Psychophysicality : rethinking the physicalist foundations of the mind/body problem
In this thesis, I shall examine the question of physicalism through two papers criticising the formulation of the doctrine. In the first chapter, I discuss Tim Carne's and D.H. Mellor's influential (1990) There Is No Question of Physicalism, in which they argue that there are no real criteria by which the science of psychology can be separated from the paradigmatically physical sciences, and so no principled reason to suppose that the predicates of pyschology do not describe real elements of the world's ontology whereas those of physics do. I shall explain why I find their arguments unconvincing, and to show how some of the reasons they consider not to support the noncontinuity of psychology with physics actually can support the distinction. Crane and Mellor take physicalism to be an epistemological doctrine, according to which the empirical world ~contains just what a true and complete physical science would say it contains~. Physicalism can, however, be taken as a metaphysical doctrine, and indeed I think that many modern physicalists do take it this way. In his (1998) What Are Physical Properties?, Chris Daly argues that no principled distinction can be drawn between physical and nonphysical properties,
Nightshade, Cleodhna P. A.
B Philosophy (General)
Psychophysicality : rethinking the physicalist foundations of the mind/body problem. In this thesis, I shall examine the question of physicalism through two papers criticising the formulation of the doctrine. In the first chapter, I discuss Tim Carne's and D.H. Mellor's influential (1990) There Is No Question of Physicalism, in which they argue that there are no real criteria by which the science of psychology can be separated from the paradigmatically physical sciences, and so no principled reason to suppose that the predicates of pyschology do not describe real elements of the world's ontology whereas those of physics do. I shall explain why I find their arguments unconvincing, and to show how some of the reasons they consider not to support the noncontinuity of psychology with physics actually can support the distinction. Crane and Mellor take physicalism to be an epistemological doctrine, according to which the empirical world ~contains just what a true and complete physical science would say it contains~. Physicalism can, however, be taken as a metaphysical doctrine, and indeed I think that many modern physicalists do take it this way. In his (1998) What Are Physical Properties?, Chris Daly argues that no principled distinction can be drawn between physical and nonphysical properties,
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