel arguments from evil against the existence of God (Sterba, 2019; Sterba Sophia 59, 501–512, 2020; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 203–208, 2020b; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 223–228, 2020c; Sterba Religions 12, 536, 2021). According to one of these arguments, the problem of natural evil, God must necessarily prevent the horrendous evil consequences of natural evil such as diseases and hurricanes; however, these horrendous evil (...) consequences of natural evils still occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I reply to Sterba’s argument from natural evil by introducing a naturalistic theodicy, and then demonstrating how it overcomes Sterba’s problem of natural evil. This paper is divided into five sections. First, I unpack Sterba’s problem of natural evil into three parts (Section 1), namely, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about non-human life, and Sterba’s arguments from analogy. I then introduce a general naturalistic theodicy to the problem of natural evil (Section 2): naturalists grant that natural forces (entropy, evolutionary pressures, tectonic plate movements, etc.) cause horrendous consequences of natural evil, yet still consider human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to, so, if God made this naturalistic universe, God made human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to. I then use this naturalistic theodicy to reply to Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans (Section 3), before bolstering the case by appeal to Sterba’s moral obligation claims about non-human life (Section 4). I then reply to Sterba’s arguments from analogy (Section 5). (shrink)

I recently argued that reductive physicalist versions of libertarian free will face a physical indeterminism luck objection. John Lemos claims that one potential advocate of reductive physicalist libertarianism, Robert Kane, avoids this physical indeterminism luck objection. I here show how the problem remains.

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that the same agential states can cause different possible actions. Nonreductive physicalism is, roughly, the view that mental states cause actions to occur, while these actions also have sufficient physical causes. Though libertarian free will and nonreductive physicalism have overlapping subject matter, and while libertarian free will is currently trending at the same time as nonreductive physicalism is a dominant metaphysical posture, there are few sustained expositions of a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian (...) free will – indeed some tell against such an admixture. This paper concocts such a blend by articulating and defending, with some caveats, a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian free will. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy’s decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action occurs or (...) not: Maddy’s reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent’s lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent’s lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up. (shrink)

_Knowing Reality_ is a guided introduction to metaphysics and epistemology. Each of the book’s twelve chapters contains extended excerpts from influential historical and contemporary philosophers, as well as a guided exposition of their views and their locations within the logical space of the issues at play. Topics are introduced through engaging thought experiments, with relevant philosophical puzzles sprinkled throughout. Complex issues are explained using down-to-earth examples, with illustrations provided to connect with readers and assist them in understanding the sophisticated concepts (...) under discussion. (shrink)

There is a difference between having reasons for believing and believing for reasons. This difference is often fleshed out via an epistemic basing relation, where an epistemic basing relation obtains between beliefs and the actual reasons for which those beliefs are held. The precise nature of the basing relation is subject to much controversy, and one such underdeveloped issue is whether beliefs can be based on brain processing. In this paper I answer in the negative, providing reasons that the basing (...) relation must be a specific psychological level relation between mental states, rather than being a brain process. (shrink)

While there are reasons to believe that both component forces and a resultant force operate on a body in combined circumstances, the threat of overdetermination largely prevents adoption of this view. Accordingly, a lively debate has arisen over which force actually exists and which force is eliminated in combined circumstances, the components or the resultant. In this article I present a non-reductive model of resultant force which ensures the existence of both the resultant force and the component forces without overdetermination. (...) According to the non-reductive model, the resultant force is the summation of component forces, where summation is interpreted as meaning that the component forces, when temporally and spatially overlapping, form a superposed mixture which is the resultant force, but which is not identical to the conjunction of component forces taken with temporal and spatial independence. (shrink)

This article is an exploration of the problem of identity in Whitehead. Both the Platonic and the nominalistic tendencies in Whitehead are analyzed. His theory of eternal objects is criticized and a process view of identity based on tropes is defended.

Modern logicians have sought to unlock the modal secrets of Aristotle's Syllogistic by assuming a version of essentialism and treating it as a primitive within the semantics. These attempts ultimately distort Aristotle's ontology. None of these approaches make full use of tests found throughout Aristotle's corpus and ancient Greek philosophy. I base a system on Aristotle's tests for things that can never combine (polarity) and things that can never separate (inseparability). The resulting system not only reproduces Aristotle's recorded results for (...) the apodictic syllogistic in the Prior Analytics but it also generates rather than assumes Aristotle's distinctions among 'necessary', 'essential' and 'accidental'. By developing a system around tests that are in Aristotle and basic to ancient Greek philosophy, the system is linked to a history of practices, providing a platform for future work on the origins of logic. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for the redundancy of Whitehead’s Platonic notion of the extensive continuum, counterposing it to his related notion of an atomic “ether of events.” I argue that Whitehead’s atomic ether is more compatible with orthodox general relativity than generally supposed and remarkably close to the contemporary idea of a discrete manifold in the causal set theory of quantum gravity. I argue that the method of extensive abstraction complements Whitehead’s atomic hypothesis by demonstrating the ultimately fictive nature (...) of any continuum. (shrink)

The argument from reason states that if naturalism is true, then our beliefs are caused by physical processes rather than being causally based in their reasons, so our beliefs are not knowledge—including the belief in naturalism itself. Recent critics of the argument from reason provide dual process replies to the argument from reason—our beliefs can have both a naturalistic cause/ explanation and be caused/explained by its reasons, thereby showing that naturalism can accommodate knowledge. In this paper I consider three dual (...) process replies and conclude that none of them are successful. (shrink)

Christian List has recently presented a compatibilist libertarian solution to the free will and determinism problem. He proposes the admixture of libertarianism, which endorses agential alternative possibilities, with physical determinism, which endorses the necessity of physical effects. In this paper, we argue that List's innovative proposal ultimately fails.

Jaegwon Kim argues that unreduced mental causes are excluded from efficacy because physical causes are sufficient in themselves. One response to this causal exclusion argument is to embrace some form of overdetermination. In this paper I consider two forms of overdetermination. Independent overdetermination suggests that two individually sufficient causes bring about one effect. This model fails because the sufficiency of one cause renders the other cause unnecessary. Dependent overdetermination suggests that a physical cause is necessary and sufficient for a given (...) effect, but it necessitates a mental cause of the effect as well. This model fails because the necessity of the mental cause renders the physical cause individually insufficient. (shrink)

This review discussion outlines Justin Barrett’s Preparedness Model. This evolutionary model for belief in God is shown to posit a maladaptive mind for infants. Questions about its implications and the supporting data are considered.

Résumé Cet article aborde la querelle comme un élément de la stratégie d’un philosophe vis-à-vis de la postérité. On pourrait évidemment penser à des querelleurs invétérés comme Pascal, Voltaire ou Rousseau, mais il sera question ici du cas plus complexe de Diderot et du dernier ouvrage publié de son vivant, l’_Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron et sur les moeurs et les écrits de Sénèque pour servir à l’introduction de la lecture de ce philosophe_ (1782). L’article démontre (...) que celui-ci constitue un cas de « texte-querelle », c’est-à-dire un texte qui met en scène la querelle menée à son propre sujet et qui ainsi la fait redémarrer; il analyse la posture qu’adopte le philosophe-querelleur, surtout dans l’énoncé paradoxal « ne nous engageons point dans les querelles », dont il examine les qualités performatives. (shrink)

Qualia Epiphenomenalism is the view that qualitative events lack causal efficacy. A common objection to qualia epiphenomenalism is the so-called Self-Stultifying Objection, which suggests that justified, true belief about qualitative events requires, among other things, the belief to be caused by the qualitative event—the very premise that qualia epiphenomenalism denies. William Robinson provides the most sustained response to the self-stultification objection that is available. In this paper I argue that Robinson's reply does not sufficiently overcome the self-stultification objection.

Nonreductive physicalism states that actions have sufficient physical causes and distinct mental causes. Nonreductive physicalism has recently faced the exclusion problem, according to which the single sufficient physical cause excludes the mental causes from causal efficacy. Autonomists respond by stating that while mental-to-physical causation fails, mental-to-mental causation persists. Several recent philosophers establish this autonomy result via similar models of causation :1031–1049, 2016; Zhong, J Philos 111:341–360, 2014). In this paper I argue that both of these autonomist models fail on account (...) of the problem of Edwards’s Dictum. However, I appeal to foundational principles of action theory to resuscitate mental-to-mental causation in a manner that is consistent with the models of causation endorsed by these autonomists. (shrink)

Qualia epiphenomenalism is the view that qualitative properties of events, such as the raw feel of tastes or painfulness, lack causal efficacy. One common objection to qualia epiphenomenalism is the epistemic argument, which states that this loss of causal efficacy undermines our capacity to know about these epiphenomenal qualitative properties. A number of rejoinders have been offered up to insulate qualia epiphenomenalism from the epistemic argument. In this paper I consider and ultimately reject two such replies, namely, the common underlying (...) cause reply and the appeal to physical-effect epiphenomenalism. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Nonreductive physicalists endorse the principle of mental causation, according to which some events have mental causes: Sid climbs the hill because he wants to. Nonreductive physicalists also endorse the principle of physical causal completeness, according to which physical events have sufficient physical causes: Sid climbs the hill because a complex neural process in his brain triggered his climbing. Critics typically level the causal exclusion problem against this nonreductive physicalist model, according to which the physical cause is a sufficient cause of (...) the behavioural effect, so the mental cause is excluded from causally influencing Sid’s behaviour. In this paper I demonstrate how numerous nonreductive physicalists have responded to the causal exclusion problem by weakening the principle of physical causal completeness in numerous ways. The result: either numerous nonreductive physicalist solutions fail on account of the fact that they do not satisfy a robustly defined principle of physical causal completeness, or there is an accelerating trend of solving the causal exclusion problem by suitably weakening the principle of physical causal completeness. (shrink)

According to proponents of the causal exclusion problem, there cannot be a sufficient physical cause and a distinct mental cause of the same piece of behaviour. Increasingly, the causal exclusion problem is circumvented via this compatibilist reasoning: a sufficient physical cause of the behavioural effect necessitates the mental cause of the behavioural effect, so the effect has a sufficient physical cause and a mental cause as well. In this paper, I argue that this compatibilist reply fails to resolve the causal (...) exclusion problem. (shrink)

Dwayne Tunstall turns to Lewis Gordon's Africana existential phenomenology in an effort to untangle Marcel's “reflective method” from its involvements with colonial racism. Tunstall's book interprets Marcel's religious existentialism as a development of his attempt to resist modernity's burgeoning dehumanization but observes that Marcel's sociopolitical thought leaves antiblack racism unexamined, which amounts to a failure to attend to “the most noxious form of depersonalization existing in the twentieth century.” In this review I call into question both Marcel's conception of (...) “philosophy proper” as well as Tunstall's appropriation of that conception in order to do philosophy personally. I am also hard pressed to accept Tunstall's implication that better responses to various manifestations of dehumanization are located in “extraphilosophical” practices or his more explicit claim that “theism” succeeds where philosophy proper has failed. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s principle of Explanatory Exclusion says there can be no more than a single complete and independent explanation of any one event. Accordingly, if we have a complete neurological explanation for some piece of human behavior, the mental explanation must either be excluded, or it must not be distinct from the neurological explanation. Jaegwon Kim argues that mental explanations are not distinct from neurological explanations on account of the fact that they refer to the same objective causal relation between (...) events. A number of critics have argued that this extensional model of explanatory individuation allows for too many descriptions to state the same explanation. In this paper I consider, and ultimately reject, a possible response to these critics called the Constitutive Property Reply. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is an inherently unstable position. In his view, the most serious problem is that non-reductive physicalism leads to type epiphenomenalism—the causal inefficacy of mental properties. Kim suggests that we can salvage mental causation by endorsing functional reduction. Given the fact that Kim’s goal in formulating functional reduction is to provide a robust account of mental causation it would be surprising if his position implies eliminativism about mental properties or (...) leads to a view that is similar to one of the versions of non-reductive physicalism that he criticizes. We will show that depending on how certain key claims are interpreted, there are reasons for thinking functional reduction has these implications, in which case either Kim fails to provide a robust account of mental causation or there is reason to suspect that some of his criticisms of non-reductive physicalism are misguided. (shrink)

For the nonreductive physicalist, behavioural effects have a complete physiological explanation and a distinct psychological explanation. In a series of papers Jaegwon Kim argues that there can be no more than a single complete and independent explanation of any one event, thereby excluding the psychological explanation. For his own part, Kim includes psychological explanations through the use of an extensional model of explanatory individuation. Numerous critics have pointed out the counterintuitive results of this extensional model of explanatory individuation. In a (...) recent article in this journal, Neil Campbell suggests that Kim's property exemplification account of events provides the conceptual resources to dodge this objection. In this article I argue that this appeal to the property exemplification account does not work in the crucial case of mental explanation. (shrink)

The type-type reductive identity of the mental to the physical was once the dominant position in the mental causation debate. In time this consensus was overturned, largely due to its inability to handle the problem of multiple realizability. In its place a nonreductive position emerged which often included an adherence to functionalism. Functionalism construes mental properties as functional states of an organism, which in turn have specific physical realizers. This nonreductive form of functionalism, henceforth called role functionalism, has faced a (...) number of criticisms itself. Chief among these is the concern that the realizer of the functional role is causally sufficient, so the role property does not make a contribution of its own. In this paper I argue that there is a way for unreduced functional properties to play a role after all. This is done by conceiving of functional properties as higher level functional properties of a macro system which determine that its realizers will play the roles that they play. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim once refrained from excluding distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient physical cause of the effect. At that time, Kim also refrained from excluding distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect. More recently, he has excluded distinct mental causes of effects that depend upon the sufficient cause of the effect, since the physical cause is individually sufficient for the effect. But there has been, to this point, no parallel (...) shift in the explanatory realm, such that distinct mental explanations of effects that depend upon complete physical explanations of the effect are excluded since the physical explanation is objectively complete. In this paper I consider, defend, and apply this update to the principle of explanatory exclusion—an update, which, in the final analysis, demonstrates a significant advantage that non-reductive physicalism has over reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Mind and the Causal Exclusion Problem The causal exclusion problem is an objection to nonreductive physicalist models of mental causation. Mental causation occurs when behavioural effects have mental causes: Jennie eats a peach because she wants one; Marvin goes to Harvard because he chose to, etc. Nonreductive physicalists typically supplement adherence to mental causation with … Continue reading Mind and the Causal Exclusion Problem →.

For some time now, Jaegwon Kim has argued that irreducible mental properties face the threat of causal inefficacy. The primary weapon he deploys to sustain this charge is the supervenience/exclusion argument. This argument, in a nutshell, states that any mental property that irreducibly supervenes on a physical property is excluded from causal efficacy because the underlying physical property takes care of all of the causal work itself. Originally intended for mental properties alone, it did not take long for his critics (...) to suggest the argument generalizes across all of the special science properties as well. Kim responds in two different ways to the generalization problem. The first response, which I call the higher-level solution, is ably dismissed by numerous critics. The second response, which I call the identity solution, has not faced comparable scrutiny. In this paper I argue that the identity solution faces numerous problems of its own. (shrink)

There have been and continue to be disagreements about how to consider the traditional square of opposition and the traditional inferences of obversion, conversion, contraposition and inversion from the perspective of contemporary quantificational logic. Philosophers have made many different attempts to save traditional inferences that are invalid when they involve empty classes. I survey some of these attempts and argue that the only satisfactory way of saving all the traditional inferences is to make the existential assumption that both the subject (...) and predicate classes and their complement classes are non-empty for all the propositions we admit. I briefly indicate the room for continued controversy over how properly to interpret Aristotle?s statements regarding these inferences, but find some plausibility in the views of Manley Thompson and A.N.Prior that Aristotle had in mind a particular arrangement of existential import unfamiliar to most contemporary logicians. (shrink)

In recent years, emergentism has resurfaced as a possible method by which to secure autonomous mental causation from within a physicalistic framework. Critics argue, however, that emergentism fails, since emergentism entails that effects have sufficient physical causes, so they cannot also have distinct mental causes. In this paper I argue that this objection may be effective against supervenient emergentism, but it is not established that it is effective against mereological emergentism. In fact, after demonstrating that two founding emergentists, Samuel Alexander (...) and C. Lloyd Morgan, are mereological emergentists, I show how mereological emergentism provides fresh responses to the causal exclusion problem. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Cynthia MacDonald and Graham MacDonald offer a resolution to the twin problems of mental causation and mental causal relevance. They argue that the problem of mental causation is soluble via token monism – mental events are causally efficacious physical events. At the same time, the problem of mental causal relevance is solved by combining this causally efficacious mental property instance with the systematic co-variation between distinct mental properties of the cause and the action-theoretic properties (...) of the effect in question. In this paper we argue that the solution offered by Mac- Donald and MacDonald faces significant difficulties in resolving both of the twin problems of mental causation and mental causal relevance. (shrink)

In The Causal Exclusion Problem, the popular strategy of abandoning any one of the principles constituting the causal exclusion problem is considered, but ultimately rejected. The metaphysical foundations undergirding the causal exclusion problem are then explored, revealing that the causal exclusion problem cannot be dislodged by undermining its metaphysical foundations – as some are in the habit of doing. Finally, the significant difficulties associated with the bevy of contemporary nonreductive solutions, from supervenience to emergentism, are expanded upon. While conducting this (...) survey of contemporary options, however, two novel approaches are introduced, both of which may resolve the causal exclusion problem from within a nonreductive physicalist paradigm. (shrink)