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What Are the
Metaphysical Issues?
Metaphysics: questions about the
nature of reality
Nature of ultimate reality
 permanence and change
 appearance and reality
Nature of human reality
 mind-body problem
 freedom and determinism
Metaphysical Positions
Monism
 Materialism
 Idealism
Dualism
Conceptual Tools for
Metaphysics
Simplification of complexity
 Ockham's razor
Inference to the best
explanation
 used by both science and
metaphysics
Ontology
Questions about what is most
fundamentally real
Fundamental reality
 that upon which everything
else depends
 that which cannot be created
or destroyed
Metaphysical Categories
Things that are not real: eliminativist
strategy
Realities reducible to more
fundamental realities: reductionist
strategy
Things that are fundamentally real
Plato’s Metaphysics
Nonphysical realities: Platonic
Forms
Degrees of reality
Allegory of the cave
Propositions of the MindBody Problem
The body is a physical thing
The mind is a nonphysical thing
The mind and body interact and
causally affect one another
Nonphysical things cannot causally
interact with physical things
These four statements cannot all be
true
Positions on the Mind-Body
Problem
Mind-body dualism
 Interactionism
 Parallelism
 Occasionalism
Physicalism
 Identity theory (reductionism)
 Eliminativism
Functionalism
Descartes’s Arguments for
Mind-Body Dualism
Principle of the nonidentity of
discernibles
Argument from doubt
• Discourse on the Method
Argument from divisibility
Argument from consciousness
• Meditations on First Philosophy
The Cartesian Compromise


Division of reality
• Science’s authority in the
physical realm
• Religion’s authority in the
spiritual realm
Interactionism
Physicalism: An Alternative
to Dualism
Four problems of dualism:
 Where is the mind-body
interaction?
 How does the interaction occur?
 Conservation of energy?
 Success of brain science?
The Positive Case for
Physicalism
Correlation between mental events
and brain states
Consciousness may be a by-product
of low-level physical processes
Forms of Physicalism
Identity theory, or reductionism


Mental events are identical to brain
events
Brain research will answer all questions
about the mind
Eliminativism


Labels traditional psychological
theories as folk psychology
No beliefs or desires, only brain states
and processes
Functionalism
Minds are constituted by a certain
pattern or relation between the parts
of a system
Minds have multiple realizability
Mental states are defined in terms of
their causal role (how they function)
Artificial Intelligence
Can computers think?
Turing test
Strong AI thesis: an appropriately
programmed computer can think
Weak AI thesis: a computer can only
simulate mental activities
Issues of Freedom and
Determinism
How do nature/nurture, heredity/
environment affect us ?

consider identical twins, separated at
birth
What is the origin of our actions?
What implication does determinism
have for moral responsibility?
Types of Freedom
Circumstantial
 ability to do what we choose
 freedom from external forces
Metaphysical
 free will
 relates to our internal condition,
not external forces
Most philosophy is concerned with
metaphysical freedom
Positions on Freedom
Determinism
Libertarianism
Incompatibilism
Hard determinism
Compatibilism
Hard Determinism
Problems with libertarianism
Positive arguments for determinism
Denial of the possibility of moral
responsibility
Objections to Libertarianism
Conflicts with the scientific world
view
Requires the problematic notion of
uncaused events
Fails to explain that we can influence
other people's behavior
The Positive Case for
Determinism
1. Every event, without exception, is
causally determined by prior events
2. Human thoughts and actions are
events
3. Therefore, human thoughts and actions
are, without exception, causally
determined by prior events
Determinist Thinkers
Spinoza
 pantheism
 free will is an illusion
B.F. Skinner
 radical behaviorism
 reduction of all mental terms to
scientific statements about
behavioral probabilities
Tenets of Libertarianism
We are not determined
We do have freedom of the will
We have the capacity to be
morally responsible for our
actions
Objections to Determinism
Determinism makes an unwarranted
generalization from a limited amount of
evidence
Determinism undermines the notion of
rationality
Determinism confuses methodological
assumptions of science with
metaphysical conclusions
Types of Antideterminism
Indeterminism
 Some events are uncaused
Agency theory
 Event-causation
 Agent-causation
Radical existential freedom
 Jean-Paul Sartre
Arguments for
Libertarianism
Argument from introspection
Argument from deliberation
Argument from moral responsibility
Compatibilism
Soft determinism
We are both determined and morally
responsible for our actions
Voluntary actions take place when
the determining causes reside within
the agent, not externally
Hierarchical Compatibilism
(Frankfurt)
First-order desires
Second-order desires
Second-order volitions