Dispositional explanations in dualism

The costs and benefits of optimistic explanations and dispositional optimism.

Explanatory style and dispositional optimism have been linked to physical health. In this issue, Peterson and Seligman and Carver and Scheier review an impressive series of studies which together suggest that there may be health risks associated with attributing bad outcomes to internal, stable, and global causes and with failing to maintain a generalized expectancy for good outcomes. We attemp...

Dualism in Disguise

Dualism revisited.

The problem of consciousness should eventually receive a scientific solution, but there are a number of scientific and philosophical obstacles along the way. I offer solutions to the philosophical problems and proposals for approaching the scientific problems.

Undefeated dualism

In the standard thought experiments, dualism strikes many philosophers as true, including many non-dualists. This ‘striking’ generates prima facie justification: in the absence of defeaters, we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be, i.e. we ought to be dualists. In this paper, I examine several proposed undercutting defeaters for our dualist intuitions. I argue that each proposal ...

Wave-particle dualism in action

Wave-particle dualism is at the very heart of quantum mechanics. It manifests itself mostprominently in the double-slit experiment that has given rise to a fascinating discussion of “which-slit” information versus interference. In the present talk we analyze [1,2] two recent experiments[3,4] reporting simultaneous observation of “which-slit” and interference. Moreover, we introd...