richard mckay rorty (1932-2007) is the american neo-pragmatist. criticizing the prevalent issues of traditional philosophy such as truth, knowledge, objectivity, logic and philosophy, he considers epistemology a modern subject which emerged via forging the mind by rene descartes. in his view, separation of mind–body is an unprecedented matter created in descartes philosophy. he thinks that, i...

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...

In chapter 2 Swinburne rejects physicalism for two reason. The first is that it committed to entailments do not exist. It suggested this reason questionable both because there no persuasive deny are such entailments, and also think has entailments. second the mental involves privileged access by subject physical features allow access. proposed does in fact permit 3 defends Simple View of person...

I defend the thesis that the physicalist two perspectives position on qualia described below merits further examination and debate – that it has potential as a possible basis for a correct account of the relationship of qualia1 to our physical world view. The idea that what is a quale to one observer is a brain state to another – that each is simply a different perspective on a single reality –...

It may be that qualia are neither a uniquely hard problem that physicalism can only resolve by treating them as fundamental properties as Chalmers has suggested in some of his writings (1995, 1996, 2003), nor so ephemeral that they will disappear entirely once Science has solved all of the easy problems associated with the brain as Dennett has proposed in some of his (1988, 1991). It could be t...

This paper describes a version of type identity physicalism, which we call Flat Physicalism, and shows how it meets several objections often raised against theories. theory is informed by recent results in the conceptual foundations physics, particular clarifies notion ‘physical kinds' light analysis paradigmatic case reducing thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. We show Physicalism compati...

The debate over physicalism in philosophy of mind can be seen as concerning an inconsistent tetrad of theses: (1) if physicalism is true, a priori physicalism is true; (2) a priori physicalism is false; (3) if physicalism is false, epiphenomenalism is true; (4) epiphenomenalism is false. This paper argues that one may resolve the debate by distinguishing two conceptions of the physical: on the ...

Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature concerns how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are cons...

Debates about the metaphysical compatibility between miracles and natural laws often appear to prejudge the issue by either adopting or rejecting a strong physicalist thesis (the idea that the physical is all that exists). The operative component of physicalism is a causal closure principle: that every caused event is a physically caused event. If physicalism and this strong causal closure prin...