CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Philosophy 51
21 Fine-Grained Supervenience Pete Mandik (Philosophy,
William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ)
The philosophical technical term ‘supervenience’ is frequently used in the philosophy
of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is
neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists.
I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially
interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist
physicalists. Central to my arguments will be considerations concerning how best to articulate
the spirit of the idea of supervenience. I argue for a novel version of supervenience, ‘finegrained
supervenience,’ which is the claim that if, at a given time, a single entity instantiates
two distinct mental properties, it must do so in virtue of instantiating two distinct physical
properties. I argue further that despite initial appearances to the contrary, such a construal of
supervenience can be embraced only by reductive physicalists. P7
22 Dualism Without the Usual Problems: An Introduction to Soft-Interactionism
Bernard Molyneux (Philosophy, UC Davis, Woodland, CA)
Dualists have in recent decades presented arguments which, being Cartesian in style, lead
to species of dualism with causal interaction problems. As a result, contemporary dualists usually
endorse epiphenomenalism, the thesis that the conscious mind is causally inefficacious.
In contrast, I present a new dualist position derived from a family of libertarian responses to
the problem of free will, in which non-physical agency has its effect by exploiting the indeterminacy
in physical state evolutions. The resulting interactionist view allows the dualist to
convincingly answer the two principal arguments for physicalism - the causal exclusion argument
and the argument from lack of evidence - while retaining any motivation provided by
Cartesian dissociation, specifically via reformulated zombie arguments. The view is amenable
to a naturalistic development, as it is able to exploit the ontological neutrality of evolutionary
and computational theory. Lastly, the view is open to empirical verification. However, such
an investigation cannot proceed at the level of physics, but requires cross-level observations
taken at the physical and intentional levels. C2
23 Phenomenal Realist Physicalism Implies Coherency of Epiphenomenalist
Meaning William S. Robinson (Iowa State University, Ames, IA)
Recent criticisms of epiphenomenalism include a self-stultification objection, according
to which epiphenomenalism is incoherent, because phenomenal quality words could not mean
what epiphenomenalists say they mean, if epiphenomenalism were true. This paper seeks to
remove the sting of this objection. As many physicalists will agree, phenomenal quality terms
do not simply have the same meaning as neural property terms. If phenomenal realist physicalism
is true, there must be some true theory T, statable in terms acceptable to physicalists,
that explains how such terms come into use. Let epiphenomenalists construct a new theory,
T*, that is exactly like T except that wherever a phenomenal quality is invoked as a cause,
the term for that quality is replaced by the neural property term that physicalists say has an
identical referent. Since causal contexts are extensional, T* will be true if T is; both will be
acceptable to physicalists; and T* will be usable by epiphenomenalists, as it attributes causation
only to properties that they agree are physical. So, if phenomenal realist physicalism is
true, there is a T* that is true and coherently usable by epiphenomenalists. – This argument
bears adversely on an important argument offered by K. Balog. Some arguments she gives to
support her view can be re-targeted as arguments against my conclusion. These arguments are
reviewed and answered. C9
24 A Critique of Jaegwon Kim’s Physicalism: An Implicit Argument for a Non-
Cartesian Interactionism David Scharf (Physics, Maharishi
University of Management, Fairfield, IA)
Kim’s argument for a minimal physicalism breaks down in two critical places. First, his
functional reduction of cognitive/intentional properties fails to do justice to what we mean