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Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the... more
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      PhilosophyMetaphysicsPhilosophy of SciencePhilosophy of Physics
“Realization” is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties.... more
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      MetaphysicsPhilosophy of MindPhilosophy of SciencePhilosophy of Psychology
Special sciences (such as biology, psychology, economics) describe various regularities holding at some high macroscopic level. One of the central questions concerning these macroscopic regularities is how they are related to the laws of... more
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      Philosophy of MindEmergent PhenomenaPhysicalismFunctionalism
Drafts of chapters 1-2.
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      MetaphysicsPhilosophy of MindPhilosophy of ScienceFunctionalism
The ‘Mind-Upload’ hypothesis (MU), a radical version of the Brain- in-a-Vat thought experiment, asserts that a whole mind can safely be transferred from a brain to a digital device, after being exactly encoded into substrate independent... more
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    •   31  
      Consciousness (Psychology)Embodied CognitionBrain-computer interfacesEmbodiment
The main purpose of this monograph is to respond to the reiterated criticisms that some reductionist philosophers, especially Jaegwon Kim and David Papineau, have developed of the non-reductive physicalist explanation of the causal power... more
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      Philosophy of MindMental CausationPhysicalismEmergence
I discuss whether there are some lessons for philosophical inquiry over the nature of simulation to be learnt from the practical methodology of reengineering. I will argue that reengineering serves a similar purpose as simulations in... more
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      Cognitive ModelingComputational ModelingModeling and SimulationPhilosophy of Cognitive Science
Compatibilist libertarianism proposes a new solution to the problem of an apparent incompatibility of free will and determinism. It drives a wedge between ontological levels and claims that free will is possible as a higher-level... more
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      Free WillSupervenienceDeterminismFree will and determinism debate
The exclusion problem is meant to show that non-reductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: if mental properties are not identical with physical properties, then they are not causally efficacious. Defenders of a difference-making... more
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      Mental CausationPhysicalismCausal ExclusionEmergentism
Supporters of the autonomy of higher-level causation (or explanation) often appeal to proportionality, arguing that higher-level causes are more proportional than their lower-level realizers. Recently, measures based on information theory... more
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      Information TheoryCausationMental CausationExplanation
Alethic functionalism, as propounded by Michael Lynch, is the view that there are different ways to be true, but that these differences nevertheless contain enough unity to forestall outright pluralism. This view has many virtues. Yet,... more
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      PhilosophyMetaphysicsOntologyPhilosophy of Mind
The concept of affordance is rapidly gaining popularity in neuroscientific accounts of perception and action. This concept was introduced by James Gibson to refer to the action possibilities of the environment. By contrast, standard... more
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      NeurosciencePsychologyCognitive SciencePerception
Individuality is an important concept in biology, yet there are many non-equivalent criteria of individuality expressed in different kinds of biological individuals. This paper evaluates these different kinds in terms of their capacity to... more
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      Natural KindsOrganismal BiologyMultiple realizationBiological Individuality
“Realization” and “emergence” are two concepts that are sometimes used to describe same or similar phenomena in philosophy of mind and the special sciences, where such phenomena involve the synchronic dependence of some higher-level... more
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      Philosophy of MindMetaphysics of MindPhysicalismEmergence
Token physicalism is often viewed as a modest and unproblematic physicalist commitment, as contrasted with type physicalism. This paper argues that the prevalence of functional individuation in biology creates serious problems for token... more
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      PhysicalismFunctionalismBiological FunctionsSortal
The mind/brain identity theory is often thought to be of historical interest only, as it has allegedly been swept away by functionalism. After clarifying why and how the notion of identity implies that there is no genuine problem of... more
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      Embodied CognitionIdentity theoryExperienceMind/body Problem
Nonreductive physicalism has its problems; in what follows, I solve them. Or, at least, I propose solutions to what I regard as three of the most serious challenges facing the view: those of causal exclusion, causal heterogeneity, and... more
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      Mental CausationPhysicalismMaterial ConstitutionCounterpart Theory
In a number of individual and collaborative papers, Carl Gillett and I have championed a theory of realization that we take to characterize a many-one ontological determination relation between property instances found in the natural... more
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      Multiple realizationMultiple Realizability
The notion of realization made its first appearance in the late sixties in the philosophy of mind, where it was proposed that mental state-types, though not themselves physical state-types, are still functional state-types that are in... more
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      RealizationMultiple realizationPhysical Realization
C. S. Peirce is often credited as a forerunner of the verificationist theory of meaning. In his early pragmatist papers, Peirce did say that if we want to make our ideas clear(er), then we should look downstream to their actual and future... more
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    •   228  
      SemioticsBuddhismHistoryIntellectual History
The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how mind and matter relate. The proposed solution herein is a variant of panpsychism – the theory that all (pan) has minds (psyche) – that we name... more
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      William JamesAlfred North WhiteheadConsciousnessMental Causation
ABSTRACT: Functionalists about truth employ Ramsification to produce an implicit definition of the theoretical term true, but doing so requires determining that the theory introducing that term is itself true. A variety of putative... more
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      SemanticsPropertyTruthFunctionalism
We critically analyze Alexander Rosenberg's argument from multiple realizability of biological properties to there being no biological laws. The argument is intuitive and suggestive. Nevertheless, a closer analysis reveals that the... more
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      Laws of Nature (Philosophy)Multiple realizationBiological laws
Polger and Shapiro argue that their official recipe, a criterion for judging when the phenomenon of multiple realization (MR) exists, renders MR less widespread than its proponents have assumed. I argue that, although Polger and Shapiro’s... more
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    • Multiple realization
This paper focuses on the framework for the compositional relations of properties in the sciences, or “realization” relations, offered by Ken Aizawa and Carl Gillett (A&G) in a series of papers, and in particular on the analysis of... more
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      Philosophy of MindMetaphysics of SciencePhilosophy of Cognitive SciencePhilosophy of Neuroscience
This paper introduces a new approach to the theory of truthmaking. According to this approach, there are multiple forms of truthmaking. Here, I characterize and motivate a specific version of this approach, which I call a ‘Pluralist... more
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      MetaphysicsOntologyPluralismTruthmaking
A prominent way of explaining how race is socially constructed appeals to social positions and social structures. On this view, the construction of a person's race is understood in terms of the person occupying a certain social position... more
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      MetaphysicsRace and EthnicityFunctionalismSocial Constructionism/ Constructivism
This paper examines the multiple realizability thesis within a causal framework. The beginnings of this framework are found in an influential paper by Sober (1999), in which he argues that the multiple realizability thesis poses no... more
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      Philosophy of BiologyGeneral Philosophy of ScienceCausal explanationMultiple realization
Multiple realizability (MR) is traditionally conceived of as the feature of computational systems, and has been used to argue for irreducibility of higher-level theories. I will show that there are several ways a computational system may... more
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      Philosophy of MindPhilosophy of ScienceComputational ModellingComputational Neuroscience
In this paper, I argue against the use of the notion of multiple realization to defend a unified account of life, as proposed by Krzysztof Chodasewicz. I show that the notion of multiple realization is itself highly problematic but, most... more
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      UniversalsMultiple realization
In this paper, I argue that the newly developed network approach in neuroscience and biology provides a basis for formulating a unique type of realization, which I call topological realization. Some of its features and its relation to one... more
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      Multiple realizationTopological explanations
In this book, Marcin Milkowski argues that the mind can be explained computationally because it is itself computational—whether it engages in mental arithmetic, parses natural language, or processes the auditory signals that allow us to... more
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      Cognitive SciencePhilosophy of MindPhilosophy of ScienceComputational Modeling
The supposed crucial argument that refutes reductionism once and for all is the idea of the multiple realizability (MR) of the higher or non-physical properties. Introducing and developing this notion, authors such as Putnam and Fodor... more
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      Mental CausationPhysicalismEmergenceReductionism
Just as different sciences deal with different facts—say, physics versus biology—so we may ask a similar question about normative theories. Is normative political theory concerned with the same normative facts as moral theory or different... more
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      Social TheoryPolitical PhilosophyEthicsPhilosophy of Science
The goal of this paper is to make headway on a metaphysics of social construction. In recent work (forthcoming), I've argued that social construction should be understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. However, I agree with grounding... more
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      Feminist TheoryFeminist PhilosophyGenderSocial Ontology
This article investigates several consequences of a recent trend in philosophy of mind to shift the relata of realization from mental state-physical state to function-mechanism. It is shown, by applying both frameworks to the... more
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      ReductionismMultiple realization
The contingency of biological regularities – and its implications for the existence of biological laws – has long puzzled biologists and philosophers. The best argument for the contingency of biological regularities is John Beatty’s... more
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      Evolutionary BiologyPhilosophy of SciencePhilosophy of BiologyLaws of Nature (Philosophy)
Polger and Shapiro (2016) claim that unlike human-made artifacts cases of multiple realization in naturally occurring systems are uncommon. Drawing on cases from systems biology, I argue that multiple realization in naturally occurring... more
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      Systems BiologyMultiple realization
If causalism is a complete theory of what it is to behave intentionally, it also has to account for intentional omissions. Carolina Sartorio (2009) has developed a powerful argument, the Causal Exclusion for Omissions, showing that... more
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      MetaphysicsPhilosophy of ActionIntentionalityCausal Exclusion
In earlier work, I proposed and defended a formulation of physicalism that was distinctive in appealing to a carefully-defined relation of physical realization (Melnyk 2003). Various philosophers (Robert Francescotti, Daniel Stoljar, Carl... more
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      MetaphysicsMaterialismMetaphysics of MindPhysicalism
Non-reductive physicalism is commonly understood as the view that mental properties are realized by physical properties. Here, I argue that the realization relation in question is a power inheritance relation: if a property P realizes a... more
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      MetaphysicsPhilosophy of MindPhysicalismDispositions
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      MetaphysicsPhilosophy of MindPhilosophy of SciencePhysicalism
A common view is that the truth of multiple realization, e.g., about psychological states, entails the truth of functionalism. This is supposed to follow because what is multiply realized is eo ipso realized. I argue that view is mistaken... more
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      RealizationMultiple realization
The main idea of this thesis is multi-descriptional physicalism. According to it, only physical entities are elements of our ontology, and there are different ways to describe them. Higher-level vocabularies (e.g., mental, neurological,... more
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      MetaphysicsOntologyPhilosophy of MindConsciousness
The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how mind and matter relate. The proposed solution herein is a variant of panpsychism – the theory that all (pan) has minds (psyche) – that we name... more
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      PhilosophyEpistemologyAlfred North WhiteheadConsciousness
Talk of properties and predicates are common, and some even used interchangeably, in the philosophy of the social sciences. In this presentation, however, I challenge the widespread "slide" from predicate-talk to talk of properties. I... more
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      Reflexivity (Sociology)Alfred Schutz (Sociology)Philosophy of the Social SciencesMultiple realization
In natural kind debates, Boyd's famous Homeostatic Property Cluster theory (HPC) is often misconstrued in two ways: Not only is it thought to make for a normative standard for natural kinds, but also to require the homeostatic mechanisms... more
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      Philosophy of ScienceTheory Of MechanismsFunctionalismNatural Kinds
Biochemical kinds such as proteins pose interesting problems for philosophers of science, as they can be studied from the points of view of both biology and chemistry. The relationship between the biological functions of biochemical kinds... more
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      BiochemistryMetaphysicsPhilosophy of SciencePhilosophy of Biology