PHIL 255: Week 8

Churchland on Metaphysics

Announcements

The final exam is scheduled for Dec. 21. Plan your travel accordingly.

• Much of this exam will be based on lectures. Web notes will cover only a small part of lecture material.

• The exam will be cumulative, in that the discussion of Churchland will build upon issues in Graham.

Essay topics are now available.

Exam 1 will be returned Nov. 3.

A car with intentionality?

Approaches to Philosophy

1. A priori: Plato, Kant, Frege, Husserl, etc.

2. Naturalistic: Aristotle, Hume, Quine, Patricia Churchland

• Rejection of the supernatural.
• Philosophy allied with science.
• Theory, not logical or linguistic analysis.
• Inference to the best explanation, not thought experiments.

Mechanistic Explanation

Explanation based on objects, relations, changes.

Simple examples: lever, bike.

Levels of explanation: social, psychological, neural, molecular, biochemical ...

Integrate levels:

• McCauley & Bechtel: Explanatory pluralism.
• Mitchell: Integrative pluralism.
• MIM: Mechanistic integrative materialism.

Reduction

Churchland's examples:

• Temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy.
• Light is electromagnetic radiation.

Biological examples:

• Life is not a special force, but the result of biochemical mechanisms.
• Disease is caused by multiple mechanisms.

Conceptual change is widespread. Meanings change.

Coevolution of scientific fields.

• Versus functionalism.
• Nervous systems have many levels of organization: p. 3.

Reductionism does not eliminate the value of life: self-esteem can survive.

• "The meaning of life is love and work."

Against substance dualism

No positive description of the mind and its interactions with body.

No competition for brain-based explanations.

Overemphasizes the conscious mind.

Causation

Vs. correlation. Probability not enough.

Hume: constant conjunction.

In world or in mind? Kant.

Can causality be perceived?

Phil 255

Computational Epistemology Laboratory.

Paul Thagard

This page updated October 31, 2005