Social Objects, Response-Dependence, and Realism

There is a widespread sentiment that social objects such as nation-states, borders, and pieces of money are just figments of our collective imagination and not really ‘out there’ in the world. Call this the ‘antirealist intuition’. Eliminativist, reductive materialist, and immaterialist views of social objects can all make sense of the antirealist intuition, in one way or another. But these views face serious difficulties. A promising alternative view is nonreductive materialism. Yet it is unclear whether and how nonreductive materialists can make sense of the antirealist intuition. I develop a version of nonreductive materialism that is able to meet this explanatory demand. The central idea is that social objects are materially constituted, response-dependent objects. I go on to offer an independent argument in favor of this response-dependent view of social objects. I then suggest that a proponent of this view can appeal to the response-dependent nature of social objects to explain, or explain away, the antirealist intuition.

A paradigm for psychiatry

This chapter examines the idea that psychiatric disorders are disorders of the brain, mind, and the person’s relation to the world. The etiology, pathophysiology, and symptomatology of these disorders are influenced by interactions between the brain, mind, immune and endocrine systems, and the person’s relation to the environment. A biopsychosocial model provides the best account of the development of these disorders and a guide for research and treatment. The chapter also discusses some of the merits and limitations of the symptom-based DSM-5 and the more recent circuit-based RDoC, and defends the view that they can be complementary models in a paradigm for psychiatry research and clinical practice. The chapter defends nonreductive materialism as the theory best able to account for the different dimensions of the brain–mind relation in psychiatry.

Process Externalism and mental causation: setting metaphysical bounds on cognitive science

In this article, I examine the argument by which Process Externalism—an interesting empirical theory that echoes 4E’s core ideas—undermines Kim’s supervenience argument. If mental properties do not depend exclusively on neurological properties but depend on external or extra-cranial properties, mental causation cannot be pre-empted by or reduced to neurological properties. In this sense, Keijzer and Schouten argue that this theory entails a robust nonreductive materialism (RNM) that vindicates a notion of mental causation. However, I will argue that this maneuver produces different kinds of overdetermination problems that compromise the metaphysical austerity of a materialist theory of cognition and, for this reason, Process Externalism might not be conceived as entailing an RNM. Finally, I will suggest that the theory could be rendered as a moderate reductive account of the cognitive phenomena that would avoid the overdetermination problems that haunt nonreductive accounts of cognition.

Il problema mente-corpo nel dibattito contemporaneo

- The mind-body problem is a crucial question to philosophers and cognitive scientists who pursue a program of naturalization of mind while preserving its causal efficacy. Two options seem to be open if we approach the question from a materialistic point of view: either preserve the notion of mental autonomy, by adhering to a nonreductive materialism, or give up that notion by supporting a reductive option. What I propose for discussion here is a neo-reductive perspective which considers mental causation as a sort of physical causation and maintains the mind-body identity.Keywords: Mental causation, Physicalism, Supervenience, Epiphenomenalism, Qualia, Identity theory.Parole chiave: Causalitŕ mentale, Materialismo, Sopravvenienza, Epifenomenalismo, Qualia, Teoria dell'identitŕ psico-fisica.