Emergence in Mind and Science

心灵与科学的出现

• 批准号: 2241016
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: King's College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2241016
• 关键词: Emergence; Mind; Science

My research project is placed at the intersection of philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of science. My main aim is to vindicate the possibility of higher-level causation within a physicalist framework.Our daily life is based beyond any doubt on the common intuition that we do things, that is, that we are agents who can cause effects in the world. Underlying this intuition there is a widely challenged philosophical notion: mental causation. Currently most analytic philosophers hold that there are only physical entities and relations among them (i.e. physicalism). Nonetheless, we can still claim, as I do, that there are mental properties. Mental properties are those instantiated during conscious experiences such as perceptions, beliefs, memories, and so on. How do mental properties relate to the physical world? Although physicalism is today a prominent view, reductive physicalist accounts were largely abandoned in the late seventies. This fact fostered new views on the mental and the resurgence of some old ones. One of them is emergentism. Although there is not a unified account of emergence, most emergentists share the following claims: (1) the world is layered into levels, from the most fundamental to the more complex ones, (2) higher-level properties depend on and (3) are to some extent autonomous from their lower-level physical base. Jaegwon Kim is one of the main opponents not only of emergentism but also of nonreductive physicalism. He identifies the latter with the former, and he has used the Exclusion Argument (EA) to undermine both views. The EA concludes that mental and other higher-level properties are causally excluded by their physical realizers because they already do all the causal work. Jessica Wilson's emergentist theory questions this identification and tries to overcome the EA by appealing to a new view of emergent properties. In her powers-based account, higher-level properties are causally efficacious by having a distinct power profile from their lower-level realizers. Although Wilson's theory is promising, it faces several objections. The main challenge is that having a distinct causal profile is not what it takes for a higher-level property to be causally autonomous, and if it did, then the overdetermination problem would arise. I believe that one of the main sources of problems (although presented as a virtue) of Wilson's view is that she does not commit to any particular theory of causation. In order to defend Wilson's view from her critics I will first explore which theory of causation is best suited for this goal. Then I aim to develop a difference-making strategy (based not only on Yablo's well-known account but also on more recent approaches by Menzie and List) that endows higher-level properties with causal relevance and at the same time avoids overdetermination.

我的研究项目位于心灵哲学、形而上学和科学哲学的交叉点。我的主要目的是在物理主义框架内证明更高层次因果关系的可能性。毫无疑问，我们的日常生活是基于我们做事的共同直觉，也就是说，我们是能够对世界产生影响的行动者。在这种直觉的基础上，有一个受到广泛挑战的哲学概念：心理因果关系。目前大多数分析哲学家认为只有物理实体和它们之间的关系（即物理主义）。尽管如此，我们仍然可以像我一样，声称存在心理属性。心理属性是那些在知觉、信念、记忆等有意识的经历中实例化的东西。精神属性是如何与物质世界联系起来的？虽然物理主义在今天是一个突出的观点，但还原物理主义的说法在70年代后期基本上被抛弃了。这一事实催生了新的精神观点，也使一些旧观点死灰复燃。其中之一是紧急情况。尽管对涌现现象没有统一的解释，但大多数涌现主义者都有以下观点：(1)世界是分层的，从最基本的到更复杂的；(2)更高层次的属性依赖于(3)在某种程度上独立于较低层次的物理基础。金在权不仅是紧急主义的主要反对者，也是非还原物理主义的主要反对者之一。他将后者与前者等同起来，并使用排斥论证（EA）来破坏这两种观点。EA的结论是，心理和其他高级属性被物理实现者排除在外，因为它们已经完成了所有的因果工作。Jessica Wilson的涌现主义理论质疑这种认同，并试图通过引入涌现属性的新观点来克服EA。在她的基于权力的描述中，高级属性因其与低级实现者具有不同的权力而有效。尽管威尔逊的理论很有希望，但它面临着一些反对意见。主要的挑战是，拥有一个独特的因果概况并不是使高级属性成为因果自治所需要的，如果是这样，那么就会出现过度决定问题。我认为威尔逊观点的主要问题来源之一（尽管被认为是一种优点）是她没有致力于任何特定的因果关系理论。为了在批评者面前为威尔逊的观点辩护，我将首先探讨哪一种因果关系理论最适合这个目标。然后，我的目标是制定一种差异制定策略（不仅基于Yablo的著名描述，还基于Menzie和List最近的方法），赋予更高层次的属性因果相关性，同时避免过度决定。