Organon F
Volume 28, November 2021, Issue 4, Pages 867–895
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article
A Dilemma about the Mental
Guy Dove – Andreas Elpidorou
https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28406
Physicalism demands an explication of what it means for something to be physical. But the most popular way of providing one—viz., characterizing the physical in terms of the postulates of a scientifically derived physical theory—is met with serious trouble. Proponents of physicalism can either appeal to current physical theory or to some future physical theory (preferably an ideal and complete one). Neither option is promising: currentism almost assuredly renders physicalism false and futurism appears to render it indeterminate or trivial. The purpose of this essay is to argue that attempts to characterize the mental encounter a similar dilemma: currentism with respect to the mental is likely to be inadequate or contain falsehoods and futurism leaves too many significant questions about the nature of mentality unanswered. This new dilemma, we show, threatens both sides of the current debate surrounding the metaphysical status of the mind.
Consciousness; materialism; mental; metaphysics; mind; physical; physicalism; reduction; theory.
Author
Guy Dove
Affiliation
University of Louisville
Address
Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, 313 Bingham Humanities Building, Louisville, Kentucky 40292 USA
Author
Andreas Elpidorou
Affiliation
University of Louisville
Address
Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, 313 Bingham Humanities Building, Louisville, Kentucky 40292 USA
andreas.elpidorou@louisville.edu
Received
24 April 2019
Revised
8 June 2020
Accepted
28 September 2020
Published online
10 March 2020
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Dove, G. – Elpidorou, A. (2021). A Dilemma about the Mental. Organon F, 28(4), 867–895. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28406
Chicago
Dove, Guy – Elpidorou, Andreas. 2021. "A Dilemma about the Mental." Organon F 28 (4): 867–895. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28406
Harvard
Dove, G. – Elpidorou, A. (2021). A Dilemma about the Mental. Organon F, 28(4), pp. 867–895. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28406
© Guy Dove – Andreas Elpidorou
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