Wong, Wai Kin. / "November 2011." / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-116). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1: --- The problem of mental causation for physicalism --- p.7 / Chapter 1.1 --- Mental causation´ؤintroduction to the problem --- p.7 / Chapter 1.2 --- The problem of mental causation for physicalism --- p.8 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- "A brief introduction to physicalism´ؤlayered model, supervenience, and physical closure" --- p.8 / Chapter 1.2.2 --- What is the mind from a physicalist perspective? --- p.12 / Chapter 1.3 --- Non-reductive physicalism stated --- p.14 / Chapter 1.3.1 --- Commitments and generally accepted claim of physicalism --- p.14 / Chapter 1.3.2 --- Reductive physicalism and non-reductive physicalism --- p.15 / Chapter 1.3.3 --- The non-reductive physicalist's view on mental causation --- p.19 / Chapter 1.4. --- What is next? --- p.20 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Kim's supervienience/exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism --- p.21 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.21 / Chapter 2.2 --- Supervenience argument --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3 --- Exclusion argument --- p.25 / Chapter 2.4 --- Implications of the supervenierice/exclusion argument --- p.28 / Chapter 2.5 --- Objections to the supervenience/exclusion argument --- p.29 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Kim on the principle of causal/explanatory exclusion --- p.33 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.33 / Chapter 3.2 --- Kim's realist commitment --- p.35 / Chapter 3.3 --- Kim's argument for explanatory exclusion --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4 --- From the principle of explanatory exclusion to the principle of causal exclusion --- p.38 / Chapter 3.5 --- Kim's view on non-standard overdetermination and how the gap between EEP and CEP is bridged --- p.39 / Chapter 3.6 --- Kim's view on causation --- p.43 / Chapter 3.7 --- Further implications of production causation for the exclusion argument --- p.47 / Chapter Chapter 4: --- Two concepts of causation and the supervenience/exclusion argument --- p.53 / Chapter 4.1 --- The counterfactual analyses of causation´ؤa general overview --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2 --- How the dependence conception of causation helps non-reductive physicalists to avoid the causal exclusion principle --- p.59 / Chapter 4.3 --- Production conception vs. dependence conception? The debate between Kim and Loewer (I) --- p.62 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Loewer's objections to the use of production conception in the formulation of the supervenience/exclusion argument --- p.63 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- The first reason put forward by Loewer --- p.63 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Loewer's argument for (2) --- p.68 / Chapter 4.4 --- Production conception vs. dependence conception? The debate between Kim and Loewer (II) --- p.73 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Can a non-reductive physicalist distinguish epiphenomena from a genuine causal process by the dependence conception of causation? --- p.74 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Does agency require production? --- p.78 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Kim's third objection on omissions --- p.79 / Chapter 4.4.4 --- Loewer's responses to Kim's second and third objections --- p.82 / Chapter 4.4.5. --- Further discussion on Kim's second and third objections --- p.84 / Chapter 4.5 --- Conclusion --- p.87 / Chapter Chapter 5: --- Does Yablo's determination proposal help to solve the exclusion problem for non-reductive physicalism? --- p.88 / Chapter 5.1. --- Yablo's idea elaborated --- p.89 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Yablo's argument for the determination proposal --- p.91 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- The primacy of the causal status of mental events --- p.94 / Chapter 5.2 --- Evaluating Yablo's idea --- p.96 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Are mental properties determinables of physical properties? --- p.97 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- The story is not ended. The crux of the issue is not whether the determination proposal is literally true --- p.100 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Why is proportionality constraint not the solution? --- p.102 / Chapter 5.3 --- What about the causal exclusion principle? --- p.107 / Chapter 5.4 --- Conclusion --- p.108 / Chapter Chapter 6: --- The final conclusion´ؤthe exclusion problem remains unsolved --- p.110 / Responses to the external review --- p.Error! Bookmark not defined. / Bibliography --- p.113

In the always connected and fast-paced modern world we live in, questions about who we are, what our values are, and how to act are more pertinent than ever. What better way to reconcile these questions than turning to a seemingly out of touch 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche? Interestingly enough, Nietzsche lamented that his contemporaries would never understand his work; similarly, he thought of his own work as directed towards ‘philosophers of the future.’ As any present moment passes and as history progresses, we, in a sense, run away from ourselves. This projecting of oneself into the future is unavoidable. Could one ever strictly pin down oneself in such a way to eliminate this problem of time? Of course not! This is an absurd question. What we should really be asking is can we at least exist in a way that is at one with the movement of time and the immediacy of modern technology? The purpose of this paper is to illuminate what would be involved in the task of figuring out how to authentically be-alongside-oneself in this way, qua Nietzsche. However, once we, if successful, are able to achieve a mode of being-alongside- ourselves, it is fruitless, in a sense; we are always being thrown into the future and are therefore no longer alongside-ourselves as such. This is why we shall pivot at the end of this paper in order to suggest how it is possible to orient our being- thrown-into-the-future in the most useful and timely way.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore a thought-provoking consequence of the functionalist theory of mind. Given the current organizational structure of Earth and field theories of consciousness in neuroscience, Earth is probably conscious. The argument is explored through an examination of the current organizational structure of Earth and field theories of consciousness in neuroscience, which leads to the conclusion that Earth is conscious. Various theories of mind have been proposed by neuroscientists and philosophers alike in an attempt to qualify what consciousness is and what provides the basis for consciousness to occur. Support, in the form of data and information, for this thesis was found through reviews of philosophic and neuroscientific literature. Using a functionalist argument and field theories of consciousness, I argue for the possibility of Earth’s consciousness due to its organization. Based on the likelihood of human consciousness being spatially distributed, I illustrate how Earth’s organization is sufficiently similar. However, there is controversy surrounding functionalist theories of mind. This is detailed with Ned Block’s (1978) objection to functionalism, the Chinese Nation thought experiment. I place this objection in conversation with Paul and Patricia Churchland’s (1981) work on inverted qualia, absent qualia, and the method to identify systems with and without qualia. A further objection to my conclusion is explored with Kammerer’s (2015) Sophisticated Anti-Nesting Principle is addressed. Finally, this thesis draws some inspiration from Eric Schwitzgebel’s (2014) paper “If Materialism is True, the United States is Probably Conscious,” but the conclusion is projected to a larger scale, resulting in implications for morality, politics, and theories of mind.

The reductionist tenets of the biomedical model of mental illness generate research methods and clinical practices that neglect significant cultural elements of mental illness. The biomedical model is reductionist because it assumes a view of the mind that lends itself to biological reductionism. Developing a more holistic model of mental illness requires replacing the accepted view of mind with a new one. In this paper, research demonstrating the significance of culture to mental illness will be reviewed in order to illuminate the flaws of the biomedical model. The extended mind theory will be analyzed and discussed as a potential basis for the development of a new paradigm within psychiatry, one which transcends the reductionist tendencies of the biomedical model.

This thesis examines the development of reflective skills. Reflection has been recognised as a prime mode of creating knowledge for project managers. Reflection literature indicates that reflective skills do not develop naturally; guidance, encouragement and facilitation is usually required for managers to reach their highest learning potential. Among the tools suggested to aid this development are written project journals. While there has been research on some aspects of journals, there was little found on the design of reflective journals relevant to developing project management reflection skills. This study has examined the effect or influence of various designs of reflective journals on different facets of reflective learning. The research question was: ????Are there facets of reflection that can be influenced by journal design????? Evidence for the study was first gathered through literature then from journal content and interviews. Literature on reflective learning revealed the facets relevant to the study: definition of reflection, consequences, emotions, temporal factors and individual and organisational culture. Issues identified in journal literature that needed to be applied to the study of reflection development included the journal audience, assessment and format. Participants in the study were final year undergraduates and Masters students who worked on industry based projects over several months. They were requested to keep journals for the duration of the projects, to submit them for examination and then asked to offer feedback on the various journal designs on completion of the projects. The research was conducted over four years, through seven projects, with thirty students taking part. The journal design went through six modifications. The primary findings from the study were: the majority of participants followed the predicted development hierarchy of reflective development; development of reflective skills is dependent on individual and organisational culture; audience does have an impact on reporting of and reflection on concerns; and journal design can facilitate development of some levels of reflection but has no influence on the development of critical reflection. / Masters by research thesis

One of the most interesting developments in recent psychological theorising has been a growing appreciation of the need for a viable theory of mental causation. Hitherto, the prospects for reconciling what seems to be the uniquely rational character of human thought and action with the non-rational mechanistic workings of the natural world have appeared to be limited or even illusory, and the pursuit of reconciliation of this sort has therefore formerly been dismissed as being either impossible of completion or inappropriate for contemplation. Much of the scepticism concerning the role of causal processes in human thought and action was dispelled, however, by the philosopher Donald Davidson, who argues that not only is human action capable of being caused by the actor�s thoughts and desires, but that only when such action is so caused, can it be rational. Davidson�s proposal for the reconciliation of human rationality with causal necessitation is articulated in his theory of Anomalous Monism. According to this theory, there exists what may be termed an ontological-conceptual distinction between events themselves and the characters or properties that are attributed to events by human observers, and it is through recognition of this distinction that one discovers how mental events, that is, events that are amenable to description in the psychological vocabulary, are causally efficacious yet free from the constraints typically associated with the necessity and sufficiency of causal laws. Anomalous Monism, if it were workable, would therefore resolve the paradox according to which human mentality is at once integrated in, and yet unconstrained by, the mechanistic natural world, by demonstrating the compatibility of the facts of causation with the intuitions of folk psychology. However, close examination of Anomalous Monism reveals it to rely on logically flawed anti-realist principles concerning the characters of events, properties and causation. It follows from this that the theory itself must be rejected, but the task that it was devised to undertake, the formulation of a viable theory of mental causation, need not be similarly discarded. Rather, what remains is the challenge of delineating an alternative theory, one that withstands logical scrutiny whilst addressing what is characteristic of human mental processes, and thereby what is characteristic of mental causation. The theory of Direct Realism that is derived from the broader philosophical realism of John Anderson provides the materials for meeting this challenge. According to Direct Realism, mental phenomena are relational situations obtaining between certain organisms (including humans) and their environments. As such, mental phenomena are included in the range of phenomena occurring in the natural world and they are therefore subject to all of its ways of working, including its deterministic mechanisms. The particular challenge that a Direct Realist theory of mental causation faces, that of demonstrating that relational situations can be causal, is revealed upon examination of the character of causation to be unproblematic. Furthermore, the seeming incompatibility between human rationality and natural necessitation is resolved when it is acknowledged that, rather than be an inherent feature of thought and action, logical structure is a characteristic of the natural environment that organisms are at times sensitive to, as revealed by its effects on the characters of their thoughts and actions. Far from being remote or illusory, the prospects for reconciling human mentality with the causal mechanisms of the natural world are discovered in the present thesis to be favourable when a realist approach to the characters of both mental events and causation is adopted.

In this thesis I consider the problem of the distinctiveness of knowledge of our own mental states and attitudes. I consider four influential approaches to this problem: the epistemic approach, the "no reasons view," the neo-expressivist approach and the rational agency approach. I argue that all of them face serious problems. I further argue that many of these problems are connected with the lack of fine-grained enough classification of the entities with respect to which we have self-knowledge. I suggest such a classification, distinguishing passive occurrent mental states, mental actions and standing attitudes, and argue that we should treat each of these categories separately for the purpose of explaining self-knowledge of them. I discuss in detail self-knowledge we have with respect to two of these categories: standing attitudes and mental actions. On my account self-knowledge of standing attitudes stands in a derivative relation to self-knowledge of other kinds. In my discussion of self-knowledge of mental actions I establish that we have a distinctive non-observational kind of self-knowledge and show some specific characteristics of this kind of self-knowledge. In the end I attempt to relate self-knowledge of mental actions to practical knowledge in the ordinary sense of skill.

In contemporary philosophy of mind, the issue of consciousness has taken center stage. Broadly speaking, those who deal with consciousness fall into two camps: those who prioritize empirical work and those who favor conceptual investigation. One prominent argument has served to deepen the divide: the argument for the possibility of zombies. In this paper I intend to examine closely this argument, as it’s presented by David Chalmers, and some of the attempts to discredit it. In so doing, I present some of my own arguments against it, as well as the claim that if it’s sound, then materialism is false. Finally, I present a sketch of a new way of thinking about consciousness that would, I argue, guard against the threat—real or merely apparent—of arguments such as the zombie-argument.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Divinity School, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-192). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.