Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism

by Derk Pereboom

In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental intrinsic properties provide categorical bases for known physical properties and would also yield an account of consciousness. While there are non-physicalist versions of this position, some are amenable to physicalism. The book's third theme is a defense of a nonreductive account of physicalism. The type of nonreductivism endorsed departs from others in that it rejects all token identity
claims for psychological and microphysical entities. The deepest relation between the mental and the microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity.

Genres: Philosophy

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 2011

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read any philosophy of mind in a while. But I like it - it has enough overlap with phenomenology that I find the problems it addresses intriguing. I can't say I followed all of this; I've been out of academia too long to know all the jargon and all the other philosophers the author refers to. But the basic argument was quite coherent, although I didn't feel it was particularly original. Multiple realizability of mental states is a notion I know I've come across before. It was nice to think about this stuff again though.

[Setaareh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A firm and careful survey of the state of the field.

[Lorenzo]

Great book, read with specific emphasis on chapters on Russellian monism.