Physicalism and Mental Causation

Physicalism and Mental Causation PDF Author: Sven Walter
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845405838
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Physicalism—the thesis that everything there is in the world, including our minds, is constituted by basic physical entities—has dominated the philosophy of mind during the last few decades. But although the conceptual foundations of the physicalist agenda—including a proper explication of notions such as ‘causation', ‘determination', ‘realization’ or even ‘physicalism’ itself—must be settled before more specific problems (e.g. the problems of mental causation and human agency) can be satisfactorily addressed, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on the relationships between the various key concepts of the debate on physicalism is yet missing. This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency, written by established and leading authors in the field.

Physicalism and Mental Causation

Physicalism and Mental Causation PDF Author: Sven Walter
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845405838
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
Physicalism—the thesis that everything there is in the world, including our minds, is constituted by basic physical entities—has dominated the philosophy of mind during the last few decades. But although the conceptual foundations of the physicalist agenda—including a proper explication of notions such as ‘causation', ‘determination', ‘realization’ or even ‘physicalism’ itself—must be settled before more specific problems (e.g. the problems of mental causation and human agency) can be satisfactorily addressed, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on the relationships between the various key concepts of the debate on physicalism is yet missing. This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency, written by established and leading authors in the field.

Mental Causation

Mental Causation PDF Author: Thomas Kroedel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487149
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.

Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Mind

Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Mind PDF Author: Neil Campbell
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 9781551115092
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Since Descartes’s division of the human subject into mental and physical components in the seventeenth century, there has been a great deal of discussion about how—indeed, whether or not—our mental states bring about our physical behavior. Through historical and contemporary readings, this collection explores this lively and important issue. In four parts, this anthology introduces the problem of mental causation, explores the debate sparked by Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism, examines Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument for the view that qualia are epiphenomenal, and investigates attempts to employ the controversial concept of supervenience to explain mental causation.

Mental Causation and Ontology

Mental Causation and Ontology PDF Author: S. C. Gibb
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199603774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This book demonstrates the importance of ontology for a central debate in philosophy of mind. Mental causation seems an obvious aspect of the world. But it is hard to understand how it can happen unless we get clear about what the entities involved in the process are. An international team of contributors presents new work on this problem.

Mind in a Physical World

Mind in a Physical World PDF Author: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262611534
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.

Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Mind

Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Mind PDF Author: Neil Campbell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780712602143
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind PDF Author: Brian McLaughlin
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0199262616
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 833

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Book Description
This is the most authoritative and comprehensive guide ever published to the state of the art in philosophy of mind, a flourishing area of research. An outstanding team of contributors offer 45 new critical surveys of a wide range of topics.

Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World

Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World PDF Author: Terry Horgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107077834
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
A collection of new essays that develop themes from the work of the philosopher Jaegwon Kim.

Personal Agency

Personal Agency PDF Author: E. J. Lowe
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191550906
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will—a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world—with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind—one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively—is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.

The Metaphysics of Mind

The Metaphysics of Mind PDF Author: Janet Levin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108944205
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
The Metaphysics of Mind presents and discusses the major contemporary theories of the nature of mind, including Dualism, Physicalism, Role-Functionalism, Russellian Monism, Panpsychism, and Eliminativism. Its primary goal is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question, including their prospects for explaining the special qualitative character of sensations and perceptual experiences, the special outer-directedness of beliefs, desires, and other intentional states, and—more generally—the place of mind in the world of nature, and the relation between mental states and the behaviors that they (seem to) cause. It also discusses, briefly, some further questions about the metaphysics of mind, namely, whether groups of individuals, or entire communities, can possess mental states that cannot be reduced to the mental states of the individuals in those communities, and whether the boundaries between mind and world are as sharp as they may seem.