Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Mind

  • Consciousness: What Evolutionary Good Is It?

    Bear in mind that the word 'consciousness' has several distinct meanings. 'Consciousness' can refer to the state of being awake, to the ability to introspect internal states, and to the phenomenon of attention. But 'consciousness' insofar as it poses a 'hard problem' for physicalists is the subjective quality of experience. These subjective qualities can be…

  • Consciousness Without Self-Consciousness

    Just over the transom: A friend of mine and I have ongoing discussions about consciousness. Some of his beliefs I have a hard time accepting. He believes for example that his cat doesn't have conscious experience. I can't put my finger on why I have such a hard time accepting this, but I do. One issue that…

  • An Analogy for the Categorial Difference Between Consciousness and Matter

    Some people pin their hopes on future science for a solution of the problem of consciousness as if hope, which has a place in religion, has any place in a strictly scientific worldview. If we only knew enough about the brain, these people opine, we would understand how consciousness arises from it. But consider an…

  • Materialist Mysterianism

    I wonder whether mysterianism in defense of such theological doctrines as the Trinity does not in the end backfire by making possible the philosophical justification of philosophical theses incompatible with it.  To ease our way into this line of inquiry, let us consider materialist mysterianism.  1.  If mysterianism is an acceptable approach in theology, why can't…

  • Alvin Plantinga on YouTube: A Modal Argument for Dualism

    Here.  The host, Robert Kuhn, "an old brain scientist" as he describes himself, can't seem to wrap his mind around the argument.  The argument goes like this, where 'B' denotes (rigidly designates) a person's body or else that part of a person's body (presumably the brain or a part of the brain) with which the…

  • God and Evil, Mind and Matter

    It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or…

  • Conceivability, Possibility, Self, and Body

    A reader sent me the following argument which he considers a good one: 1. It is conceivable that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).2. Therefore, it is possible that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).3. Therefore, I have a property P that my body does…

  • Analogies, Souls, Harm to Souls, and Murder

    Peter Lupu comments: Bill has argued that my murder-argument relies upon a faulty analogy. I have a very general response to this charge: while the murder-argument indeed relies upon an analogy, the analogy upon which it relies is one employed by the soul-theorists themselves. Thus, I contend that if the soul-theorists are entitled to a…

  • J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)

    (The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion.  Comments are closed here, but will be open there.) Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P.…

  • Causal Interaction: A Problem for the Materialist Too!

    Ed Feser has been giving Paul Churchland a well-deserved drubbing over at his blog and I should like to join in on the fun, at least in the in the first main paragraph of this post. One of the standard objections to substance dualism in the philosophy of mind is that the substance dualist cannot…

  • When Is an Identification an Elimination, and When Not? Idealism and Eliminativism not in the Same Logical Boat

    A reader, recently deployed to Afghanistan, finds time to raise an objection that I will put in my own words to make it as forceful as possible: You endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism, but then you criticized him for thinking that Moorean appeals to common sense are also effective against  standard idealist claims such as…

  • Lycan’s Moorean Argument Against Eliminative Materialism

    The following is from  William G. Lycan, A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING  REFUTATION OF ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM: [. . .] I contend that the Eliminativist is refuted by Moore's technique, in just the same way as was the temporal idealist. The argument will now be quite straightforward:  Numerous common-sense mental ascriptions, such as that Granny wants a beer…

  • Is Folk Psychology a Theory? The Case of Desire

    When one is in the grip of a desire one typically knows it. He who wants a cold beer on a hot day knows what he wants and is likely to deem unhinged anyone with the temerity to deny that there are desires. Anywhere on the scale from velleity to craving, but especially at the…

  • Eliminativism: A ‘Mental’ (Lunatic) Philosophy of Mind?

    Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), p. 19: This [eliminative materialism] looms as a lunatic philosophy of mind, as behaviorism does not, because it does not merely attack the thought that beliefs and desires are inner realities . . . but it also attacks the idea that…

  • From Naturalism to Nihilism by Way of Scientism: A Note on Rosenberg’s Disenchantment

    The rank absurdities of Alex Rosenberg's The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality are being subjected to withering criticism at Ed Feser's weblog here, here and here. But a correspondent wants me to throw in my two cents, so here's a brief comment. In the ComBox to the article linked to above, Rosenberg, responding to critics,…