This project foregrounds two undertheorized features of Heidegger’s philosophy of science: his critique of physicalism and the positive counterpart to his critiques of modern science. Chapters 1–2 examine Heidegger’s early work up to Being and Time. Chapters 3–4 focus on Heidegger’s post–Being and Time work. Chapter 1 refutes the widespread view (advanced, for instance, by Joseph Rouse, Hubert Dreyfus, and Robert Brandom) that the early Heidegger thinks science generally studies entities that instantiate a mode of being that he calls presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit). I call this the Vorhandenheit claim; I reconstruct and refute three arguments on its behalf. I argue that Heidegger thinks modern physicalistic science, rather than science or natural science as such, privileges the study of present-at-hand things. Chapter 2 develops my positive interpretation of the early Heidegger’s philosophy of science. Heidegger’s “existential” conception of science (which, I argue, has roots in Aristotle’s ethics) posits a special connection between science, truth, and authenticity. Heidegger also thinks that modernity is physicalistic. I discuss physicalism’s negative consequences and trace Heidegger’s analysis of its roots in Aristotle and Descartes. I also compare Heidegger with key Anglophone philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn, W. V. Quine, and Helen Longino. Chapter 3 discusses Heidegger’s analysis of quantum physics and his dialogue with Werner Heisenberg. Many (such as Taylor Carman and Trish Glazebrook) interpret Heidegger as a deflationist on quantum physics’s historical significance vis-à-vis classical physics. But on my reading, Heidegger is ambivalent. I unpack Heidegger’s non-deflationary remarks about quantum physics. I then argue that his ambivalence about physics reflects and informs his ambivalence about the relationship between early modernity and the late-modern “technological” age. Chapter 4 asks how science might be reformed in response to Heidegger’s criticisms. I examine why Heidegger’s vision for science reform led him to support the Nazis. I then offer a sketch of a Heideggerian science consistent with liberal-democratic principles. Heideggerian science would promote pluralistic and philosophically-historically informed research at the potential cost of highly specialized research and technological development. I also compare liberal-democratic Heideggerian science with the accounts offered by Paul Feyerabend, Helen Longino, and Philip Kitcher. / 2025-01-24T00:00:00Z

Type identity theory is a theory within physicalism that maintains that types of mental states or processes are identical to types of states or processes in the brain. This would imply mental types can’t be encountered in physical structures other than the brain. But it seems to be the case that other biological creatures with different physical processes going on in their brain are able to experience a mental state such as pain. Even our brain, with its ability to undergo modification, functionally and structurally, in response to experience or injury, an ability called neuroplasticity, seems to have the ability to instantiate or realize the same mental state by two different neural events. This is the multiple realizability nature of the mental, that challenge type identity theory, but that functionalism seems to account for. Multiple realizability seems to provide a plausible basis for the irreducibility of mind to brain, and thus a good argument for why they should not be considered identical. I argue that when type identity theory claims that types of mental states or processes are identical to types of states or processes in the brain, this should be understood as claiming that types of mental states are identical to types of mechanisms in the brain, by which I mean types of interaction between fundamental particles that comprises the brain. I argue that two physical structures realizing the same mental state must be relevantly similar in the way their respective fundamental particles are interacting with one another. In other words, that similarity in function implies similarity in the way the physical realizers are organized. Therefore, the multiple realizability nature of mental states shouldn’t render them irreducible or non-identical to specific types of interactions fundamental particles.

Within the Philosophy of Mind two features of our mental life have been acknowledged as the most perplexing - consciousness, the phenomenal "what it is likeness" of our mental states, and intentionality, the aboutness or directedness of our mental states. As such, it has become commonplace to develop theories about these phenomena which seek to explain them naturalistically, that is, without resort to magic or miracles. Traditionally this has been done by analyzing consciousness and intentionality apart from one another. However, in more recent years the tide has turned. In contemporary theories these phenomena are typically analyzed in terms of the other. This results in two competing views: Representationalism, which seeks to ground consciousness in intentionality, and Phenomenalism, which seeks to ground intentionality in consciousness. David Chalmers has proposed an alternative view to these which takes consciousness and intentionality as essentially interdependent, neither more fundamental than the other. This thesis explores the motivations for Representationalism and Phenomenalism, outlines their extraneous commitments, and analyzes their merits - as well as assessing whether Chalmers' view is a defensible middle ground. This involves an analysis of the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism, phenomenal consciousness, intentionality, and the nature of mental content. I argue that the view which Chalmers advocates is the best supported. Yet, I argue, it could benefit by adopting a thoroughgoing externalism of mental content.

My goal in this dissertation is to analyze the question, why is co-location a problem for the metaphysics of material objects? I believe that the existing literature on the topic identifies three possible answers to this question: Either, (i) co-location is a problem because it violates the no-coincidence principle, or because (ii) co-location violates the claim that the best available explanation for the relationship between objects that share the same empirically discriminable properties is the relationship of numerical identity, or finally because (iii) co-location violates the thesis of microphysical determination. I argue that (i), (ii), and (iii) are not sufficient reasons to think that co-location is metaphysically problematic, and that a denial of these assumptions does not warrant a rejection of co-location. I maintain that, instead, if co-location is a problem, it is so in virtue of violating a more basic assumption. Co-location is a problem for the view that the individuation and persistence conditions of any given material object is completely and solely determined by the physical or material properties of such an object. I advance reasons to believe that the latter view is fundamental in the sense that (i), (ii), and (iii), are consequences of it, and that co-location is in conflict with (i), (ii) and (iii), because it questions the basic physicalist view that provides the conditions for (i), (ii), and (iii). The fact that (i), (ii) and (iii) depend on the belief that physical properties exhaust the individuation and persistence of material objects, explains why they are not good reasons against co-location: They cannot establish that co-location is a problem for an account of material objects because they depend on the belief that co-location denies. Therefore, (i), (ii), and (iii) provide no more than three different ways of begging the question against co-location. I argue that, in order to show that co-location is a problem, we must show that physicalism with respect to material objects is the correct, or at least the most plausible, metaphysics of material objects, and this is something that neither (i), (ii), or (iii) can show. This statement of the relationship between co-location and anti-colocation reasons is also a contribution to the discussion of co-location. / Philosophy

In the first chapter of this paper I focus on the general overview of Occam's Razor, and develop several interpretations and adaptations of Occam's Razor as a principle of simplicity. In the second chapter I apply these different interpretations in the Physicalism/Dualism debate, and critically assess the validity of these implementations of Occam's Razor in philosophy of mind. In the final chapter I give an overview of my discussion thus far, and make assertions about what my paper means for the usage of Occam's Razor's as a whole.

Physicalism as universally construed is the thesis that everything in the world is either physical or a consequence of physical facts. Certain consequences of physicalism for free will, religion, and so on make it unpalatable to some. Physicalism should not be dismissed merely on its unpalatability. Nonetheless, we should be very sure it is true before accepting it uncritically (as much of science and philosophy now do). Physicalism is a contingent thesis, taken as true on the basis of strong inductive evidence and an inference-to-the-best-explanation that specifies it as the best theory over any of its competitors to provide an ontological account of the universe. So long as there is no contrary evidence to the claims of physicalism, then it stands relatively uncontested. I argue that there is a body of well-attested empirical evidence that falsifies universally-construed physicalism by violating an essential assumption of the theory – causal closure of the physical domain. I present a detailed account of this closure-violating evidence. So that those who are unfamiliar with the body of evidence on offer may judge its validity, I include brief summations of experimental designs, findings, and analyses, plus some controversies pertaining to the data and their resolutions. I then argue why this body of empirical evidence should count against universal physicalism, argue for the evidence’s scientific legitimacy, and discuss criticisms which have been lodged against it, then explain why these criticisms lack force. I conclude that the evidence I present is sufficient to falsify the universal construal of physicalism as supported by today’s and by foreseeable future understandings of the physical world. I acknowledge, though, that nothing can be guaranteed against an indefinite “wait-and-see” argument for some implausible “fully-realized” physics that may be able to reconcile the evidence I propose with such a fully-completed formulation of physicalism. I suggest that if this is the best physicalists can come up with, then their position is weak and the inference-to-the-best-explanation that until now supported universal physicalism should be turned around to tell against the theory. / text

A number of recent objections to physicalism are based on the apparent gap between physical knowledge and phenomenal knowledge. In response, some physicalists accept the epistemic gap, but deny the inference from the epistemic gap to a metaphysical gap. One popular strategy is to argue that there is something unique about our phenomenal concepts, the concepts that we use to think about our phenomenal states in terms of their subjective character, that explains the apparent gap. I develop a version of this strategy.Specifically, I argue that phenomenal-physical identities are necessarily true. These identities only seem contingent due to peculiarities of our phenomenal concepts. Phenomenal concepts have a unique connection to their referents; they are "self-presenting" concepts, which include their referents as components of the concepts themselves. Regardless of how we conceptualize the world, a phenomenal concept will always refer to the phenomenal state. But this is not true of non-phenomenal concepts, even concepts like `H2O' that seem to get at the essence of their referents. There is always an element of contingency in the connection between a non-phenomenal concept and its referent.When we consider an identity between a phenomenal concept and a non-phenomenal concept, like `pain = the firing of p-neurons', the more intimate connection between the phenomenal concept and its referent generates the intuition that the two concepts could come apart. This is true in a sense. If we were to adopt conceptualize things differently, the physical concept might not refer to the same state. For example, if we were to adopt a different theory of neuroscience, we might not conceptualize the firing of p-neurons as `the firing of p-neurons'. Phenomenal concepts, on the other hand, will always pick out the same referents, regardless of how we represent the world. For this reason, the concepts `pain' and `the firing of p-neurons' do come apart, but not in a sense that makes trouble for physicalism. What is possible is not a world in which pain isn't identical to the firing of p-neurons, but only a world in which pain isn't conceptualized as the firing of p-neurons.

One common element of Kripke’s and Chalmers’ reactions to physicalist theories of mind is their reliance upon the intuition that concepts about conscious experiences are essentially identified by the “immediate phenomenal quality” of the conscious experience, how the experience feels from the subjective point of view. I examine how Kripke’s and Chalmers’ critiques require that concepts about conscious experiences be identified by their subjective feel and then move on to provide some ways in which this intuition about concepts of conscious experience could be wrong. Specifically, the intuition is not consistent with our intuitions about unusual cases reported by pain researchers and does not take such cases to be genuine cases of pain. These inconsistencies weaken the intuition, making it problematic for any critique of identity theory or physicalism to rely heavily upon it.

This paper explores and evaluates the famous Mary case put forward by Frank Jackson in support of what he calls the knowledge argument against physicalism. After laying out Jackson’s position, I set out to determine whether certain previous physicalist attempts at undermining it have been successful. Finding that they have not, I use their shortcomings to inform the construction of a new position, one which I argue renders the Mary case at odds with itself and frees physicalism from the knowledge argument’s grasp.

This dissertation makes progress on the mind-body problem by examining certain key features of epistemic defeasibility, introspection, peer disagreement, and philosophical methodology. In the standard thought experiments, dualism strikes many of us as true. And absent defeaters, we should believe what strikes us as true. In the first three chapters, I discuss a variety of proposed defeaters—undercutters, rebutters, and peer disagreement—for the seeming truth of dualism, arguing that not one is successful. In the fourth chapter, I develop and defend a novel argument from the indefeasibility of certain introspective beliefs for the conclusion that persons are not complex objects like brains or bodies. This argument reveals the non-mechanistic nature of introspection. / text