Browsing by Subject "Reductionism"
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Item Reduction, ontology and the limits of convention(2010-12) Pickel, Bryan William; Sainsbury, R. M. (Richard Mark); Dever, Joshua; Koons, Robert; Hochberg, Herbert; MacBride, Fraser; Bonevac, DanielIt is widely agreed that ontological reduction is possible, that the ontology of one theory can be shown to be nothing over and above the ontology of a distinct theory. However, it is also widely agreed that one assesses a theory’s ontology by determining what it says there is. I show that there is a tension between these orthodox positions. To resolve this tension, I propose and defend the view that the ontological commitments of a statement are sensitive to the theory in which it is embedded.Item Three essays on the nature of consciousness(2018-06-13) Morgan, Jonathan Brink; Sainsbury, R. M., (Richard Mark); Tye, Michael; Montague, Michelle; Sosa, Ernest David; Pautz, AdamYou and I are conscious. So are most humans and higher mammals. However, things like tables, chairs, rocks, and other inanimate objects are not. Though there is something it is like to be me, there is nothing it is like to be a table. But what is it to be conscious? What is this property that we have but that inanimate objects lack? This is the question my dissertation seeks to answer. I begin by noting an asymmetry in our epistemic access to qualia––roughly those qualities that we are immediately aware of in conscious experience. I argue that at least some of these qualities are spatial qualities and, moreover, spatial qualities that are not typically instantiated by subjects or the internal states of subjects. The moral is that, in general, being conscious must consist in being related to certain qualities that are not ‘in the heads’ of conscious subjects. Consciousness extends beyond the bounds of skin and skull. My view is that only two theorists can adequately explain this: the intentionalist and the naïve realist. Roughly, the intentionalist thinks that to have a perceptual experience is to phenomenally represent the world as being some way, whereas the naïve realist thinks that to have a perceptual experience is, at least sometimes, to simply perceive the world. Though many hold that we must choose between these theories, I show that this is false. All positive naïve realist theses admit of intentionalist precisification. In this way, we may be both intentionalists and naïve realists. Once we find our footing as intentionalists who embrace naïve realism, we face a further question: What is the place of consciousness in nature? Answering this question is harder than generally acknowledged since phenomenal representation has peculiar representational limits. Just as there are things that cannot be pictorially or diagrammatically represented, there are things that cannot be phenomenally represented. One cannot, for example, phenomenally represent color without phenomenally representing space. But extant theories that ‘reduce’ phenomenal representation to naturalistic ingredients fail to respect these limits. We must, therefore, embrace a non-reductive theory of consciousness.Item Why people don't matter and what to do about that(2017-05-04) Galgon, Jake David; Strawson, Galen; Woodruff, Paul, 1943-; Schechtman, Marya S; Dogramaci, SinanReductionism about personal identity is the view that facts about personal identity reduce to lower-level facts about things like psychological or physical connectedness. In this dissertation, I give arguments for reductionism and for Derek Parfit’s “Extreme Claim” that reductionism requires a radical revision of our ordinary normative thought. After detailing the extent of this revision, I introduce and describe a special sort of self-alienation that is likely to be engendered by a genuine belief in Extreme Claim Reductionism. I argue that this alienation cannot and should not be eliminated, and consider existing attempts to eliminate similar sorts of alienation and note where they seem to fall short of their aim. I then outline a practical strategy for living with Extreme Claim Reductionism and the alienation that accompanies it.