1. In a recent article in this journal, Neil Campbell has argued that certain problems with the doctrine of psycho-physical supervenience can be overcome if supervenience is viewed as a relation between predicates rather than as a relation between properties. Campbell suggests that, when properly understood, this predicate version of supervenience "expresses a form of psycho-physical dependence...

The so-called Exclusion argument (Kim 2000; Papineau 2004) about mental causation applies one premise that is typically accepted without much discussion: the thesis of causal completeness of the physical domain (CCP). In part one I evaluate Papineau’s (2001) argument for the CCP. I argue that this argument is not satisfying and that it is incomplete. The rest of the thesis is dedicated to an al...

In addition to ignoring the severe practical problems posed by decoherence phenomena, quantum mind hypotheses are motivated by a misunderstanding of the nature of classical (i. e. nonquantum) dynamics. As presently understood, nonlinear dynamical systems – of which the brain is clearly one – exhibit the twin phenomena of chaos and emergence. The first of these impedes reductionist formulations ...

Filling in the schema requires specifying what it is for an entity to be physical, and what it is for an entity to be ‘‘nothing over and above’’ some other entities. Some have worried that no account of the physical is adequate for physicalist purposes; and I’ll soon say a bit about how physicalists have responded (in my view, successfully) to this worry. But my main focus here is on nothing ov...

Once, a mind-body theory based upon the idea of supervenience seemed to be a promising alternative to the various kinds of reductionistic physicalism. In recent years, however, Jaegwon Kim has subjected his own brainchild to a very thorough criticism. With most of Kim’s arguments I agree wholeheartedly not least because they converge with my own thoughts.2 In order to explain the few points of ...

Many philosophers use “physicalism” and “naturalism” interchangeably. In this paper, I will distinguish ontological naturalism from physicalism. While broad versions of physicalism are compatible with naturalism, naturalism doesn't have to be committed to strong versions of physical reductionism, so it cannot be defined as equivalent to it. Instead of relying on the notion of ideal physics, nat...

Many philosophers have been attracted by the view that colors are mindindependent properties of object surfaces. A leading, and increasingly popular, version of this view that has been defended in recent years is the so-called physicalist position that identifies colors with (classes of) spectral reflectance distributions. This view, has, however, come in for a fair bit of criticism for failing...

In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the conception of “physical” embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of the physical that hold in classical physical theories. Certain of those properties contradict the character of the physical in quantum mechanics, which prov...

Modern science has undermined belief in countless imaginary causalities. What is the nature of the relation between mind and brain? Philosophers have debated the issue for millennia, but it is only in the last twenty years that empirical evidence has begun to uncover some of the secrets of this ancient riddle. This lecture explores the possiblity that advances in neuroscience will undermine and...