A major objection to the view that the relation of persons to human animals is coincidence rather than identity is that on this view the human animal will share the coincident person's physical properties, and so should (contrary to the view) share its mental properties. But while the same physical predicates are true of the person and the human animal, the difference in the persistence conditions of these entities implies that there will be a difference in the properties ascribed by (...) these predicates, with the result that the physical properties that determine the person's mental states will belong to the person and not to the human animal. (shrink)

[Sydney Shoemaker] A major objection to the view that the relation of persons to human animals is coincidence rather than identity is that on this view the human animal will share the coincident person's physical properties, and so should (contrary to the view) share its mental properties. But while the same physical predicates are true of the person and the human animal, the difference in the persistence conditions of these entities implies that there will be a difference in (...) the properties ascribed by these predicates, with the result that the physical properties that determine the person's mental states will belong to the person and not to the human animal. /// [Galen Strawson] What are the grounds of self-consciousness? I consider 29 proposals and reject 22, including a number of proposals that experience of body (or bodies) is necessary for self-consciousness. A popular strategy in debates of this sort is to argue that one cannot be said to have some concept C (e.g. the concept ONESELF, necessary for self-consciousness) unless one has a need or a use for C given the character of one's experience considered independently of the character that it has given that one possesses C. I suggest that such arguments are invalid. (shrink)

This paper discusses in broad terms the metaphysical projects of Sydney Shoemaker’s Physical Realization . Specifically, I examine the effectiveness of Shoemaker’s novel “subset” account of realization for defusing the problem of mental causation, and compare the “subset” account with the standard “second-order” account. Finally, I discuss the physicalist status of the metaphysical worldview presented in Shoemaker’s important new contribution to philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

What does it mean to say that this person at this time is 'the same' as that person at an earlier time? If the brain is damaged or the memory lost, how far does a person's identity continue? In this book two eminent philosophers develop very different approaches to the problem.

[Sydney Shoemaker] A major objection to the view that the relation of persons to human animals is coincidence rather than identity is that on this view the human animal will share the coincident person's physical properties, and so should (contrary to the view) share its mental properties. But while the same physical predicates are true of the person and the human animal, the difference in the persistence conditions of these entities implies that there will be a difference in (...) the properties ascribed by these predicates, with the result that the physical properties that determine the person's mental states will belong to the person and not to the human animal. /// [Galen Strawson] What are the grounds of self-consciousness? I consider 29 proposals and reject 22, including a number of proposals that experience of body (or bodies) is necessary for self-consciousness. A popular strategy in debates of this sort is to argue that one cannot be said to have some concept C (e.g. the concept ONESELF, necessary for self-consciousness) unless one has a need or a use for C given the character of one's experience considered independently of the character that it has given that one possesses C. I suggest that such arguments are invalid. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that this person at this time is 'the same' as that person at an earlier time? If the brain is damaged or the memory lost, how far does a person's identity continue? In this book two eminent philosophers develop very different approaches to the problem.

Since the appearance of a widely influential book, Self-Knowledge and Self-ldentity, Sydney Shoemaker has continued to work on a series of interrelated issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. This volume contains a collection of the most important essays he has published since then. The topics that he deals with here include, among others, the nature of personal and other forms of identity, the relation of time to change, the nature of properties and causality and the relation (...) between the two, dualism and immortality, and the nature of mental states. All the essays show the same care and precision in argument as the earlier book, but they also reveal a substantial shift in Professor Shoemaker's position to a form of materialism. In fact, a number of papers together constitute what is probably the most subtle and rigourous defence yet of a sophisticated functionalism in the account of the mind. (shrink)

This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal collection of his work on interrelated issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. It reproduces all of the original papers, many of which are now regarded as classics, and includes four papers published since the first edition appeared in 1984. Themes include the nature of self-knowledge and self-reference, personal identity, persistence over time, properties, mental states, and perceptual experience.A number of the papers, including 'Self-Reference and Self-Awareness', 'Persons and (...) Their Pasts', 'Causality and Properties', and 'The Inverted Spectrum', have remained at the centre of discussion of their topics. Several of the essays in the original collection discuss the ways in which causal considerations enter into the individuation of properties, and three of the added essays - 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity', 'Realization and Mental Causation', and 'On What There Are' - deal with related themes. The neo-Lockean view of personal identity presented in 'Persons and Their Pasts' is developed with a different emphasis in the added paper 'Self and Substance'.Identity, Cause, and Mind's reappearance will be warmly welcomed by scholars and students alike. (shrink)

One does not have to agree with the main conclusions of David Chalmers’s book in order to find it stimulating, instructive, and frequently brilliant. If Chalmers’s arguments succeed, his achievement will of course be enormous; he will have overthrown the materialist orthodoxy that has reigned in philosophy of mind and cognitive science for the last half century. If, as I think, they fail, his achievement is nevertheless considerable. For his arguments draw on, and give forceful and eloquent expression to, widely (...) held intuitions; seeing how they go astray, if they do, cannot help but deepen our understanding of the issues he is addressing. (shrink)

This paper concerns Sydney Shoemaker's view, presented in his book, Physical Realization (Oxford University Press, 2007), of how mental properties are realized by physical properties. That view aims to avoid the "too many minds" problem to which he seems to be led by his further view that human persons are not token-identical with their bodies. The paper interprets and criticizes Shoemaker's view.

Sydney Shoemaker has been arguing for more than a decade for an account of the mind–body problem in which the notion of realization takes centre stage. His aim is to provide a notion of realization that is consistent with the multiple realizability of mental properties or events, and which explains: how the physical grounds the mental; and why the causal work of mental events is not screened off by that of physical events. Shoemaker's proposal consists of individuating (...) properties in terms of causal powers, and defining realization as a relation of inclusion between sets of causal powers. Thus, as the causal powers that define a mental property are a subset of the causal powers that characterize a physical property, it can be said that physical properties realize mental properties. In this paper we examine the physicalist credentials of Shoemaker's mind–body theory in relation to three important issues: the direction of the relation of dependence that the theory is committed to; the possibility of mental properties existing without being anchored by physical properties; and the compatibility of the theory with the causal closure of the physical world. We argue that Shoemaker's theory is problematic in all three respects. After that we consider whether the theory should count as a mind–body theory at all, given that it seems to be committed to a distorted view of mental properties. (shrink)

A common conception of what it is for one property to “realize” another suggests that it is the realizer property that does the causal work, and that the realized property is epiphenomenal. The same conception underlies George Bealer’s argument that functionalism leads to the absurd conclusion that what we take to be self-ascriptions of a mental state are really self-ascriptions of “first-order” properties that realize that state. This paper argues for a different concept of realization. A property realizes another if (...) its “forward looking” causal features are a subset of those of the property realized. The instantiation of the realizer property will include the instantiation of the property realized; and when the effects produced are due to the causal features of the latter, it is the instantiation of it that is appropriately regarded as their cause. Epiphenomenalism is avoided, and so is Bealer’s absurd conclusion. (shrink)

One does not have to agree with the main conclusions of David Chalmers’s book in order to find it stimulating, instructive, and frequently brilliant. If Chalmers’s arguments succeed, his achievement will of course be enormous; he will have overthrown the materialist orthodoxy that has reigned in philosophy of mind and cognitive science for the last half century. If, as I think, they fail, his achievement is nevertheless considerable. For his arguments draw on, and give forceful and eloquent expression to, widely (...) held intuitions; seeing how they go astray, if they do, cannot help but deepen our understanding of the issues he is addressing. (shrink)

Fleshing out Ramsey-sentence functionalism; against Lewis's "mad pain" mixed theory; relating functionalism to the causal theory of properties. Empirical functionalism is chauvinistic so probably false. A terrific, in-depth paper.

A common conception of what it is for one property to “realize” another suggests that it is the realizer property that does the causal work, and that the realized property is epiphenomenal. The same conception underlies George Bealer’s argument that functionalism leads to the absurd conclusion that what we take to be self-ascriptions of a mental state are really self-ascriptions of “first-order” properties that realize that state. This paper argues for a different concept of realization. A property realizes another if (...) its “forward looking” causal features are a subset of those of the property realized. The instantiation of the realizer property will include the instantiation of the property realized; and when the effects produced are due to the causal features of the latter, it is the instantiation of it that is appropriately regarded as their cause. Epiphenomenalism is avoided, and so is Bealer’s absurd conclusion. (shrink)

[Sydney Shoemaker] A major objection to the view that the relation of persons to human animals is coincidence rather than identity is that on this view the human animal will share the coincident person's physical properties, and so should share its mental properties. But while the same physical predicates are true of the person and the human animal, the difference in the persistence conditions of these entities implies that there will be a difference in the properties ascribed by (...) these predicates, with the result that the physical properties that determine the person's mental states will belong to the person and not to the human animal. /// [Galen Strawson] What are the grounds of self-consciousness? I consider 29 proposals and reject 22, including a number of proposals that experience of body is necessary for self-consciousness. A popular strategy in debates of this sort is to argue that one cannot be said to have some concept C unless one has a need or a use for C given the character of one's experience considered independently of the character that it has given that one possesses C. I suggest that such arguments are invalid. (shrink)

In Physical Realization, Sydney Shoemaker argues that all properties, including phenomenally conscious properties that feature in our cognitive activities are realized in microphysical states of affairs or properties. It is the purpose of Physical Realization to provide an account of realization ‘and to discuss [its] bearing on a number of central topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind’ . This book consolidates many of the themes found in Sydney Shoemaker’s work over the past quarter of a (...) century, including his work on properties, coincident objects, essentialism, material constitution, and persistence through time, and culminates in a systematic overall metaphysical framework. (shrink)

The paper defends the view that there is a constitutive relation between believing something and believing that one believes it. This view is supported by the incoherence of affirming something while denying that one believes it, and by the role awareness of the contents one’s belief system plays in the rational regulation of that system. Not all standing beliefs are accompanied by higher-order beliefs that self-ascribe them; those that are so accompanied are ones that are “available” in the sense that (...) their subjects are poised to assent to their contents, to use them as premises in reasoning, and to be guided by them in their behavior. The account is compatible with the possibility of negative self-deception—mistakenly believing that one does not believe something—but the closest thing to positive self-deception it allows is believing falsely that a belief with a certain content is one’s dominant belief on a certain matter through failure to realize that one has a stronger belief that contradicts it. The view has implications about Moore’s paradox that contradict widely held views. On this view self-ascriptions of beliefs can be warranted and grounded on reasons—but the reasons are not phenomenally conscious mental states (as held by Christopher Peacocke) but rather available beliefs. (shrink)

This is an expanded edition of Sydney Shoemaker's seminal collection of his work on interrelated issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. It reproduces all of the original papers, many of which are now regarded as classics, and includes four papers published since the first edition appeared in 1984. Themes include the nature of self-knowledge and self-reference, personal identity, persistence over time, properties, mental states, and perceptual experience.A number of the papers, including 'Self-Reference and Self-Awareness', 'Persons and (...) Their Pasts', 'Causality and Properties', and 'The Inverted Spectrum', have remained at the centre of discussion of their topics. Several of the essays in the original collection discuss the ways in which causal considerations enter into the individuation of properties, and three of the added essays - 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity', 'Realization and Mental Causation', and 'On What There Are' - deal with related themes. The neo-Lockean view of personal identity presented in 'Persons and Their Pasts' is developed with a different emphasis in the added paper 'Self and Substance'.Identity, Cause, and Mind's reappearance will be warmly welcomed by scholars and students alike. (shrink)

One does not have to agree with the main conclusions of David Chalmers’s book in order to find it stimulating, instructive, and frequently brilliant. If Chalmers’s arguments succeed, his achievement will of course be enormous; he will have overthrown the materialist orthodoxy that has reigned in philosophy of mind and cognitive science for the last half century. If, as I think, they fail, his achievement is nevertheless considerable. For his arguments draw on, and give forceful and eloquent expression to, widely (...) held intuitions; seeing how they go astray, if they do, cannot help but deepen our understanding of the issues he is addressing. (shrink)

[…] One view I hold about the nature of phenomenal character, which is also a view about the relation between phenomenal character and the introspective belief about it, is that phenomenal character is “self intimating.” This means that it is of the essence of a state’s having a certain phenomenal character that this issues in the subject’s being introspectively aware of that character, or does so if the subject reflects. Part of my aim is to give an account which makes (...) it intelligible that this should be so. A more substantive view I hold about phenomenal character is that a perceptual state’s having a certain phenomenal character is a matter of its having a certain sort of representational content. This much I hold in common with a number of recent writers, including Gil Harman, Michael Tye, Bill Lycan, and Fred Dretske. But representationalism about phenomenal character often goes with the rejection of “qualia,” and with the rejection of the possibility of spectrum inversion and other sorts of “qualia invesion.” My version of representationalism embraces what other versions reject. It assigns an essential role to qualia, and accepts the possibility of qualia inversion. A central aim of the present paper is to present a version of this view which is free of the defects I now see in my earlier versions of it. (shrink)

I am grateful to Michael Tye for his discussion of my book, and to the editor for offering me the opportunity to respond to Tye's criticisms of my account of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience—especially since this prompted reflections that led me to see a way of removing one unattractive feature of the account.

This article evaluates whether personal identity should be sought only in the biological or embodied existence of the person or exclusively in psychological existence. It suggests that whatever the answer turns out to be, it would involve causality. It argues against the animalist view of personal identity and defends the classical neo-Lockean view by arguing that the thick properties of person are psychological or mental ones. The author's answer to the question of what we are is in part that we (...) are creatures having certain kinds of mental properties as the thick properties whose causal profiles determine their persistence conditions. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker’s causal theory of properties is an important starting place for some contemporary metaphysical perspectives concerning the nature of properties. In this paper, I discuss the causal and intrinsic criteria that Shoemaker stipulates for the identity of genuine properties and relations, and address George Molnar’s criticism that holding both criteria presents an unbridgeable hypothesis in the causal theory of properties. The causal criterion requires that properties and relations contribute to the causal powers of objects if they (...) are to be deemed genuine rather than ‘mere-Cambridge’. The intrinsic criterion requires that all genuine properties and relations be intrinsic. Molnar’s S-property argument says that these criteria conflict if one considers extrinsic spatiotemporal properties and relations to contribute causally. In this paper, I argue that a solution to the contradiction that Molnar identifies involves a denial of discreteness between objects, leading to a power holist perspective and a resulting deflationary account of intrinsicality. (shrink)

The case of Brown and Brownson can be thought of as an updated version of John Locke’s prince-cobbler example, one that replaces a soul transfer with a brain transplant. Briefly, Brown and Robinson are operated on for the removal of brain tumors by a procedure that involves the temporary removal of the brain from the skull, and by a surgical blunder Brown’s brain ends up in Robinson’s skull; the resulting person, Brownson, has Brown’s brain and Robinson’s body, and his psychological (...) states, including memories, are those one would expect Brown to have. (shrink)

Let me begin by indicating where I think Harman and I are in agreement. We both think that "subjective reactions" must come into an account of color, although we have different views about how they do. We both think that perceptual experience has a "presentational or representational character," and that color is represented by our visual experiences as a feature of external objects, not as a feature of our experience. Moreover, we agree that, as Harman puts it, "color is experienced (...) as a simple basic quality, rather than a disposition or complex of causal properties." As Harman emphasized in an earlier paper, 1 what we are introspectively aware of in our experience is its presentational or representational content, not any "mental paint" which bestows this content. I shall refer to all of this as Harman's "phenomenological point." Because we agree on this, we also agree that if his characters George and Mary were spectrum inverted relative to each other, supposing that to be possible, this would have to involve their perceiving the same objects as having different properties, this despite the fact that as normal perceivers they would perceive these objects as having the same colors. And I think we agree that in this case the properties would have to be relational ones, defined or constituted by their relations to the experiences of the subject perceiving them. (shrink)

This excellent collection of essays by Sydney Shoemaker covers his work over the last ten years in the philosophy of mind. Shoemaker's overarching concern in the collection is to provide an account of the mind that does justice to the “first-person perspective.” The two main topics are the nature of self-knowledge and the nature of sensory experience. The essays are insightful, careful, and thought-provoking.

Qualia realists hold that experience’s phenomenal character is a non-representational property of experience, what they call qualia. Representationalists hold that phenomenal character is a representational property of experience—there are no qualia (in this particular sense of the word). The transparency of qualia to introspection would seem to count as reason for rejecting qualia realism and favoring representationalism. Sydney Shoemaker defends a middle ground, call it moderate qualia realism, which seems to provide a response to the problem of transparency (...) that in consistent with qualia realism. According to this view, while phenomenal character is a representational property of experience, it is determined by certain non-representational properties of experience, namely qualia. Shoemaker explains the apparent transparency of qualia by claiming that, while qualia are not directly introspectable, they are indirectly introspectable. I argue that neither Shoemaker’s moderate qualia realism nor his account of indirect introspection provide the qualia realist with a plausible solution to the problem of transparency. (shrink)

From now on I will assume that it is possible in principle for there to be cases of spectrum inversion in which the invertees are equally good perceivers of the colors. What I want to show next is that while allowing this possibility is incompatible with standard representationalism, it requires acceptance of a different version of representationalism. Consider the standard way of describing a case of spectrum inversion. Returning to Jack and Jill, we say that red things look to Jack (...) the way green things look to Jill, blue things look to Jack the way yellow things look to Jill, and so on. Of course, we might also express this by saying that the phenomenal character of Jack’s experience of red things is like the phenomenal character of Jill’s experience of green things, and so on. Or by saying that “what it is like” for Jack to see red things is “what it is like” for Jill to see green things, and so on. But “phenomenal character” is philosophical jargon, and “what it is like” is on its way to being that. We need to be able cash these locutions in terms that we are sure we understand. And I think that the best way of doing that is in terms of how things look. Now the sense in which red things look different to Jack and Jill cannot be that they look to have different colors in the epistemic sense. We can suppose that both perceive red things as being red, and therefore that to both red things look red in the epistemic sense. Nor can it be the comparative sense – to each, we can suppose, red things look like standard red things under standard conditions. The remaining sense of “looks” is supposed to be the phenomenal sense. Now those who employ this notion typically speak of things as looking red, blue, yellow, etc., in the phenomenal sense. But if Jack and Jill are both accurate perceivers of the colors of things, it can’t be that the difference in how things look to them is a difference in what colors things look to them, even if “looks” is used in the phenomenal sense.. (shrink)

This excellent collection of essays by Sydney Shoemaker covers his work over the last ten years in the philosophy of mind. Shoemaker's overarching concern in the collection is to provide an account of the mind that does justice to the “first-person perspective.” The two main topics are the nature of self-knowledge and the nature of sensory experience. The essays are insightful, careful, and thought-provoking.

The sense in which having the available belief that P gives one a reason for believing that one believes that P is just that if one has that available belief one is thereby justified, or warranted, in believing that one has it. In explaining why it is so it helps to bring in the notion of rationality. We noted earlier that it is a requirement of full human rationality that one regularly revise one’s belief system in the direction of greater (...) consistency and coherence, and, as a condition of one’s being able to do this, that one have access to its contents and their relations to one another. Judging that one believes something when one does, and judging that one doesn’t believe something when one doesn’t, are manifestations of the satisfaction of this requirement of rationality. That seems a sufficient reason to say that one is warranted in doing so. (shrink)

In recent decades the focus of discussions on personal identity has shifted, largely due to the work of Derek Parfit, from the metaphysical question of what constitutes the identity of persons over time to the question of the nature of the special concern that persons have for their own future well being, including the question of whether “what matters” is identity itself, or something else, perhaps psychological continuity and connectedness, that normally goes with identity but can be present without it. (...) Raymond Martin’s Self-Concern is, to be best of my knowledge, the first book-length treatment of the latter topic, and should be read by anyone interested in it. Although not primarily historical, its accounts of the views on this topic of such writers as Samuel Clark, Anthony Collins, Joseph Priestly, and William Hazlett will be news to most readers. And its own arguments are interesting, if not always persuasive. (shrink)

The author addresses remarks he considers fallacious made by panayot butchvarov concerning russell's views on the nature of language ("on denoting"). Butchvarov thought that russell and wittgenstein were advancing purely empirical theories. The author claims that this is patently false in the case of wittgenstein and only partially true of russell. Russell "did "not" hold, But emphatically denied, That every word in a significant sentence must correspond to an element in reality." the author holds that russell's principle about constituents "applies (...) to all propositions that we can think about." (staff). (shrink)