Mind, Matter, and Metabolism

Journal of Philosophy 113 (10):481-506 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

I discuss the bearing on the mind-body problem of some general characteristics of living systems, including the physical basis of metabolism and the relation between living activity and cognitive capacities in simple organisms. I then attempt to describe stages in the history of animal life important to the evolution of subjective experience. Features of the biological basis of cognition are used to criticize arguments against materialism that draw on the conceivability of a separation between mental and physical. I also argue against commonly held views about the "multiple realizability" of mental states of the kind seen in humans. The aim of the paper is to reconfigure and narrow the "explanatory gap" between mental and physical.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,854

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Review: Some Problems for Reductive Physicalism. [REVIEW]Pierre Jacob - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3):648 - 654.
Epistemic Gaps and the Mind-Body Problem.Thomas Foerster - 2019 - Dissertation, Cornell University
Evolving Across the Explanatory Gap.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2019 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11 (1):1-13.
Closing (or at least narrowing) the explanatory gap.Katalin Farkas - 2021 - In Peter R. Anstey & David Braddon-Mitchell (eds.), Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 125-142.
Consciousness-dependence and the explanatory gap.Neil Campbell Manson - 2002 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (4):521-540.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-05-18

Downloads
517 (#54,970)

6 months
68 (#86,536)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references