The Metaphysics of Mental Causation

Macdonald, Cynthia; Macdonald, Graham

doi:10.5840/jphil20061031110

Cited by 38 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…11 Parts of this section overlap with parts of Sect. 5 in Macdonald and Macdonald (2006). There we concentrate more on Hitchcock's account of causation.…”

Section: Relevance In General 11mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…8 5 This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of possible alternatives, just the more obvious ones. 6 For the metaphysical technicalities concerning the structured view of events see Macdonald and Macdonald (2006) and the references cited therein. 7 This example was used as an analogy to the mental-physical case in Macdonald and Macdonald (1986).…”

Section: The Importance Of Being An Instancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Some have preferred to approach these issues using an ontology embracing tropes. We have argued against this in 'The Metaphysics of Mental Causation'(Macdonald and Macdonald 2006), so would not address that approach here.…”

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confidence: 98%

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Emergence and Causal Powers

Macdonald

2007

Erkenn

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“…11 Parts of this section overlap with parts of Sect. 5 in Macdonald and Macdonald (2006). There we concentrate more on Hitchcock's account of causation.…”

Section: Relevance In General 11mentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: The Importance Of Being An Instancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Emergence and Causal Powers

Macdonald

2007

Erkenn

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“…On this way of viewing things, an event such as the event of my now thinking that water is transparent might, as it happens, have as its constitutive property a property of me (thinks that water is transparent), and have as a property of it the property of being a thinking that water is transparent (I say 'might' here because, if one holds (as I do) that physicalism is true and contingent, one will deny that mental properties of persons are constitutive of the events that are the exemplifyings of them, maintaining instead that such properties supervene (in a sense to be specified) on physical properties of persons. For more on this, see Macdonald and Macdonald (2006)). Given the additional, plausible assumption that the exemplification of a property is the thing that has it (for example, the exemplification of the property, red, is the red bird), the exemplification of the intentional, contentful type or property of being a thinking that water is transparent is the event of thinking that water is transparent.…”

Section: Introspection and Authoritative Self-knowledge 365mentioning

confidence: 94%

Introspection and Authoritative Self-Knowledge

Macdonald

2007

Erkenn

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In this paper I outline and defend an introspectionist account of authoritative self-knowledge for a certain class of cases, ones in which a subject is both thinking and thinking about a current, conscious thought. My account is distinctive in a number of ways, one of which is that it is compatible with the truth of externalism-the view that the contents of subjects' intentional states are individuation-dependent on factors external to their minds. It is thus decidedly antiCartesian, despite being introspectionist. My argument proceeds in three stages. A virtue of the position I develop is that the epistemic features on which it is based also apply to sensations and to non-episodic intentional states, to the extent that one has authoritative knowledge of them. However, despite the appeal to analogies with observable properties of objects of perception, the account is not a 'perceptual' model of such knowledge in the sense that those such as Shoemaker, Burge and others have in mind. Because the features on which the analogy is based are abstract and general, they are not tied to cases of observation alone. Those who appeal to such phenomena as 'intellectual experience' (Burge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 96, 91-116, 1996) or 'intellectual intuition' (Bealer, Philosophical perspectives, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 29-55, 1999) in their accounts of authoritative self-knowledge may well appeal to such features. This, amongst other factors, distinguishes the position from other introspectionist ones in a way that makes it immune to standard objections to perceptual models of self-knowledge.

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“…Then, I shall proceed as follows. First, I shall establish to my satisfaction that a tropist nonreductive physicalism along the lines of the one proposed by Robb can indeed meet the demand for non-epiphenomenalism, in spite of criticisms by Nordhof 1998 andMacDonald andMacDonald 2006. This will grant the compatibility of tropism and NENRP.…”

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confidence: 93%

Basic Ontology, Multiple Realizability and Mental Causation

Orilia¹

2008

Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind

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In basic ontology philosophers dispute inter alia about the nature of properties and events. Two main rival views can be identified in the current debate. According to universalism, properties are universals and events are structured entities involving as constituents (in a typical case) a particular, a property qua universal and a time. In contrast, according to tropism, properties are tropes, abstract particulars that can also be viewed as events. This paper analyzes the resources that these two doctrines can offer in an attempt to construct a nonreductive physicalist account of the mental that accommodates multiple realizability without falling prey to epiphenomenalism (in short, NENRP). The tropist resources allow for success by means of a strategy leading to a non-unitarian doctrine. This rules out the unitarian idea, according to which creatures with important physical differences can still have the very same experiences. This tropist strategy can be "simulated" in a version of universalism, with the same non-unitarian consequences. However, from the perspective of another, possibly more natural, version of universalism, one can perhaps find another avenue for NENRP, which brings with it a unitarian point of view. The resulting approach strongly suggests, in contrast to one based on tropism, the possibility of something like self-acquaintance as understood by philosophers such as Russell or Chisholm. In sum, the paper shows ways in which basic ontology matters in philosophy of mind.

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The Metaphysics of Mental Causation

Cited by 38 publications

References 0 publications

Emergence and Causal Powers

Emergence and Causal Powers

Introspection and Authoritative Self-Knowledge

Basic Ontology, Multiple Realizability and Mental Causation

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