In his book Psychoneural Reduction – The New Wave John Bickle takes up a question that indeed deserved fresh consideration for quite some time – the question of whether psychology can be reduced to neurobiology. Of course, Bickle is right. In the last twenty years the general debate about the concept of theory reduction led to a lot of new insights. It should have been natural to reconsider the...

David Chalmers’ conceivability argument against physicalism relies on the entailment from a priori conceivability to metaphysical possibility. The a posteriori physicalist rejects this premise, but is consequently committed to psychophysical strong necessities. These don’t fit into the Kripkean model of the necessary a posteriori, and they are therefore, according to Chalmers, problematic. But ...

The next version to excite attention took off from the idea that, while mental terms cannot be translated into physical terms (as Carnap’s program had required) nevertheless, it does not follow that these terms refer to non-physical states. So, it was proposed, mental phenomena can be identical with states and processes in the brain, even though psychological descriptions have meanings differen...

According to the so-called Hempel’s Dilemma, thesis of physicalism is either false or empty. Our intention in this paper not propose a solution but rather argue as follows: extent that Dilemma applies it equally any theory gives deep-structure and changeable account our experience high-level theories. In particular, we will show also mind–body dualistic The scope turns out be very wide: special...

One reason philosophers have addressed the metaphysics of color is its apparent relevance to the sciences concerned with color phenomena. In the light of such thinking, this paper examines a pairing of views that has received much attention: color physicalism and externalism about the content of perceptual experience. It is argued that the latter is a dubious conception of the workings of our p...

If a sensory brain state plays an unusual functional role, does the phenomenology go with the role or the brain state? If the phenomenology goes with the functional role, that supports functionalism, which is the view that phenomenology just is the role. If it goes with the brain state, that supports physicalism, which is the view that phenomenology is what realizes or implements the role. I ag...