Larry Hardin has been the most steadfast and influential critic of physicalist theories of color over the last 20 years. In their modern form these theories originated with the work of Smart and Armstrong in the 1960s and 1970s 1 and Hardin appropriately concentrated on their views in his initial critique of physicalism. 2 In his most recent contribution to this project 3 he attacks Michael Tye...

In a recent paper, Shapiro and Sober (2007) defend two claims with respect to the master argument for epiphenomenalism, which is designed to rebut non-reductive physicalism: (i) relative to an interventionist account of causation, as most elaborately presented in (Woodward 2003), the master argument turns out to be invalid; and (ii) interventionism provides a means to experimentally uncover mic...

Paul Churchland argues that Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument against physicalism is so strong that if it defeated physicalism it would, at the same time, defeat ‘substance dualism’. The purpose of this paper is to articulate this ‘parity of reasons’ objection. In the first part of the paper, I discuss Churchland’s argument. I demonstrate that although his formulation of the objection is not w...

Perry, in this lucid, deep, and entertaining book (based on his 1999 Jean Nicod lectures), supposes that type-identity physicalism is antecedently plausible, and that rejecting this thesis requires good reason (this is " antecedent physicalism "). He aims to show that experience gap arguments, as given by Jackson (the knowledge argument), Kripke (the modal argument), and Chalmers (the zombie ar...

Supervenience physicalism attempts to combine non-reductionism about properties with a physical determination thesis in such a way as to ensure physicalism. I argue that this attempt is unsuccessful: the specific supervenience relation in question is either strong enough to ensure reductionism, as in the case of strong supervenience, or too weak to yield physical determination, as in the case o...

personal identity is a problem in the possibility of resurrection. what criterion is there that we can say a resurrected man is the same as the expired one? what is the answer in dualism, and what is in physicalism? does this question cause to deny possibility of resurrection? some philosopher claim that we have no criterion for identity between these two. and then, they conclude that after lif...