The Waning of Materialism

by Robert C. Koons (Editor), George Bealer (Editor)

Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism 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. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defenses 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 papers 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics

490 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2010

About the author

Robert Charles Koons is American philosopher, noted for his contribution to metaphysics and philosophical logic. Koons has also advocated for academic freedom and courses on Western civilization. Koons is a national Senator of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, as well as a member of the executive committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the articles that compose this book vary in quality, this book as a whole constitutes a significant, impressive, and highly enjoyable treatment of contemporary anti-materialist arguments and positions. I particularly (and sometimes surprisingly) liked chapters 2 (Adam Pautz), 4 (Stephen White), 11 (Tyler Burge), 15 (Terry Horgan), and 22 (E. J. Lowe).

I am starting work on a detailed summary and assessment of each article in this book. If you would like to see it, send me an email or message.

[Lenhardt Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent survey of recent defenses of various immaterialist views in metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

[Philemon - · Rating 3 out of 5]

One-celled life arose out of biochemical organization of molecules and evolution took it from there. For most of the twentieth century there seemed little reason to look beyond matter as the basis and ensuing architecture of life. Until fairly recently, philosophers did little to challenge the physicalist narrative. Physical science and its glamorous technological offspring held the stage. But more recently, philosophers have come out from under their rocks and begun to put up more of a challenge. They have been inspirited by the failure of high-tech neurological research to shed any real light on consciousness and qualitative first-person experience. For decades the neuroscientists said "we don't know yet but we're making good progress." But failure like theirs eventually mutes such language.

This book contains twenty-seven papers from philosophers all shedding doubt on the adequacy and utility of materialist explanations. They discuss alternatives like dualism, property dualism, functionalism, behaviorism, eliminativism, primitism, et. al., with variations. Some of their ideas clump together and some don't. The chance to read all twenty-seven papers is a clear invitation to confusion. I didn't. What I read were Koons's Introduction and M. Bonjour's overview essay, followed by abstracts to the remaining essays.

My own conclusion, if I have a right to one: materialism's putative waning has not yet paved a way for any other view to confidently replace it. No one understands Chalmers's "hard problem," the relationship of consciousness to matter, or offers a convincing theory of how mere matter would ever have had means or motive to invent it. The sum of these twenty-seven essays is babble, a noise that should prompt humility in our inquisitive species. This poor, shambling reader will just leave it at that.