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This article addresses the question of which metaphysical paradigm is most suitable for gaining a deeper understanding of our conscious inner life and bringing us closer to a powerful theory of consciousness (TOC). To answer this question, the key characteristics of a strong theory, namely, predictive and explanatory power, are used to evaluate various paradigms. The predictive power of a TOC relies primarily on how accurately it can state the conditions under which a physical system is capable of forming conscious states, whereas the explanatory power of a TOC reflects the degree to which the theory makes it intelligible why conscious states are formed under the stated conditions. It proves expedient for the evaluation to divide the paradigms into two classes: physicalism and non-physicalism. From the physicalist point of view, consciousness is reducible to the physical, while non-physicalism is predicated on the assumption that consciousness is fundamental and irreducible to physical properties. The analysis reveals that a TOC built on the physicalist paradigm has the potential to achieve high predictive power but fails to unfold explanatory power. It is demonstrated that the non-physicalist paradigm has clear advantages over physicalism when it comes to developing a powerful TOC. These findings make a strong case for initiating a paradigm shift that replaces the prevailing physicalist stance with a non-physicalist approach. Such a paradigm shift does not make the prominent neuroscientific theories obsolete. Rather, it places these theories in a broader context and entails a reinterpretation of the neurophysiological indicators of consciousness.

Russellian monism—an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (The analysis of matter, Routledge, London, 1927/1992)—is roughly the view that the natural sciences can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and structural properties of physical entities and not about their categorical properties, and, moreover, that our qualia are constituted by categorical properties. Recently, Stoljar (Philos Phenomenol Res 62:253-281, 2001a), Stoljar (Philos Perspect 15:393-413, 2001b), Strawson (Real materialism: and other essays, Oxford, New York, 2008), Montera (J Conscious Stud 17:70-83, 2010), Montero (in: Alter and Nagasawa (eds) Consciousness in the physical world: perspectives on Russellian monism, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015), Alter and Nagasawa (J Conscious Stud 19:67-95, 2012), and Chalmers (in: Alter and Nagasawa (eds) Consciousness in the physical world: perspectives on Russellian monism, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015) have attempted to develop this doctrine into a version of physicalism. Russellian monism faces the so-called combination problem, according to which it is difficult to see how categorical properties could collectively constitute qualia. In this paper, I suggest that there is an insufficiently discussed aspect of the combination problem which I call the difference-maker problem. Taking the differencemaker problem into account, I argue that the combination problem—whether or not it can be solved—results in a dilemma for the project of developing Russellian physicalism. That is, Russellian monism is either physicalistically unacceptable or it is implausible; hence, Russellian monism and physicalism are incompatible.

It has been suggested that many philosophical theses--physicalism, nominalism, normative naturalism, and so on--should be understood in terms of ground. Against this, Ted Sider has argued that ground is ill-suited for this purpose. Here, Dasgupta develops Sider's objection and offers a response.

Given that disparate mind/body views have interfered with interdisciplinary research in psychoanalysis and neuroscience, the mind/body problem itself is explored here. Adding a philosophy of mind framework, problems for both dualists and physicalists are presented, along with essential concepts including: independent mental causation, emergence, and multiple realization. To address some of these issues in a new light, this article advances an original mind/body account—Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism (DiCoToP). Next, puzzles DiCoTop reveals, psychoanalytic problems it solves, and some empirical evidence accrued for views consistent with DiCoToP are presented. In closing, this piece challenges/appeals for neuroscience research to gain evidence for (or against) the DiCoToP view.

This paper considers the extent to which the notion of truthmaking can play a substantive role in defining physicalism. While a truthmaking-based approach to physicalism is prima facie attractive, there is some reason to doubt that truthmaking can do much work when it comes to understanding physicalism, and perhaps austere metaphysical frameworks in general. First, despite promising to dispense with higher-level properties and states, truthmaking appears to make little progress on issues concerning higher-level items and how they are related to how things are physically. Second, it seems that truthmaking-based approaches to physicalism will have a difficult time addressing the status of truthmaking itself without, in effect, appealing to the resources of alternative ways of conceptualizing physicalism.

This paper argues that the exclusion problem for mental causation can be solved by a variant of non-reductive physicalism that takes the mental not merely to supervene on, but to be grounded in, the physical. A grounding relation between events can be used to establish a principle that links the causal relations of grounded events to those of grounding events. Given this principle, mental events and their physical grounds either do not count as overdetermining physical effects, or they do so in a way that is not objectionable.

Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. This thesis is widely judged to be uniquely counterintuitive: the idea that consciousness is an illusion strikes most people as absurd, and seems almost impossible to contemplate in earnest. Defenders of illusionism should be able to explain the apparent absurdity of their own thesis, within their own framework. However, this is no trivial task: arguably, none of the illusionist theories currently on the market is able to do this. I present a new theory of phenomenal introspection and argue that it might deal with the task at hand.

The philosophical interest of verbal disputes is twofold. First, they play a key role in philosophical method. Many philosophical disagreements are at least partly verbal, and almost every philosophical dispute has been diagnosed as verbal at some point. Here we can see the diagnosis of verbal disputes as a tool for philosophical progress. Second, they are interesting as a subject matter for first-order philosophy. Reflection on the existence and nature of verbal disputes can reveal something about the nature of concepts, language, and meaning. In this article I first characterize verbal disputes, spell out a method for isolating and resolving them, and draw out conclusions for philosophical methodology. I then use the framework to draw out consequences in first-order philosophy. In particular, I argue that the analysis of verbal disputes can be used to support the existence of a distinctive sort of primitive concept and that it can be used to reconstruct a version of an analytic/synthetic distinction, where both are characterized in dialectical terms alone.

According to conceptual reductive accounts, if properties of one domain can be conceptually reduced to properties of another domain, then the former properties are ontologically reduced to the latter properties. I will argue that conceptual reductive accounts face problems: either they do not recognise that many higher-level properties are correlated with multiple physical properties, or they do not clarify how we can discover new truthmakers of sentences about a higher-level property. Still, there is another way to motivate ontological reduction, the truthmaker reductive explanations (TRE). TRE can be given by using resources from John Heil’s truthmaker theory and the a priori entailment view or the a posteriori entailment view. I will argue that we can give these truthmaker reductive explanations if there are various less-than-perfectly similar physical properties that can be the truthmakers of sentences about higher-level properties and the physical similarity between them can explain why an irreducible higher-level property is not needed.

Nonreductive physicalism is very popular in the philosophy of the special sciences. It consists of three theses. First, the properties studied in the special sciences are not identical to physical properties, since they are multiply realized by them. Second, special-science properties nevertheless supervene on physical properties in the sense that there cannot be a difference with respect to these properties without a further difference with respect to physical properties. Third, these higher-level properties are causes and effects of other properties. But several philosophers, most notably Jaegwon Kim, have argued that nonreductive physicalism is untenable since its first two theses contradict the third. Here, List and Menzies trace Kim in focusing on the relationship between mental and neural properties, though their conclusions apply more generally. They show that the truth or falsity of the principle is in fact a contingent matter, and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for its truth and establish that, when the principle is true, it can actually support, rather than undermine, the causal autonomy of special-science properties.