supervenience

In this essay, I examine Fodor's argument in favor of psychological individualism and Egan's response. According to Fodor's causal argument, every scientific theory individualizes states or identities according to their causal powers. Therefore, Common sense intentional psychology should individualize the states according to the narrow content. Fodor offers two counter-examples to the above argument. According to the second counter-example (2), the anti-individualist claims that since the behavior of twins is distinct in type, their mental states must also be distinct in type, and according to the causal powers of the distinct mental states of type, they are not identical. Fodor gives two responses to the second counter-example. According to (2a), Fodor wants to prove that we should not consider the behavior of twins as different. As a result, the mental states of twins are not distinct. In response to (2a), Egan claims that Fodor's argument is based on the assumption that behavioral types supervene on brain types. According to (2b), Fodor makes two similar arguments by likening "anti-individualist psychology" to "H and T particle theory." One is to distinguish a type of Oscar's mental state from his twin; The second is to distinguish between H-particles and T-particles. In response to (2b), Egan claims that Fodor presupposes an unwarranted supervenience assumption in both arguments without providing an argument for it. Finally, I conclude that if Fodor has no good argument for the doctrine of the supervenience, then he has no reason to distinguish between extensive contents and other relative properties.

Based on the interaction between science and religion, Nancy Murphy turns to a special version of non-transitive physicalism that uses empirical science, physicalism, and the Bible to formulate her holistic physicalism; A middle position between essential dualism and illusionism that defines humans as spiritual beings and hides the problem of the mind within it. Murphy brings the soul into holistic physicalism with his theological assumptions and not with scientific evidence and philosophical arguments. The distinguishing feature of non-transmission physicalism from transmission physicalism is the attention to the explanatory gap in the issue of "supervenience". Holistic physicalism has not filled this gap and has only changed the form of the problem from explaining the relationship between human parts to explaining the relationship between human dimensions. Therefore, combining the universal and weak perceptions of supervenience, along with the positive and negative teachings of holistic physicalism, that is, the use of pure holistic physicalism and avoiding introducing theological presuppositions in a philosophical theory, can be used to solve the problem.

Qualitative experience (Qoalia) is one of the biggest obstacles to the truth of physicalism. How to explain joy, happiness, sorrow and pain with physics is not a simple dilemma for physicists. In the meantime, Barbara Montero; One of the most famous claimants of physicalism, by presenting a special meaning of "is" in the definition of physicalism (everything is physical) claims that development can be created in the "physical" sense. For example, when we say "water is H2O", it does not necessarily mean that water is the same as H2O, but it can mean that water is derived from and composed of H2O. Correspondingly, qualitative experiences (mental affairs), although not the same as physical (mental) affairs, are metaphysical and based on them, and the same amount is sufficient for the qualitative experiences of physical experiences. In this article, we present the translation of "Physicalism" by Barbara Montero in three steps, critique metaphysics and prove that this doctrine proves the maximum coexistence or change between mental and physical matters. And the coexistence or change between mental and physical matters cannot be a valid reason for applying the word "physical" to qualitative experiences such as pleasure.

In the division of theories of the philosophy of mind, all kinds of physicalists, whether reductionist or non-reductionist, are considered Monist; because they believe in the physicality of everything. Reductionist physicists, on the other hand, believe that in addition to knowing everything as physical, everything can be reduced to lower levels of physics; But non-reductionists in physicalism, although they consider everything to be physical, believe that in the field of physics we are confronted with "emergent" things that cannot be reduced to the fundamental particles of physics and given a microphysical explanation of Have them; Because we are basically dealing with something new; But "property dualism", by acknowledging the non-physical nature of mental features, believes in two kinds of things in the universe and, as a result, has fundamentally rejected both Monist physicalist theories. Moreover, although in feature dualism, as in non-reductionist physicalism, we encounter a genus of non-reductionism and novelty, non-reductionism and novelty in property dualism are "species" and "species," respectively. Is "fundamental", not "typical" and "superficial". The present article prevents further sputum by clarifying the exact boundaries of the dualistic nature of property with physicalism, especially its non-reductionist type.

In this paper, first Physicalism is defined by the suggestion of David Lewis, and through the use of the concept of Supervenience. Afterwards, it is explained that among a variety of Emergentist's positions, a small number can be chosen to have an ontological inconsistency with Physicalism. In this regard, the Substantial Emergentism, based on the thoughts of Hasker, Lowe and Toner, and the Causal Emergentism, based on O'Connor and Wong's ideas, and their incompatibility with physicalism is explained. In the following, the relation of each of these ideas, with each other and with Physicalism and Cartesian Dualism, is analyzed. In the end, based on a metaphysical analysis, a new Emergentist's position is proposed; which its ontology is not a basically different plan from Physicalism, but at the same time inconsistent with it. It is also explained that the non-differentiation of this proposal with physicalism in terms of its ontological outline is its advantage over the emergentist's positions which are examined in this paper.

The main purpose of this article is to defend the position of moral realism, that is to defend this general approach to which moral characteristics and attributes are part of the outside world and at least some of the moral propositions are true. To this end, it is first necessary to criticize moral nonrealism arguments and to respond. One of the arguments of moral nonrealism versus moral realism has been formulated through Supervenience. John Mckie and Simon Blackburn, with the help of Supervenience, have argued in defense of moral realism and rejection of moral realism. In this paper we seek to explain, analyze and criticize this argument. So, first, we explain the nature of Supervenience and its domain to the field of ethics, then analyze Blackburn's argument through Supervenience in a critique of moral realism and finally, will criticize this argument.The result of this research is that moral realism is more acceptable than ethical falsehoods.

There are two main criticisms that are brought against any divine command theory (DCT); namely DCT undermines the autonomy of morality and DCT puts morality on an arbitrary foundation. Audi has suggested that these two problems can be avoided by adopting the a priori groundedness view of DCT. He takes the property of being obligatory to be identical to the property of being divinely commanded (commandable) arguing that both of them supervene on non-moral (natural) properties. The grounding of moral properties on natural ones is a priori as well as necessary. So, basic moral principles are necessary truths and necessary truths are not determined by the Divine Will. It means that we can know moral concepts independent of theological ones. This study is an attempt to show that, Audi’s DCT is inconsistent with the well-known and highly plausible view of God’s free-command thesis. For this purpose, I used Murphy’s trilemma against the property identity version of the divine command theory.

In this paper, an explication of the term "supervenience" is presented. Then, this explication is used to clarify the meaning of the supervenience of the soul (mind) on the body (brain) and its effect on the philosophical problem of the afterlife. It has shown that physicalism about soul cannot be formulated upon supervenience per se, since reductivity is an essential aspect of physicalism. So, the main thesis of this paper is that supervenience of the soul on body is consistent with non-physicalistic/non-reductive versions of an afterlife as well as the physicalistic ones.

Davidson’s anomalous monism is one of the physicalistic explanations of mind, mental traits and states. According to this view, all events are existentially physical phenomena with physical and mental descriptions. Mental states, however, are not reduced to physical states. Mental states have physical characteristics, so they have causal relationship with physical states, which is not systematic for intentional mental states. The relationship between mental and physical states is explained according to the theory of supervenience.The present paper, first, explains the principles of anomalous monism such as causal interaction, regularity of causality, irregularity of mental affairs, and supervenience . Then it reviews and criticizes the theory of supervenience by posing some problems such as the necessity of real truthfulness of laws, impossibility of multilateral determination of the effects of mental and physical causes, sufficiency of a systematic order in explaining the relationship between phenomena, explaining causality on the basis of counterfactual conditionals and incompatibility of the lack of bridging laws to relate mental and physical domains.

Donald Davidson, a great analytic philosopher, represented a theory on token identity through which he provided another theory concerning the relation between mental and physical properties called "Supervenience" theory. He tried to avoid involving in reductionism through preserving dualism of these properties.In this Paper first, we explain his theory, then we show how he failed to solve mental causation problem and how his theory faces with either causal exclusion or overdetermination. So, the main problem of Cartesian dualism remains unsolved in this theory.

Some physicalists speak of development of physicalism in the field of epistemology without taking into account reductionist points. They try to develop this subject through formal model of theories which are in a direct relation to Supervenience. They believe that all facts are supervenient on physical facts, in the sense that physical fact determines all facts, but not in the sense that all facts are reduced to physical facts. In the present article, the author tries to take a historical view, and discuss main topics and kinds of supervenience.