Nearly everybody nowadays accepts the 'causal completeness of physics' - every physical event (or at least its probability) has a full physical cause. This leaves no room for non-physical things to make a causal difference to physical effects. But it would be absurd to deny that thoughts and feelings (and population movements and economic depressions . . .) cause physical effects. So they must be physical things.
In truth a clear-headed physicalist shouldn't be thinking any of these dualist thoughts. If pains are one and the same as C-fibres firing, then there… - David Papineau
In truth a clear-headed physicalist shouldn't be thinking any of these dualist thoughts. If pains are one and the same as C-fibres firing, then there…
- David Papineau
Natural selection has ensured that each species achieves the requisite effect somehow, but it doesn't care, so to speak, how the trick is done. - David Papineau
Natural selection has ensured that each species achieves the requisite effect somehow, but it doesn't care, so to speak, how the trick is done.
I say that there is nothing deficient about our current theoretical grasp of mind-brain identities. The problem is only that they are counter-intuiti… - David Papineau
I say that there is nothing deficient about our current theoretical grasp of mind-brain identities. The problem is only that they are counter-intuiti…
On the methodological issue, I think that would be hopeless to try to adjudicate between my view and orthodoxy by appeal to phenomenological introspe… - David Papineau
On the methodological issue, I think that would be hopeless to try to adjudicate between my view and orthodoxy by appeal to phenomenological introspe…
Of course our genes will make some capacities very much easier to learn than others, and of course our genes themselves are not learned. But the poin… - David Papineau
Of course our genes will make some capacities very much easier to learn than others, and of course our genes themselves are not learned. But the poin…
The 'phenomenal concept' issue is rather different, I think. Here the question is whether there are concepts of experiences that are made available t… - David Papineau
The 'phenomenal concept' issue is rather different, I think. Here the question is whether there are concepts of experiences that are made available t…
I'm not so sure that I am a reductionist in the strict type-identity sense. The issues here are messy. But I certainly a reductionist in the more gen… - David Papineau
I'm not so sure that I am a reductionist in the strict type-identity sense. The issues here are messy. But I certainly a reductionist in the more gen…
I think that there are non-physical laws all right: genuine (if not strict) laws written in the language of biology, economics, and so on. But I don'… - David Papineau
I think that there are non-physical laws all right: genuine (if not strict) laws written in the language of biology, economics, and so on. But I don'…
A century ago mainstream science was still quite happy to countenance vital and mental powers which had a 'downwards' causal influence on the physica… - David Papineau
A century ago mainstream science was still quite happy to countenance vital and mental powers which had a 'downwards' causal influence on the physica…
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