Two arguments are famously held to support the conclusion that consciousness cannot be explained in purely physical or functional terms – hence, that physicalism is false: the modal argument and the knowledge argument. While anti-physicalists appeal to both arguments, this paper argues there is a methodological incoherence in jointly maintaining them: the modal argument supports the possibility...

Objects Within contemporary philosophy there is an ongoing debate relating to the subjects of realism, materialism and physicalism and there is no agreement on a standard account of how to distinguish between abstract and concrete objects (Rosen, 2014). Philosophers who commit to abstract objects are often termed platonists whilst philosophers who deny their existence are termed nominalists (Ro...

Abstract A thought experiment demonstrates that physicalism about consciousness entails a paradoxical duplication of physical information. Moreover, objective existence acquires the status property. To avoid this paradox, one requires concept objectivity in which individuation is finite and incomplete. Finite uncertainty thus corroborated by contemporary sciences. prevent from becoming property...

Jerry Fodor has argued that the multiple realizability argument, as discussed in his original “Special Sciences” article, “refutes psychophysical reductionism once and for all.” I argue that his argument in “Special Sciences” does no such thing. Furthermore, if one endorses the physicalism that most supporters of the “Special Sciences” view endorse, special science laws must be reducible, in pr...

The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of quantum mechanics as an inherent characteristic of life. During the last ten years the problem of the origin of life has become an innovative research subject approached by many authors. The essay is divided in to three parts: the first deals with the problem of life from a philosophical and biological perspective. The second presents the conceptu...

The juxtaposition of the notions of citizenship and the idea of republicanism in the context of Australia as a multicultural nation immediately raises the difficult and critical question of what we mean by a 'nation', and equally, what constitutes the sense of Australian identity. In the time allocated to me, I can hardly do justice to this challenging and most intriguing question, except to pa...

In this paper I examine Herodotus’s use of oppositional writing in the Histories as it relates to Hellenic identity in the 5th century BCE. As Greece was divided socially, politically, and linguistically, the presence of Hellenic identity at that time is questionable. Through literary analysis I determine the characteristics of antitheses and identify various cultural oppositions as either impl...