The Waning of Materialism

Abstract

In this book twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism and find it wanting. The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. This book responds to the most recent versions and defences of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson's knowledge argument, Kim's exclusion problem, and Burge's anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several chapters address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism — reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism — come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism.

Sameness and the self: philosophical and psychological considerations

“…But this comes at a cost—our criteria for sameness, being felt rather than known, are not amenable (in any obvious way) to quantitative, evidential analysis (for discussion, see the section titled The Problem of the Self). And this may seem too high a price to those entrenched in a materialist world view (for discussion, see Papa-Grimaldi, 1998; Meixner, 2005; Koons and Bealer, 2010; Nagel, 2012; Klein, 2014a). …”

Quantification, conceptual reduction and theoretical underdetermination in psychological science.

“…The first postulate-that reality in its entirety is physical-is of more recent vintage, gaining traction with the ascendency of physics as the sine qua non of science in the 17th century (e.g., Reichenbach, 1951). It widely has been taken (though not on logically or empirically defensible grounds; e.g., Elvee, 1992;Klein, 2012Klein, , 2014aKlein, , 2014bKoch, 1999;Koons, & Bealer, 2010;Robinson, 2008) as an endorsement of the stipulation that facts about reality expressed outside the vocabulary of (an ideally true) physics can be re-expressed wholly within that vocabulary.…”

“…2The doctrine that “reality” is that which distinguishes what “truly is the case” from that which “only appears to be” (a view with origins in Greek antiquity—e.g., Parmenides, Plato) is seen by many as overly restrictive and lacking firm foundation. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to provide an in-depth discussion of arguments questioning the exclusion of “appearance” from the taxonomy of “what is real,” comprehensive treatments are readily available (e.g., Eccles, 1994; Elvee, 1992; Klein, 2014a, 2019; Koons & Bealer, 2010; Margenau, 1984; Papa-Grimadli, 1998; Popper, 1994; Shommers, 1994; Swinburne, 2013; Trusted, 1999; Wallace, 2003). …”

Humanistic cognitive science.

“…My present goal, however, is not to offer an exhaustive overview of the mind–body problem in philosophy. Rather, it is to echo the growing consensus that physicalism alone is insufficient for accounting for phenomenal experience (see Koons & Bealer, 2010); and that despite this apparent waning of materialism, 3 a popular response by physicalists has been to construe the qualitative dimension of consciousness as epiphenomenal , namely as a causally inefficacious by-product of the brain that plays no actual role in its cognitive activities (Jackson, 1982). Though this route seems to have (in some sense, at least) salvaged the physicalist worldview, it comes at a rather high cost: Phenomenal consciousness is explained away as an illusion.…”

“…This phrase was borrowed from the title of the book, The Waning of Materialism, byKoons and Bealer (2010).…”