Blocking Definitions of Materialism

Author: Hawthorne J.P.

Source: Philosophical Studies, Volume 110, Number 2, August 2002 , pp. 103-113(11)

Publisher: Springer

Abstract:

It is often thought that materialism about the mind can be clarified using the concept of supervenience. But there is a difficulty. A materialist should admit the possibility of ghosts and thus should allow that a world might duplicate the physical character of our world and enjoy, in addition, immaterial beings with mental properties. So materialists can't claim that every world that is physically indistinguishable from our world is also mentally indistinguishable; and this is well known. What is less understood are the different ways that immaterial add-ons can make trouble for supervenience-theoretic formulations of materialism. In this paper, I shall present a problematic kind of add-on that has been ignored and look at three supervenience-theoretic attempts to formulate materialism in that light.

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA E-mail: jphawtho@rci.rutgers.edu

Publication date: 2002-08-01

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