Robust Nonreductive Materialism

2002 ◽  
Vol 99 (10) ◽  
pp. 499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derk Pereboom
Keyword(s):  
Nonreductive Materialism

Social Objects, Response-Dependence, and Realism

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-443
Author(s):  
ASYA PASSINSKY
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Promising Alternative ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
Response Dependence

AbstractThere is a widespread sentiment that social objects such as nation-states, borders, and pieces of money are just figments of our collective imagination and not really ‘out there’ in the world. Call this the ‘antirealist intuition’. Eliminativist, reductive materialist, and immaterialist views of social objects can all make sense of the antirealist intuition, in one way or another. But these views face serious difficulties. A promising alternative view is nonreductive materialism. Yet it is unclear whether and how nonreductive materialists can make sense of the antirealist intuition. I develop a version of nonreductive materialism that is able to meet this explanatory demand. The central idea is that social objects are materially constituted, response-dependent objects. I go on to offer an independent argument in favor of this response-dependent view of social objects. I then suggest that a proponent of this view can appeal to the response-dependent nature of social objects to explain, or explain away, the antirealist intuition.

Thoughts on Nonreductive Materialism

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 519-523
Author(s):  
David F. Siemens ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nonreductive Materialism

Nonreductive Materialism and Mental Causation

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ausonio Marras
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Theory ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Token Physicalism ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Bridge Principles

I take nonreductive materialism to be the conjunction of two theses, the first ontological, the second epistemological. The ontological thesis - token physicalism- is that mental events (processes, states, etc.) are tokenidentical to physical events; the epistemological thesis is that psychology is not reducible to physical theory in the classic sense of 'reduction,' according to which we reduce a theory to a another theory by deriving the laws of the former from the laws of the latter via 'bridge principles' linking the predicates of the reducing theory with the predicates of the reduced theory.

Closet Dualism and Mental Causation

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter ◽  
Alexander Miller
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Jaegwon Kim ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Argumentative Strategy ◽  
Stephen Yablo

Serious doubts about nonreductive materialism — the orthodoxy of the past two decades in philosophy of mind — have been long overdue. Jaegwon Kim has done perhaps the most to articulate the metaphysical problems that the new breed of materialists must confront in reconciling their physicalism with their commitment to the autonomy of the mental. Although the difficulties confronting supervenience, multiple-realizability, and mental causation have been recurring themes in his work, only mental causation — in particular, the specter of epiphenomenalism — has really captured the interest of philosophers in general in recent years.This growing attention has spawned a large body of literature, which it is not our aim here to explore or assess. Rather, we want to call attention to what we believe is a new and quite different argumentative strategy against epiphenomenalism voiced in some recent articles by Tyler Burge and Stephen Yablo. Each has challenged two central assumptions of the existing mental causation debate.

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