If memory is a form of imagination, how can it give us knowledge of the past? Does it give us knowledge of the past at all? The simulation theory of memory discussed in my previous post threatens to push us towards a form of scepticism about memory knowledge.
What is memory? How does it give us knowledge? When and why did it emerge? These are the questions that I grapple with in Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past (MIT Press, 2016). In this and the next two posts, I’ll give an overview …
Jaegwon Kim’s discussions of the problem of mental causation have been enormously influential, so it should come as no surprise that some critics have tried to apply his reasoning to the hylomorphic solution discussed in Part 1.
The problem of mental causation is a central problem in the metaphysics of mind, but hylomorphism implies an elegant solution to it.
What exactly are hylomorphic structures? According to traditional hylomorphists like Aristotle, as well as some contemporary hylomorphists such as Mike Rea (2011) and myself (2012, 2014, 2016), structures are powers. More specifically, hylomorphic structures are powers to configure (or organize, order, or coordinate) things.
Mind-body problems are persistent problems in understanding how thought, feeling, perception, and other mental phenomena fit into the natural world described by our best science. Hylomorphists take mind-body problems to be symptomatic of a worldview that rejects hylomorphic structure.
Typically hylomorphists discuss their theory historically in terms of what Aristotle, Aquinas, or some other philosopher of the past has claimed. That is not my approach! The hylomorphic theory I defend dovetails with current work in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and scientific disciplines such as biology and neuroscience. I argue …
