The podcast is back. Here’s part three of the series on philosophy of mind. We’ve moved from dualism in part one through to physicalism in this episode. I look at epiphenomenialism, reductionism, nonreductive physicalism and a constitution view.
As promised, here’s some suggested reading for those who want to look into the subject futher:
Nancey Murphy, “Nonreductive Physicalism and Free Will” http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10501/Default.aspx
Nancey Murphy, “Is “Nonreductive Physicalism” an Oxymoron?” http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10865/Default.aspx
Nancey Murphy and Warren Brown, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Reflections on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer (eds), In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2005). This volume includes contributions from Stewart Goetz (Substance Dualism), William Hasker (Emergent Dualism), Nancey Murphy (Nonreductive Physicalism) and Kevin Corcoran (Constitution View).
Joel B. Green (ed.), What About the Soul?: Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology (Abingdon Press, 2001). This volume includes contributions from Bill T. Arnold, D. Gareth Jones, Joel B. Green, Patrick D. Miller, Charles E. Gutenson, Stuart L. Palmer, William Hasker, Michael Rynkiewich, Virginia T. Holeman, Lawson G. Stone and Malcolm Jeeves.
Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Maloney (eds), Whatever Happened to the Soul: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Augsburg Fortress, 1998). This volume includes contributions from Nancey Murphy, H. Newton Malony, Ray S. Anderson, V. Elving Anderson, Francisco J. Ayala, Warren S. Brown Jr., Joel B. Green, Malcolm Jeeves, H. Newton Malony and Stephen G. Post.
Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Baker Academic, 2006).
The website of Timothy O’Connor, featuring a number of articles.
Happy reading, and I hope you find this episode interesting! 
Glenn Peoples
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Yaaaay! Long live the podcast!
Did you refer to Dennett as a biologist? He’s actually a philosopher.
Yes, he is a philosopher. That was a slip on my part as I always associate him with defences of Darwinism and critiques of religion as being unscientific, so I always think of him as someone in the sciences.
Good podcast. I thought you did a good job explaining the different views. Here’s some brief commentary on those views on my part, for what it’s worth:
I find non-reductive physicalism to be obscure and unmotivated. Even if there is such a thing as top down causation, as long as the higher level processes supervene on the lower level processes, all of our actions are still determined by the lower level processes (at best, all there is is systematic causal overdetermination). Furthermore, from a physicalist POV, it seems to me that reductive physicalism offers a much more straightforward and eloquent solution to the problem of mental causation – mental events just are physical events that cause other physical events. I reject physicalism, but it seems to me that if one is a physicalist, reductionism is the best way to go.
The constitution view of human persons is just wacky. Are there two material objects sitting in my chair right now, occupying the same space, composed of all the same subatomic parts etc.? Answering “Yes”, as (I believe) David Lewis put it, “wreaks of double counting”. Also, if there are two objects sitting in my chair occupying the same space, etc., do both of those objects think? If so, there are two beings sitting in my chair having all the same thoughts – how do I know which one is me? If not, then mental properties fail to supervene on physical properties, but that seems to be something a physicalist would want to deny. The best way to go, if you want to think that human beings are material objects, imho, is to adopt something in the neighborhood of what Peter van Inwagen presents in his book Material Beings.
“mental events just are physical events that cause other physical events.” – Well that’s not absent in nonreductive physicalism, of course.
Right you are Glenn. I guess that’s another reason why I have a hard time seeing what the motivation for nonreductive physicalism is supposed to be.