The Hope and Horror of Physicalism

An Existential Treatise
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-72155-2
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 158 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 392 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

This book assesses the existentially relevant consequences of physicalism. It argues that accepting physicalism is the healthiest stance we can take in the face of an account of the self and world which offers no metaphysical assurances.

Why should we care about physicalism? On one hand, the view seems to be inconsistent with things that many people find valuable, such as the existence of free will, God, the immortal soul, ultimate purpose, and natural laws like karma. On the other hand, physicalism seems to have positive existential implications such as supporting the unlimited potential of scientific understanding or the attitude that we need not fear supernatural powers or forces because they don’t exist. This book argues that physicalism has several consequences that are of existential import. It begins by outlining the history of physicalism and explaining two popular ways of understanding it: the via negativa approach and the theory-based approach. The rest of Part 1 explores the existential consequences of these two versions of physicalism. Part 2 draws on Nietzsche to construct an argument about what attitude we ought to adopt toward physicalism. It argues that we ought to avoid nihilism and despair even when being confronted with a picture of the universe which offers no metaphysical assurances. Finally, Part 3 is dedicated to how well physicalism deals with the hard problem of consciousness, mental causation, and multiple realization.

The Hope and Horror of Physicalism will appeal to anyone interested in a contemporary approach to existential philosophy, as well as scholars and advanced students working in the fields of philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brown, Christopher Devlin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie des Geistes, Neurophilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Existenzphilosophie, Lebensphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction  Part 1: The hope and the horror  1. Historical preliminaries  2. Two notions of the physical  3. Free will  4. God  5. Immortal soul  6. Ultimate purpose  7. Karma  8. Epicurean freedom and scientific imperialism  Part 2: Confronting the horror  9. Anti-Anti-Natalism  10. Mental health and physicalism  11. Mechanistic forces of darkness, the self, and rationality  Part 3: The mental and the physical  12. The Hard Problem of Consciousness  13. Mental Causation: Causal Closure of the Physical and the Exclusion Problem  14. Multiple Realizability  15. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Christopher Devlin Brown is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China. He has publications on physicalism and consciousness in journals such as Analysis, Synthese, Erkenntnis, Journal of Consciousness Studies and elsewhere. In his free time, he enjoys playing abrasive noise music.