The discussion of worldviews is today dominated by two worldviews, Theism and Naturalism, each with its own advantages and problems. Theism has the advantage of accommodating the individual with existential answers whilst having problems with integrating more recent scientific understandings of the universe. Naturalism on the other hand does well by our developments of science, the problem being instead that this understanding meets difficulty in answering some of the essentials of our existence: questions of mentality and morality. These two views differ fundamentally in stances of ontology and epistemology, and seem not in any foreseeable future to be reconcilable. To deal with this issue, Panpsychism is presented here as the worldview that can accommodate for both existential issues and scientific understanding.

Eliminative materialism is a view that has been sparsely acknowledged and often overlooked when it comes to providing us with a criterion of what it takes for you and me to persist over time. This owes much to its counterintuitive belief in the non-existence of folk-psychological notions, such as persons. Against a backdrop of philosophical and scientific inquiry, this paper amounts to providing such a criterion in the form of f-organisms, taking a different route based on emergent descriptions, instead of conventional reductive explanations. The temporal plasticity (change over time) of such f-organisms display stable persistence conditions despite their constant state of reconstruction. What informs the question of identity in such a paradigm is dealt with accordingly, and the notion of the self is put in a context in which it can no longer be said to be the self we are familiar with – a context in which the center fails to hold. The imperative question for any of such criteria will be to accommodate the concept of identity as unconstrained and far away from uncertainty as possible. The main theme will thus be to reassess the general notion of diachronic identity to include our identity over time, and make explicit the various implications for such a view.

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本篇論文的主要目的是要藉由批判Paul Churchland版本的唯物消除論當中的論證之相關蘊含以及前提，來分析其立場的缺失與不足之處。而為了要達到這個目的，我便將本論文的構成主軸分成兩個部分：第一個部分是由第一章以及第二章所構成，其主要談論過去Churchland (1981)所宣稱的消除論立場以及其論證架構，在這裡除了整理過去眾多哲學家對於他的論證的一些批判與反駁的觀點之外，我也提出自己對於過去消除論之三個主要困境的主張。第二個部分則是由第三章以及第四章所構成，其主要是針對Churchland (2007)現在的唯物消除論之新進觀點來展開論述。當中除了分析他消除論立場的一致性之外，同時也去分析並討論他所提供之支持消除論的新論證，我將之稱作為「動物認知論證」(animal cognition argument) 。我將指出，由於Churchland在該論證當中隱含了一個重要的預設，因而使得該新論證的途徑未必可以合理地推得出其原有的消除論立場。

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

在當代心靈哲學的討論中，「通俗心理學」是指日常生活中人們對於其自身或其他人心理狀態與行為的常識性理解，它是以命題態度作為核心。「取消式唯物論」認為通俗心理學題錯誤的，將會被神經科學所取消。此主張最初為費耶阿本所提出，本論文所討論的取消式唯物論，則是指邱奇瀾及邱奇蘭所主張的版本。根據他們的論點，通俗心理學是一個經驗理論，由於它是無能與停希的，並且無法被成熟的神經科學化約，所以它的律則及本體論皆是錯誤的，未來人類將會使用一套神經科學的語詞來表達我們的心靈現象，使得通俗心理學被徹底取消。另一方面，工具論則認為通俗心理學並不是經驗理論，有關命題態度的歸屬僅僅是實用上的工具，於預測上有用，但並不描述內在的物理機制，以命題態度為組成部份的通俗心理學是社會實踐中多目標的工具，它根植於人類日常生活中，因此無法被神經科學所化約或取消。本論文企圖透過對取消式唯物論與工具論間，對通俗心理學的相互爭論，進一步嘗試對「通俗心理學作為一個理論或實踐？」這個課題作一個初步的回答。我們認為通俗心理學題一個深受社會文化及演化因素影響的常識概念架構，它不僅是一因果解釋理論，並且也是依賴社會文化網絡的實踐工具，應當以理論與實踐的兩種進路來加以探討。如果通俗心理學並不僅僅是一經驗理論，而是具有理論與實踐兩面向文明及演化的產物的話，則通俗心理學將不會面臨被神經科學徹底取消的命運。

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal