The Real Combination Problem : Panpsychism, Micro-Subjects, and Emergence

Panpsychism harbors an unresolved tension, the seriousness of which has yet to be fully appreciated. I capture this tension as a dilemma, and offer panpsychists advice on how to resolve it. The dilemma, briefly, is as follows. Panpsychists are committed to the perspicuous explanation of macro-mentality in terms of micro-mentality. But panpsychists take the micro-material realm to feature not just mental properties, but also micro-subjects to whom these properties belong. Yet it is impossible to explain the constitution of a macro-subject (like one of us) in terms of the assembly of micro-subjects, for, I show, subjects cannot combine. Therefore the panpsychist explanatory project is derailed by the insistence that the world’s ultimate material constituents (ultimates) are subjects of experience. The panpsychist faces a choice of abandoning her explanatory project, or recanting the claim that the ultimates are subjects. This is the dilemma. I argue that the latter option is to be preferred. This needn’t constitute a wholesale abandonment of panpsychism, however, since panpsychists can maintain that the ultimates possess phenomenal qualities, despite not being subjects of those qualities. This proposal requires us to make sense of phenomenal qualities existing independently of experiencing subjects, a challenge I tackle in the penultimate section. The position eventually reached is a form of neutral monism, so another way to express the overall argument is to say that, keeping true to their philosophical motivations, panpsychists should really be neutral monists.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

A method for effective use of enterprise modelling techniques in complex dynamic decision making

Effective organisational decision-making requires information pertaining to various organisational aspects, precise analysis capabilities, and a systematic method to capture and interpret the required information. The existing Enterprise Modelling (EM) and actor technologies together seem suitable for the specification and analysis needs of decision making. However, in absence of a method to capture required information and perform analyses, the decision-making remains a complex endeavour. This paper presents a method that captures required information in the form of models and performs what-if calculations in a systematic manner

Trends in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Neuroscience

This paper presents current trends in philosophy of mind and philosophy of neuroscience, with a special focus on neuroscientists dealing with some topics usually discussed by philosophers of mind. The aim is to detect the philosophical views of those scientists, such as Eccles, Gazzaniga, Damasio, Changeux, and others, which are not easy to classify according to the standard divisions of dualism, functionalism, emergentism, and others. As the variety of opinions in these fields is sometimes a source of confusion, it is worth the effort to obtain an overall panorama of the topic. A general conclusion on epistemological and ontological issues, concerning the relationship between neurobiology and philosophy and the multi-level account of the embodied mind, is proposed

A model based approach for complex dynamic decision-making

Current state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art of decision-making aids are inadequate for modern organisations that deal with significant uncertainty and business dynamism. This paper highlights the limitations of prevalent decision-making aids and proposes a model-based approach that advances the modelling abstraction and analysis machinery for complex dynamic decision-making. In particular, this paper proposes a meta-model to comprehensively represent organisation, establishes the relevance of model-based simulation technique as analysis means, introduces the advancements over actor technology to address analysis needs, and proposes a method to utilise proposed modelling abstraction, analysis technique, and analysis machinery in an effective and convenient manner. The proposed approach is illustrated using a near real-life case-study from a business process outsourcing organisation

How Philosophy of Mind Needs Philosophy of Chemistry

By the 1960s many (perhaps most) philosophers had adopted ‘physicalism’ ─ the view that physical causes fully account for mental activities. However, controversy persists about what count as ‘physical causes’. ‘Reductive’ physicalists recognize only microphysical (elementary-particle-level) causality. Many (perhaps most) physicalists are ‘non-reductive’ ─ they hold that entities considered by other (‘special’) sciences have causal powers. Philosophy of chemistry can help resolve main issues in philosophy of mind in three ways: developing an extended mereology applicable to chemical combination, testing whether ‘singularities’ prevent reduction of chemistry to microphysics, and demonstrating ‘downward causation’ in complex networks of chemical reactions

How Philosophy of Mind Needs Philosophy of Chemistry

By the 1960s many (perhaps most) philosophers had adopted ‘physicalism’ ─ the view that physical causes fully account for mental activities. However, controversy persists about what count as ‘physical causes’. ‘Reductive’ physicalists recognize only microphysical (elementary-particle-level) causality. Many (perhaps most) physicalists are ‘non-reductive’ ─ they hold that entities considered by other (‘special’) sciences have causal powers. Philosophy of chemistry can help resolve main issues in philosophy of mind in three ways: developing an extended mereology applicable to chemical combination, testing whether ‘singularities’ prevent reduction of chemistry to microphysics, and demonstrating ‘downward causation’ in complex networks of chemical reactions

Mechanistic Levels, Reduction, and Emergence

We sketch the mechanistic approach to levels, contrast it with other senses of “level,” and explore some of its metaphysical implications. This perspective allows us to articulate what it means for things to be at different levels, to distinguish mechanistic levels from realization relations, and to describe the structure of multilevel explanations, the evidence by which they are evaluated, and the scientific unity that results from them. This approach is not intended to solve all metaphysical problems surrounding physicalism. Yet it provides a framework for thinking about how the macroscopic phenomena of our world are or might be related to its most fundamental entities and activities

When the part mirrors the whole: interactions beyond simple location

Reductionists believe that we can make sense of the whole in terms of its parts. Emergentists react and reply that the reductionist program is unattainable partly due to the existence of emergent properties. Under the celebrated banner “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”, such holistic stance is particularly relevant to the study of life and mind, where interactions amongst system components and environment are key. However, both antithetical tendencies of reduction and emergence betray a commitment to what Whitehead called simple location: the idea that things are simply where they are. Here we show the problematic consequences of adopting such a view when trying to understand the notion of identity. Dynamic interactions indeed denote “togetherness”, and yet they are external: no matter how much one is eager to emphasize their role, each element that “inter-acts” still exists and can be thought regardless of any essential reference to other elements. We uncover and reject such stance. Within an organismic philosophy, we propose an alternative based on internal relations, which allow to conceive each relationship entering into the essence of an entity. We discuss the fallacy of simple location in the context of abstraction, and end by drawing its implications for a theory of perception. In sum, we argue that the challenge is to conceive “inter-identities” as "intra-identities". We are not enduring interacting substances, but internally related processes

When the part mirrors the whole: interactions beyond simple location

Reductionists believe that we can make sense of the whole in terms of its parts. Emergentists react and reply that the reductionist program is unattainable partly due to the existence of emergent properties. Under the celebrated banner “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”, such holistic stance is particularly relevant to the study of life and mind, where interactions amongst system components and environment are key. However, both antithetical tendencies of reduction and emergence betray a commitment to what Whitehead called simple location: the idea that things are simply where they are. Here we show the problematic consequences of adopting such a view when trying to understand the notion of identity. Dynamic interactions indeed denote “togetherness”, and yet they are external: no matter how much one is eager to emphasize their role, each element that “inter-acts” still exists and can be thought regardless of any essential reference to other elements. We uncover and reject such stance. Within an organismic philosophy, we propose an alternative based on internal relations, which allow to conceive each relationship entering into the essence of an entity. We discuss the fallacy of simple location in the context of abstraction, and end by drawing its implications for a theory of perception. In sum, we argue that the challenge is to conceive “inter-identities” as "intra-identities". We are not enduring interacting substances, but internally related processes