A physicalist wants to be able to say the following: (A) There are no mental properties. (B) S believes p. There is an apparent inconsistency in these two claims. Most physicalists consider it implausible to suggest that (B) is false and so concede that (A) is false. In order to maintain the physicalist worldview they say that mental properties are nothing over and above physical properties. This is usually stated in terms of supervenience, something like this: a set A of properties supervenes on set B of properties if for any change to A properties there is a corresponding change to B properties and in every possible world in which A properties…
-
-
Supervenience and the Illusive Connection Between Physical And Mental Properties.
The problem of exclusion suggests that one or other of the following theses should be abandoned: all non-physical properties depend on physical properties without being reduced to physical properties and all entities that exist are physical entities. In response to the problem many physicalists have subscribed to a form of property dualism or reductive physicalism (eliminativism). Others hold that properties that are non-physical are identical to physical properties yet remain legitimate features for analysis.[1] There are some, however, who have found promising theories that draw on finding coherent ways to analyze the structural relationship between properties. Properties, on their view, are hierarchically arranged, one depending on another, being realized by…
-
Notes on James Madden’s “Mind, Matter and Nature”
Are we living in a machine? Mechanism is the view that the fundamental substance of the world exists independently of anything else. It is physical and independent of minds or other psychological properties. It is analyzed according to physical properties, causes and a like. If one is a mechanist one can either be a dualist or a materialist. Either there are entities that operate over and above the material or matter is all there is. Given the weaknesses of both positions, Madden concludes that the issue in question is whether or not mechanism should be assumed. Madden says there is a better alternative and, when applied to the philosophy of…