I survey some of the connections between the metaphysics of the relation between mind and matter, and quantum theory’s measurement problem. After discussing the metaphysics, especially the correct formulation of physicalism, I argue that two state-reduction approaches to quantum theory’s measurement problem hold some surprises for philosophers’ discussions of physicalism. Though both approaches...

Abstract According to one-level physicalism, reality is exhausted by fundamental physical entities and properties. This position sometimes defended on the basis of truthmaker view ontological commitment. Accordingly, physicalists can affirm higher-level truths without ontologically committing any properties or states affairs; affairs serve as truthmakers all that have truthmakers, a physicalist...

Abstract This paper contributes to answering the question how physicalism can be defined for a world without fundamental physical phenomena. In recent in this journal, Torin Alter, Sam Coleman, and Robert J. Howell propose necessary condition on physicalism. They argue that is true only if there no infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted I alleged faces counterexamples. An phenomena...

In this paper, I observe that Hobbesian physicalism on the one side, and Cartesian dualism on the other, have had a widespread cultural influence on the way we regard ourselves and on the way we behave toward one another. I argue that what we now need is a conceptual space within which we might forge a metaphysical alternative, an alternative that will give us some hope of overcoming the delete...