Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In this dissertation, I defend reductive physicalism, according to which (in particular) mental properties are type-identical to physical properties. I use a burden of proof strategy to defend the position, established by appealing to scientific practice, methodological considerations, and analogies between higher-level properties and paradigm cases of reduction. This strategy allows various non-reductive and anti-physicalist positions to be explored in the context of arguments presented in their favour.Non-reductive physicalists argue that some higher-level properties are not type-identical to any physical properties. Perhaps the principal argument along these lines is the Multiple Realizability Argument, while a common reductivist reply appeals to the Disjunctive Strategy. I establish a framework for understanding this dialectic that reveals the logical space available to non-reductive physicalists, allowing me to make comprehensive rejoinders to the best available responses to the Disjunctive Strategy. For example, according to a recent, powers-based response, a higher-level property instance has a proper subset of the causal powers of its realizer on the occasion, making the higher-level property instance ontologically distinct and causally autonomous from its realizer. Using my framework, I argue that the higher-level property is not token-distinct from its realizer. Furthermore, even if it were, its supposed causal autonomy is just a special case of the counterfactual stability of disjunctions.Anti-physicalists argue that some propertiesspecifically phenomenal propertiesare over and above physical properties, as per some strong form of property dualism. The main anti-physicalist arguments are the Knowledge and Conceivability Arguments. I argue that, perhaps surprisingly, these arguments actually exclude popular versions of strong emergentism (those according to which phenomenal properties are lawfully, downwardly causal), or at least render them less plausible than physicalist counterparts.Strong emergentism therefore relies mostly on its bare empirical possibility for support, which makes it resistant to
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Ranpal Dosanjh
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2311044824