Nonreductive physicalism and mental causation

In this work I articulate...

Physicalism and the Fallacy of Composition

Physicalism, as in this paper, holds that every instance of causation reported by the special sciences is shadowed, even rivaled, by causation at the level of microphysics. The reported "cause" is embodied in one massive collection of microparticle events; the "effect" in another; the former brings about the latter by laws of physics. This paper argues that while individual events in the "cause" collection bring about individual events in the "effect" collection, it does not follow, and is unbelievable, that the "cause" collection itself brings anything about. Causings reported by the special sciences can be traced only at that level.

A quasi-materialist, quasi-dualist solution to the mind-body problem

If the mental can affect, or be affected by, the physical, then the mental must itself be physical. Otherwise the physical world would not be explanatorily closed. But it is closed. There are reasons to hold that materialism (in both its reductive and non-reductive varieties) is false. So how are we to explain the apparent responsiveness of the physical to the mental and vice versa? The only possible solution seems to be this: physical objects are really projections or isomorphs of objects whose essential properties are mental. (A slightly less accurate way of putting this would be to say: the constitutive - i.e. the non-structural and non-phenomenal - properties of physical objects are mental, i.e. are such as we are used to encountering only in "introspection".) The chair, qua thing that I can know through sense perception, and through hypotheses based strictly thereupon, is a kind of shadow of an object that is exactly like it, except that this other objects essential properties are mental. This line of thought, though radically counterintuitive, explains the apparent responsiveness of the mental to the physical, and vice versa, without being open to any of the criticisms to which materialism, dualistic interaction ism, and epiphenomenalism are open.

A natureza comportamental da mente: behaviorismo radical e filosofia da mente

Pós-graduação em Filosofia - FFC

A Physicalist View Of The Passion Of Christ

My project in this paper is to provide a plausible idea of Christ’s suffering and death in terms of a theory of the human person. More specifically, I want to contrast two major theories of the person-body relation. One is dualism. Dualism is the view that a human person is composed of two substances, that is, a soul and a body, and he (strictly speaking) is identical with the soul. On the other hand, physicalism is the view that a human person is numerically identical with his biological body. I will argue that dualism is not successful in explaining Christ’s passion for some reasons. Rather, physicalism, as I shall argue, provides a better explanation of how Christ’s physical suffering and death are real just like everyone else’s, so it is philosophically and theologically more plausible than dualism.