This paper is an attempt to understand the content of, and motivation for, a popular form of physicalism, which I call ‘non-reductive physicalism’. Non-reductive physicalism claims although the mind is physical (in some sense), mental properties are nonetheless not identical to (or reducible to) physical properties. This suggests that mental properties are, in earlier terminology, ‘emergent pro...

the theory of dualism, i.e. duality of mind and body is, from most of the religious scholars and theologian's point of view, a theoretical basis for believes to hereafter. today the doctrine of physicalism is the most important challenge against dualism and whereby, mind and its moods, either are unrealistic and illusion (eliminative physicalism), or reductive physicalism; i.e. reduce them...

In a recent paper, Shapiro and Sober (2007) defend two claims with respect to the master argument for epiphenomenalism, which is designed to rebut non-reductive physicalism: (i) relative to an interventionist account of causation, as most elaborately presented in (Woodward 2003), the master argument turns out to be invalid; and (ii) interventionism provides a means to experimentally uncover mic...

In recent years, the debate on the problem of causal exclusion has seen an ‘interventionist turn’. Numerous non-reductive physicalists (e.g. Shapiro and Sober 2007) have argued that Woodward’s (2003) interventionist theory of causation provides a means to empirically establish the existence of nonreducible mental-to-physical causation. By contrast, Baumgartner (2010) has presented an interventi...

Supervenience physicalism attempts to combine non-reductionism about properties with a physical determination thesis in such a way as to ensure physicalism. I argue that this attempt is unsuccessful: the specific supervenience relation in question is either strong enough to ensure reductionism, as in the case of strong supervenience, or too weak to yield physical determination, as in the case o...

This paper describes a version of type identity physicalism, which we call Flat Physicalism, and shows how it meets several objections often raised against theories. theory is informed by recent results in the conceptual foundations physics, particular clarifies notion ‘physical kinds' light analysis paradigmatic case reducing thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. We show Physicalism compati...

Since something cannot be conscious without being a conscious subject, a complete physicalist explanation of consciousness must resolve an issue first raised by Thomas Nagel, namely to explain why a particular mass of atoms that comprises my body gives rise to me as conscious subject, rather than someone else. In this essay, I describe a thought-experiment that suggests that physicalism lacks t...

What sets human beings apart from animals? How does ‘‘mind’’ fit with soul? Different historical and contemporary views of the mind/soul are considered. A clinical case is used to argue that a strong dualistic position is not compatible with neuro-scientific evidence nor with the expectation of life after death found in the Abrahamic faiths. Reductive physicalism is a widely held view, but risk...

By the 1960s most philosophers had adopted ‘physicalism’ ─ the view that physical causes fully account for mental activities. However, controversy persists about what count as ‘physical causes.’ ‘Reductive’ physicalists recognize only microphysical (elementary-particle-level) causality. Many (perhaps most) physicalists are ‘non-reductive’ ─ they hold that entities considered by other (‘special’...