Jakub Mihálik: Consciousness in Nature. A Russellian Approach Abstract: This thesis attempts to provide a philosophical answer to the question of how phenomenal consciousness, or experience, can exist in the physical world, i.e. in the world as it is described by science. The thesis has three parts: In the first part (chapter 1) I explicate the concept of phenomenal consciousness and contrast it with other concepts of consciousness common in the literature. Moreover, I suggest that the project pursued in this thesis can be naturally viewed as a part of the more general project of trying to find a stereoscopic view of man, taken by Wilfrid Sellars to be a crucial task for contemporary philosophy. In the second part of the thesis (chapters 2 to 4) I offer a detailed evaluation of the attempts at a materialist reduction of consciousness. While in chapter 2 I explore and critique the approach of apriori physicalism (Dennett, Lewis, Rey, etc.), in chapters 3 and 4, I focus on the more recent doctrine of a posteriori physicalism and especially its most prominent variety called the phenomenal concept strategy (Loar, Papineau, Levin, Schroer, etc.). One problem with a posteriori physicalism is that, as Nida-Rümelin, Goff and others argue, the view cannot make sense of the plausible thesis that our phenomenal...

After a short introduction concerning the problem of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) the work continues with a summary of the state of the art.Thereafter, it goes on to profile four different basic scientific views of human beings and AI: symbolism, connectionism, biologism and physicalism. The emphasis is on the elucidation of anthropologically relevant statements to intelligence, spirit, thinking, perception, will, consciousness, self-consciousness, feelings and life.It is demonstrated that the basic views referred to represent greatly abbreviated and distorted pictures of human beings. Theories that do not go beyond the quantifiable level cannot adequately encompass the nature of relevant concepts and capabilities. That is above all because of the fact that generally a philosophical materialism is advocated, which considers the existence of intellectual substances impossible. For this reason a philosophical critique is necessary. The position of moderate and critical realism is advocated, whose anthropological statements are secured by epistemological and metaphysical investigations.The work comes to the conclusion that human beings cannot be understood symbolistically, connectionistically, biologistically or physicalistically. Man is a physical-intellectual entity, endowed with reason, a living social being. He is formed and led by his intellectual and therefore immortal soul, which gives him uniqueness, irreplaceability and the value of personhood. He is capable of thinking and thus of objective, abstract perception, and therefore is intelligent. Humans have an unfettered will, which, led by mental perception, is to be directed toward the good. They are moreover, through reflection, self-conscious. Humans live an intellectually determined life, which essentially differs, despite biological similarity, from that of animals and cannot possibly, due to its substantial superiority, have developed from animal life.All substantial anthropological abilities (such as intelligence, will, consciousness etc.) presuppose spirit. Because it is not within the power of human beings to create a simple substance such as spirit, a thinking, perceptive, intelligent, willing, self-conscious, sentient living being can at best be only technically imitated, modelled or simulated but never be reproduced, copied or created. The relationship of humans to AI is thus determined by an insuperable difference between their natures.

Many contemporary naturalistic philosophers have taken it for granted that a robust theory of free will, one which would afford us with an agency substantial enough to render us morally responsible for our actions, is itself not conceptually compatible with the philosophical theory of naturalism. I attempt to account for why it is that free will (in its most substantial form) cannot be plausibly located within a naturalistic understanding of the world. I consider the issues surrounding an acceptance of a robust theory of free will within a naturalistic framework. Timothy O’Connor’s reconciliatory effort in maintaining both a scientifically naturalist understanding of the human person and a full-blooded theory of agent-causal libertarian free will is considered. I conclude that Timothy O’Connor’s reconciliatory model cannot be maintained and I reference several conceptual difficulties surrounding the reconciliation of agent-causal libertarian properties with physical properties that haunt the naturalistic libertarian.

Nesta tese, desenvolve-se um argumento explicativo da relação mente-corpo fundamentada na noção de mônada, ou substância simples, como elemento ontológico estruturante de um enfoque contemporâneo da mencionada relação. Na primeira parte da tese, de natureza crítica, analisam-se as teorias fisicistas contemporâneas da mencionada relação, a saber, a teoria de superveniência da mente, da emergência e da causação mental, com vistas a justificar a proposta de assunção de uma premissa dualista que visa, principalmente, propor, em contraste com o cenário epifenomenalista do fisicismo contemporâneo, uma ontologia da mente que seja compatível com as intuições realistas do senso comum e da psicológica popular sobre a força causal da mente no universo físico. Na segunda parte, de natureza positiva, propõe-se um argumento explicativo da relação mente-corpo partindo-se, para tanto, de uma assunção e duas premissas. A assunção afirma que a mente tem o mesmo importe ontológico da matéria física, sendo estes considerados como elementos composicionais, afirmação a qual se denomina dualismo elementar. No que se refere às premissas, propõe-se duas, a saber, a tese composicional holística, que afirma que a mente e a matéria são partes constitutivas de um todo chamado substância simples, e a tese composicional mereológica, que afirma que as substâncias simples ou mônadas compõem mereologicamente, por superveniência, a relação mente-corpo. Examinam-se também algumas objeções ao argumento monadista proposto. / This thesis offers an explanatory argument concerning the mind-body relation, an argument that is grounded on the notion of monad, or the simple substance, as an ontological element for proposing a contemporary approach to the mind-body relation. In the first part, a critique of the current physicalist theories of mind is given, namely, supervenience, emergence and mental causation, in order to justify the proposal of a dualist premiss which aims at an ontology of mind which satisfies the realistic intuitions of common sense and of folk psychology on the causal efficacy and relevance of the mind amid the physical, in opposition to the epiphenomenalist view of contemporary physicalist theories. In the second part, the positive one, we propose an explanatory argument for monadism about mind-body relations, based on an assumption and two premises. The assumption says that the mind has the same ontological import of the physical matter, and they, mind and matter, are considered to be elements entering the composition of psychophysical relations, an assumption called elementary dualism. Regarding the premises, we propose two, namely, the holistic compositional thesis, which asserts that mind and matter are parts entering the composition of true wholes called substances, and the mereological compositional thesis, which says that such simple substances compose, via supervenience, the mind-body relations. Some objections to the proposed monadist argument are examined and rejoindered as well.

Nesta tese, desenvolve-se um argumento explicativo da relação mente-corpo fundamentada na noção de mônada, ou substância simples, como elemento ontológico estruturante de um enfoque contemporâneo da mencionada relação. Na primeira parte da tese, de natureza crítica, analisam-se as teorias fisicistas contemporâneas da mencionada relação, a saber, a teoria de superveniência da mente, da emergência e da causação mental, com vistas a justificar a proposta de assunção de uma premissa dualista que visa, principalmente, propor, em contraste com o cenário epifenomenalista do fisicismo contemporâneo, uma ontologia da mente que seja compatível com as intuições realistas do senso comum e da psicológica popular sobre a força causal da mente no universo físico. Na segunda parte, de natureza positiva, propõe-se um argumento explicativo da relação mente-corpo partindo-se, para tanto, de uma assunção e duas premissas. A assunção afirma que a mente tem o mesmo importe ontológico da matéria física, sendo estes considerados como elementos composicionais, afirmação a qual se denomina dualismo elementar. No que se refere às premissas, propõe-se duas, a saber, a tese composicional holística, que afirma que a mente e a matéria são partes constitutivas de um todo chamado substância simples, e a tese composicional mereológica, que afirma que as substâncias simples ou mônadas compõem mereologicamente, por superveniência, a relação mente-corpo. Examinam-se também algumas objeções ao argumento monadista proposto. / This thesis offers an explanatory argument concerning the mind-body relation, an argument that is grounded on the notion of monad, or the simple substance, as an ontological element for proposing a contemporary approach to the mind-body relation. In the first part, a critique of the current physicalist theories of mind is given, namely, supervenience, emergence and mental causation, in order to justify the proposal of a dualist premiss which aims at an ontology of mind which satisfies the realistic intuitions of common sense and of folk psychology on the causal efficacy and relevance of the mind amid the physical, in opposition to the epiphenomenalist view of contemporary physicalist theories. In the second part, the positive one, we propose an explanatory argument for monadism about mind-body relations, based on an assumption and two premises. The assumption says that the mind has the same ontological import of the physical matter, and they, mind and matter, are considered to be elements entering the composition of psychophysical relations, an assumption called elementary dualism. Regarding the premises, we propose two, namely, the holistic compositional thesis, which asserts that mind and matter are parts entering the composition of true wholes called substances, and the mereological compositional thesis, which says that such simple substances compose, via supervenience, the mind-body relations. Some objections to the proposed monadist argument are examined and rejoindered as well.