Matching Items (120)
Description
Emergentism offers a promising compromise in the philosophy of mind between Cartesian substance dualism and reductivistic physicalism. The ontological emergentist holds that conscious mental phenomena supervene on physical phenomena, but that they have a nature over and above the physical. However, emergentist views have been subjected to a variety of powerful objections: they are alleged to be self-contradictory, incompatible with mental causation, justified by unreliable intuitions, and in conflict with our contemporary scientific understanding of the world. I defend the emergentist position against these objections. I clarify the concepts of supervenience and of ontological novelty in a way that ensures the emergentist position is coherent, while remaining distinct from physicalism and traditional dualism. Making note of the equivocal way in which the concept of sufficiency is used in Jaegwon Kim's arguments against emergent mental causation, I argue that downward causation does not entail widespread overdetermination. I argue that considerations of ideal a priori deducibility from some physical base, or "Cosmic Hermeneutics", will not themselves provide answers to where the cuts in the structure of nature lie. Instead, I propose reconsidering the question of Cosmic Hermeneutics in terms of which cognitive resources would be required for the ideal reasoner to perform the deduction. Lastly, I respond to the objection that emergence in the philosophy of mind is in conflict with our contemporary scientific understanding of the world. I suggest that a kind of weak ontological emergence is a viable form of explanation in many fields, and discuss current applications of emergence in biology, sociology, and the study of complex systems.
ContributorsWatson, Jeffrey (Author) / Kobes, Bernard W (Thesis advisor) / Pinillos, Nestor (Committee member) / Horgan, Terence (Committee member) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Saying, "if Mary had watered Sam's plant, it wouldn't have died," is an ordinary way to identify Mary not watering Sam's plant as the cause of its death. But there are problems with this statement. If we identify Mary's omitted action as the cause, we seemingly admit an inordinate number of omissions as causes. For any counterfactual statement containing the omitted action is true (e.g. if Hillary Clinton had watered Sam's plant, it wouldn't have died). The statement, moreover, is mysterious because it is not clear why one protasis is more salient than any alternatives such as "if Sam hadn't gone to Bismarck." In the burgeoning field of experimental metaphysics, some theorists have tried to account for these intuitions about omissive causes. By synthesizing this data and providing a few experiments, I will suggest that judgments - and maybe metaphysics - about omissive causes necessarily have a normative feature. This understanding of omissive causes may be able to adequately resolve the problems above.
ContributorsHenne, Paul (Author) / Kobes, Bernard W (Thesis advisor) / Pinillos, Nestor A (Thesis advisor) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Panpsychist double aspect theory, the most promising version of panpsychism, holds that the mental and the physical are mutually irreducible properties, or features, of ultimate matter, therefore they both are ontologically fundamental and ubiquitous. This version of panpsychism involves the following two notions: anti-reductivism and anti- emergentism. The former states that mental phenomena are not recordable in terms of physics. The latter implies that mental phenomena do not causally arise only from a certain macroscale physical condition, and the mental and the physical do not constitute an ontological hierarchy. From these notions, it follows that any macroscale mental phenomenon is the result of a combination of ultimate mental properties. Yet this idea creates the combination problem: how higher level mentality, e.g., human or animal consciousness, arises from lower level mentality, the ultimate mental "particles." Panpsychist double aspect theory purports to find the proper location of mind in the world without being vulnerable to typical mind-body problems. Nevertheless, since this version of panpsychism explains the ontological structure of higher level mentality as analogous to the atomic structure of a molecular physical entity, the combination problem arises. In Chapter 1, I explain the general conception of panpsychism. Chapter 2 shows the plausibility of panpsychist double aspect theory and how the combination problem arises from this version. I discuss the history and implications of the combination problem in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, I introduce some alternative versions of panpsychism that do not raise the combination problem, and point out their implausibility. The intelligibility of mental combination is explained in Chapter 5. The moral of these chapters is that our epistemic intuition that mind is not composed of "smaller" minds fails to undermine the possibility that mind is structurally complex. In Chapter 6, I argue that C. Koch and G. Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) is a form of panpsychism, and that the IIT can serve as a model for solving the combination problem. However, I am not committed to the IIT, and I point out theoretical weaknesses of the IIT besides the combination problem.
ContributorsNoh, Hyungrae (Author) / Kobes, Bernard W (Thesis advisor) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Pinillos, Angel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Himalayan orogenic system is one of the youngest and most spectacular examples of a continent-continent collision on earth. Although the collision zone has been the subject of extensive research, fundamental questions remain concerning the architecture and evolution of the orogen. Of particular interest are the structures surrounding the 5 km high Tibetan Plateau, as these features record both the collisional and post-collisional evolution of the orogen. In this study we examine structures along the southwestern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, including the Karakoram (KFS) and Longmu Co (LCF) faults, and the Ladakh, Pangong and Karakoram Ranges. New low-temperature thermochronology data collected from across the Ladakh, Pangong and Karakoram Ranges improved the spatial resolution of exhumation patterns adjacent to the edge of the plateau. These data show a southwest to northeast decrease in cooling ages, which is the trailing end of a wave of decreased exhumation related to changes in the overall amount of north-south shortening accommodated across the region. We also posit that north-south shortening is responsible for the orientation of the LCF in India. Previously, the southern end of the LCF was unmapped. We used ASTER remotely sensed images to create a comprehensive lithologic map of the region, which allowed us to map the LCF into India. This mapping shows that this fault has been rotated into parallelism with the Karakoram fault system as a result of N-S shortening and dextral shear on the KFS. Additionally, the orientation and sense of motion along these two systems implies that they are acting as a conjugate fault pair, allowing the eastward extrusion of the Tibet. Finally, we identify and quantify late Quaternary slip on the Tangtse strand of the KFS, which was previously believed to be inactive. Our study found that this fault strand accommodated ca. 6 mm/yr of slip over the last ca. 33-6 ka. Additionally, we speculate that slip is temporally partitioned between the two fault strands, implying that this part of the fault system is more complex than previously believed.
ContributorsBohon, Wendy (Author) / Arrowsmith, Ramon (Thesis advisor) / Hodges, Kip V (Thesis advisor) / Whipple, Kelin X (Committee member) / Heimsath, Arjun (Committee member) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to present and analyze experimental evidence involving anti-substitution intuitions about co-referential names in simple sentences. In her book Simple Sentences, Substitution, and Intuitions, Jennifer Saul claims that anti-substitution intuitions involving co-referential names in simple sentences are particularly resistant, so much so that they exist even when one is given an identity statement that shows that the two names refer to the same individual. She uses this claim to motivate her thesis that a psychological explanation is needed to understand why these anti-substitution intuitions exist. Her theory is that before people know that two names co-refer to an individual, they have two "nodes" or "mental files" that contain information that is associated with the name. Saul claims that the reason anti-substitution intuitions in simple sentences involving co-referential names are resistant is that when people find out that two names co-refer to an individual, they do not merge the nodes into a single node, but instead the nodes are kept separate and are linked. The linked nodes then are capable of sharing information, though they do not do so by default. Instead, good reasons are needed for the sharing of information. The experimental results show that, contrary to Saul's claims, anti-substitution intuitions of this sort are not resistant such that they persist even when one is given the identity statement. This evidence is used to call into doubt the psychological explanation given by Saul and is used to raise the possibility that a particular implicature view can better explain these anti-substitution intuitions.
ContributorsZimmerman, Thomas (Author) / Pinillos, Nestor (Thesis advisor) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Kobes, Bernard W (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Authenticity has been conceived of in several different ways with various meanings and implications. The existential conception has the advantage of tracking authenticity from the phenomenology of human beings and their lived, social experience. From Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger’s criteria for existentialist authenticity, I develop the argument that authentic, feminist projects are necessarily one mode of being authentic within a patriarchal society. In defining a conception of authenticity out of Sartre and Heidegger’s terms, the question of what qualifies as an authentic feminist project arises as well as the question of what sort of content qualifies as authentic. While Simone De Beauvoir does not focus on authenticity in her ethics, she does give a basis for a value oriented, content relevant aspect of existentialism generally. Insofar as authenticity is an existentialist concept, feminist authenticity is one valuable and worthwhile project within a social patriarchy, as it promotes existence as freedom.
ContributorsScott, Siera Aubrey Lee (Author) / Huntington, Patricia (Thesis advisor) / Calhoun, Cheshire (Thesis advisor) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
About one in ten refugees from the American Revolution was African-descended, and unlike many white Loyalists fleeing war in the thirteen mainland North American colonies, black Loyalists were people without a country. Most were fleeing slavery in Virginia or the Carolinas, yet not fully able to claim to be British subjects, despite many heeding the call to join British forces. Among the 40,000 Loyalists who departed, around 3,500 black Loyalists evacuated from the newly founded United States between the years of 1776 and 1785. I hope to evaluate the movement patterns and thought process behind this particular group with what choices they ultimately had after the war using Dunmore’s Proclamation as a means to freedom. These black Loyalists faced the difficult decision in choosing what identity they would side with once they left. These former slaves ultimately had to choose between becoming forced migrants with the losing side of the war or staying with the winning side of the war as people bound by chains. Although there were a multitude of fascinating tales that could be told through the lens of these black Loyalists, one particular family caught my eye within my research. This story is the journey of the Fortune family who chose to run away from American slavery to migrate to Nova Scotia. Their story will grant me access to analyze the extreme discrimination families met as they fled, the contempt the new colonies felt against them, as well as the evolution of their societal roles as some of these immigrants integrated into their new country and became accepted as respected individuals. Furthermore, their tale aided me in understanding what caused some emigrant black Loyalists to stay in Nova Scotia despite the hardships they faced as outsiders who were unwelcome from the perspective of native white Nova Scotians.
ContributorsNanez-Krause, Michael L (Author) / Schermerhorn, Calvin J. (Thesis director) / Barnes, Andrew (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
As of 2019, 30 US states have adopted abortion-specific informed consent laws that require state health departments to develop and disseminate written informational materials to patients seeking an abortion. Abortion is the only medical procedure for which states dictate the content of informed consent counseling. State abortion counseling materials have been criticized for containing inaccurate and misleading information, but overall, informed consent laws for abortion do not often receive national attention. The objective of this project was to determine the importance of informed consent laws to achieving the larger goal of dismantling the right to abortion. I found that informed consent counseling materials in most states contain a full timeline of fetal development, along with information about the risks of abortion, the risks of childbirth, and alternatives to abortion. In addition, informed consent laws for abortion are based on model legislation called the “Women’s Right to Know Act” developed by Americans United for Life (AUL). AUL calls itself the legal architect of the pro-life movement and works to pass laws at the state level that incrementally restrict abortion access so that it gradually becomes more difficult to exercise the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade. The “Women’s Right to Know Act” is part of a larger package of model legislation called the “Women’s Protection Project,” a cluster of laws that place restrictions on abortion providers, purportedly to protect women, but actually to decrease abortion access. “Women’s Right to Know” counseling laws do not directly deny access to abortion, but they do reinforce key ideas important to the anti-abortion movement, like the concept of fetal personhood, distrust in medical professionals, the belief that pregnant people cannot be fully autonomous individuals, and the belief that abortion is not an ordinary medical procedure and requires special government oversight. “Women’s Right to Know” laws use the language of informed consent and the purported goal of protecting women to legitimize those ideas, and in doing so, they significantly undermine the right to abortion. The threat to abortion rights posed by laws like the “Women’s Right to Know” laws indicates the need to reevaluate and strengthen our ethical defense of the right to abortion.
ContributorsVenkatraman, Richa (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis director) / Brian, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Abboud, Carolina (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The purpose of this paper will be to show that the 'merge' model of mental files is to be preferred to the 'link' model of mental files because some of the problems that arise for the 'merge' model also arise for the 'link' model, and because the problems for the 'merge' model can be argued against via counterexamples or explained away. This will be shown by giving a detailed description of what both the link model and the merge model of mental files entail. The flaws of the mental file merge model will be presented, followed by the advantages of the link model, ending with several arguments as to why the merge model is better suited to explain our intuitions about identity than the link model.
ContributorsZimmerman, Thomas Scott (Author) / Pinillos, N. Angel (Thesis director) / Kobes, Bernard (Committee member) / Reynolds, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This paper seeks to emphasize how the presence of uncertainty, speculation and leverage work in concert within the stock market to exacerbate crashes in a cyclical market. It analyzes three major stock market events: the crash of Oct. 19, 1987, “Black Monday;” the dotcom bust, from 1999 to 2002; and the subprime mortgage crisis, from 2007 to 2010. Within each event period I define determinants or measurements of uncertainty, speculation. Analysis of how these three concepts functioned during boom and bust will highlight how their presence can amplify the magnitude of a crash. This paper postulates that the amount of leverage during a crash determines how long-term its effects will be. This theory is fortified by extensive research and interviews with experts in the stock market who had a front row view of the discussed crises.
ContributorsGraff, Veronica Camille (Author) / Leckey, Andrew (Thesis director) / Cohen, Sarah (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor, Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05