Essay

Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: Actions, Reasons, Causes … and Ends

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by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ I’ve been saying that I’d like a return to philosophical “normalcy,” meaning that I’d like us to stop indulging what I’ve been calling, alternatively, “crazy” and “desperate” philosophical positions: Panpsychism; Hard Determinism; Eliminative Materialism and “Illusionism”; Platonism; Mind/Body Dualism; and so on. I’m running an ongoing series of conversations with Crispin Sartwell alongside these prolegomena, […]

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Bits and Pieces

Bits and Pieces – Consciousness and “Wittgenstein/Ryle-Style” (Dis)solutions

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By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ The philosophical problem of consciousness is a problem concerning subjectivity. To be conscious is to be conscious of something: a color; a smell; a feeling or emotion; etc.  This is why it is alternatively described as “conscious experience,” “self-consciousness,” etc. Consciousness, therefore, is a kind of point of view. Specifically, it is a first-person point […]

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Essay

Some Problems with Incompatibalism

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by E. John Winner Social determinism and compatibilism I gave up worrying about the “free will vs. determinism” debate back around 1990.  At that time, I was studying Pragmatism, especially (in the present context) that of Dewey [1], George Herbert Mead [2], and the little known but nonetheless important Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behavior by Morse Peckham. […]

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Essay

Is the Free Will Debate a Verbal Dispute?

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By Paul So I’ve noticed that academic philosophers, being fairly insulated from the wider public, have largely failed to engage educated laymen who are interested, and perplexed, about free will. In particular, most people think that there are really only two plausible positions — if determinism is true then there is no free will, and if determinism is not true […]

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