Closet Dualism and Mental Causation

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter ◽  
Alexander Miller
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Jaegwon Kim ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Argumentative Strategy ◽  
Stephen Yablo

Serious doubts about nonreductive materialism — the orthodoxy of the past two decades in philosophy of mind — have been long overdue. Jaegwon Kim has done perhaps the most to articulate the metaphysical problems that the new breed of materialists must confront in reconciling their physicalism with their commitment to the autonomy of the mental. Although the difficulties confronting supervenience, multiple-realizability, and mental causation have been recurring themes in his work, only mental causation — in particular, the specter of epiphenomenalism — has really captured the interest of philosophers in general in recent years.This growing attention has spawned a large body of literature, which it is not our aim here to explore or assess. Rather, we want to call attention to what we believe is a new and quite different argumentative strategy against epiphenomenalism voiced in some recent articles by Tyler Burge and Stephen Yablo. Each has challenged two central assumptions of the existing mental causation debate.

Criticism of D.B Volkov’s Teleofunctional Solution to the Problem of Mental Causation

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Author(s):  
Anton V. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Factors ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Local Properties ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
First Editions

The articles examines the teleofunctional solution to the problem of mental causation, presented by Dmitry Volkov in his recently published book Free Will. An Illusion or an Opportunity. D.B. Volkov proposes solutions to three big metaphysical problems – mental causation, personal identity, and free will. Solving the first problem, Volkov creatively combines the advantages of Dennett’s teleofunctional model and Vasilyev’s local interactionism. Volkov’s teleofunctional model of mental causation seeks to prove the causal relevance of mental properties as non-local higher order properties. In my view, its substantiation is based on three points: (a) critics of the exclusion problem and Kim’s model of mental causation, (b) “Library of first editions” argument, (c) reduction of the causal trajectories argument (CTA 1) by Vasilyev to the counterpart argument (CTA 2) by Volkov. Each of these points faces objections. Kim’s criticism is based on an implicit confusion of two types of reduction – reduction from supervenience and from multiple realizability. The latter type does not threaten Kim’s ideas, but Volkov uses this very type in his criticism. The “Library of first editions” argument does not achieve its goal due to compositional features and because non-local relational properties are a type of external properties that cannot be causally relevant. The reduction of CTA 1 to CTA 2 is unsuccessful since, in the case of this reduction, important features of CTA 1 are lost – these are local mental properties, due to which the influence of non-local physical factors occurs. My main objection is that the concept of causally relevant non-local properties is incompatible with the very concept of cause. The set of causally relevant properties of cause can only be local.

Narrow Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juhani Yli-Vakkuri ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Hilary Putnam ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Narrow Content

Narrow mental content, if there is such a thing, is content that is entirely determined by the goings-on inside the head of the thinker. A central topic in the philosophy of mind since the mid-1970s has been whether there is a kind of mental content that is narrow in this sense. It is widely conceded, thanks to famous thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, that there is a kind of mental content that is not narrow. But it is often maintained that there is also a kind of mental content that is narrow, and that such content can play various key explanatory roles relating, inter alia, to epistemology and the explanation of action. This book argues that this is a forlorn hope. It carefully distinguishes a variety of conceptions of narrow content and a variety of explanatory roles that might be assigned to narrow content. It then argues that, once we pay sufficient attention to the details, there is no promising theory of narrow content in the offing.

scholarly journals Bioinsecticides based on plant essential oils: a short overview

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 179-182
Author(s):  
Murray B. Isman
Keyword(s):  
Essential Oils ◽  
Crop Protection ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Plant Essential Oils ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Regulatory Challenges

AbstractInterest in the discovery and development of plant essential oils for use as bioinsecticides has grown enormously in the past 20 years. However, successful commercialization and utilization of crop protection products based on essential oils has thus far lagged far behind their promise based on this large body of research, most notably because with the exceptions of the USA and Australia, such products receive no special status from regulatory agencies that approve new pesticides for use. Essential oil-based insecticides have now been used in the USA for well over a decade, and more recently have seen use in the European Union (EU), Korea, and about a dozen other countries, with demonstrated efficacy against a wide range of pests and in numerous crop systems. For the most part these products are based on commodity essential oils developed as flavor and fragrance agents for the food and cosmetic industries, as there are formidable logistic, economic, and regulatory challenges to the use of many other essential oils that otherwise possess potentially useful bioactivity against pests. In spite of these limitations, the overall prospects for biopesticides, including those based on essential oils, are encouraging as the demand for sustainably-produced and/or organic food continues to increase worldwide.

Mathematical Issues Arising From the Directed Mutation Controversy

Genetics ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 164 (1) ◽  
pp. 373-379
Author(s):  
Qi Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Directed Mutation ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Evidence

Abstract During the past 14 years or so a large body of new evidence that supposedly supports the directed mutation hypothesis has accumulated. Interpretation of some of the evidence depends on mathematical reasoning, which can be subtler than it appears at first sight. This article attempts to clarify some of the mathematical issues arising from the directed mutation controversy, thereby offering alternative interpretations of some of the evidence.

OH Emission from Protostars

1970 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
pp. 336-337
Author(s):  
I. D. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
Class I ◽  
Emission Sources ◽  
Equilibrium Situation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Maser Action ◽  
Non Equilibrium

There is a large body of evidence to suggest that the anomalous OH emission sources—particularly those which are classified as class I sources—are associated with protostars. It is also known, from the theories brought forward over the past four years, that maser action can be caused by quite a variety of non-equilibrium situations. It is argued here that one particular kind of non-equilibrium situation which can plausibly be expected to exist in protostars is very similar to that proposed previously in the electron-pumping model, and that, in this new context, it can mimic most of the observed features of class I sources.

‘We have long memories in this area’: Ulster Defence Regiment place-memory along the Irish border

2020 ◽  
pp. 175069802092145
Author(s):  
Joseph S Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The Past ◽  
Place Memory ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Time Away

A large body of literature assumes post-conflict societies can and should mediate public memory towards frames conducive to a reconciled future. However, this article argues that such a drive marginalises survivors of political violence who narrate the past as still-present wounds. The linear temporality of transitional justice presumes an idealised trajectory through time, away from violence and towards reconciliation. However, this idealised temporality renders anachronistic survivors who depend on the prolongation of traumatic pasts for the possibility of political change. Using the case of former Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland, this article examines this prolongation through the lens of Ulster Defence Regiment survivors’ resistant place-memory along the Southwest run of the Irish border. Through the performative retemporalisation of everyday places and landscapes, survivors demand that their resistant memories and narrative frames of past violence still belong and still have active political resonance in transitional political space.

Nonreductive Materialism and Mental Causation

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ausonio Marras
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Theory ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Token Physicalism ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Bridge Principles

I take nonreductive materialism to be the conjunction of two theses, the first ontological, the second epistemological. The ontological thesis - token physicalism- is that mental events (processes, states, etc.) are tokenidentical to physical events; the epistemological thesis is that psychology is not reducible to physical theory in the classic sense of 'reduction,' according to which we reduce a theory to a another theory by deriving the laws of the former from the laws of the latter via 'bridge principles' linking the predicates of the reducing theory with the predicates of the reduced theory.

scholarly journals Can Neuroscientists Test a New Physicalist Mind/Body View: DiCoToP (Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism)?

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. W. Brakel
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Multiple Realization ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
Token Physicalism ◽  
The Mind

Given that disparate mind/body views have interfered with interdisciplinary research in psychoanalysis and neuroscience, the mind/body problem itself is explored here. Adding a philosophy of mind framework, problems for both dualists and physicalists are presented, along with essential concepts including: independent mental causation, emergence, and multiple realization. To address some of these issues in a new light, this article advances an original mind/body account—Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism (DiCoToP). Next, puzzles DiCoTop reveals, psychoanalytic problems it solves, and some empirical evidence accrued for views consistent with DiCoToP are presented. In closing, this piece challenges/appeals for neuroscience research to gain evidence for (or against) the DiCoToP view.

scholarly journals Three Decades of Internet- and Computer-Based Interventions for the Treatment of Depression: Protocol for a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

10.2196/14860 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. e14860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Moshe ◽  
Yannik Terhorst ◽  
Pim Cuijpers ◽  
Ioana Cristea ◽  
Laura Pulkki-Råback ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Effect Size ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Controlled Trials ◽  
Cochrane Central Register ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
The Past ◽  
Treatment Of Depression ◽  
Computer Based

Background Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. Internet- and computer-based interventions (IBIs) have been shown to provide effective, scalable forms of treatment. More than 100 controlled trials and a growing number of meta-analyses published over the past 30 years have demonstrated the efficacy of IBIs in reducing symptoms in the short and long term. Despite the large body of research, no comprehensive review or meta-analysis has been conducted to date that evaluates how the effectiveness of IBIs has evolved over time. Objective This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to evaluate whether there has been a change in the effectiveness of IBIs on the treatment of depression over the past 30 years and to identify potential variables moderating the effect size. Methods A sensitive search strategy will be executed across the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO. Data extraction and evaluation will be conducted by two independent researchers. Risk of bias will be assessed. A multilevel meta-regression model will be used to analyze the data and estimate effect size. Results The search was completed in mid-2019. We expect the results to be submitted for publication in early 2020. Conclusions The year 2020 will mark 30 years since the first paper was published on the use of IBIs for the treatment of depression. Despite the large and rapidly growing body of research in the field, evaluations of effectiveness to date are missing the temporal dimension. This review will address that gap and provide valuable analysis of how the effectiveness of interventions has evolved over the past three decades; which participant-, intervention-, and study-related variables moderate changes in effectiveness; and where research in the field may benefit from increased focus. Trial Registration PROSPERO CRD42019136554; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=136554 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/14860

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