The Brains Blog — functionalism

2. Composite Subjectivity and Functional Structure

Consider a contrast. The solar system contains my brain as a part; my brain is conscious; the solar system is not conscious (at least in any everyday sense – let’s set panpsychism aside for now). That’s enough to show that having conscious parts is not enough, all by itself, to …

Philosophical Foundations of Neurolaw

Martin Roth November 7, 2017 November 9, 2017 Ethics / Free will / functionalism / Neuroscience; Philosophy of Science / Philosophy of Mind

Another book that may be of interest to The Brains Blog community is my Philosophical Foundations of Neurolaw, which is coming out next month. A major aim of the book is to provide an alternative to Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson’s treatment of issues in the philosophy of mind and …

Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Martin Roth November 7, 2017 November 7, 2017 Cognition / Explanation / functionalism / Neuroscience; Philosophy of Science / Psychology / reduction

This forthcoming volume, edited by David Kaplan, should be of interest to The Brains Blog community, and it includes papers by fellow contributors Gualtiero Piccinini and Corey Maley:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/explanation-and-integration-in-mind-and-brain-science-9780199685509?cc=us&lang=en&#

Our New, Ongoing and Empirically Resolvable Debates over Reduction and Emergence

Carl Gillett October 16, 2016 October 16, 2016 Carl Gillett: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy / Concepts / Explanation / functionalism / naturalism / reduction

Some philosophers of science have suggested that scientific discussions of “reductionism” and “emergentism” are merely rhetorical funding grabs. But drawing together my work in earlier parts of the book, in the final section, Part IV, I outline how we are in substantive, ongoing and empirically resolvable scientific debates about the …

The Scientific Emergentist and her Striking Metaphysical Mutualism

Carl Gillett October 15, 2016 October 15, 2016 Carl Gillett: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy / Concepts / Explanation / functionalism / naturalism / reduction

Part III of the book focuses on reconstructing the scientific emergentism of writers like Anderson, Freeman, Laughlin, Prigogine, and others, and providing a theoretical framework for its claims. I argue that scientific emergentism is a philosophically overlooked, and profoundly important position, that I dub ‘Mutualism’ with a range of novel …

The Scientific Reductionist and her Live Fundamentalist Position

Carl Gillett October 14, 2016 October 14, 2016 Carl Gillett: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy / Causation / Concepts / Events / Explanation / functionalism / reduction / Uncategorized

The widespread philosophical view is that reductionism in the sciences is a dead view and perhaps slightly distasteful to boot. As I outlined in an earlier post, the received view assumes that “reductionism” is semantic, or Nagelian, reduction. The goal of such semantic reduction was to show that higher sciences …

Revisiting Reduction and Emergence in the Sciences

Carl Gillett October 11, 2016 October 11, 2016 Carl Gillett: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy / Concepts / Explanation / functionalism / naturalism / reduction

Many thanks to John Schwenkler for allowing me to blog here about my new book Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy. The book is long, so I will seek to unpack the main themes of the book’s four sections in subsequent posts. At the end of this post, I …