Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism find it wanting. The case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defenses of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson's knowledge argument, Kim's exclusion problem, and Burge's anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism--reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism--come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism.
The Waning of Materialism
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About the Author
Robert C. Koons is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin. Koons studied at Michigan State, Oxford, and UCLA. He is the author of Paradoxes of Belief and Strategic Rationality (Cambridge, 1993), and Realism Regained (OUP, 2000). George Bealer is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of Quality and Concept (OUP, 1982).
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Format:Paperback
Materialism is a metaphysical position, not an empirical deduction, so (like any metaphysical position) its truth or falsehood is something that can be determined only through the application of logic. This collection is a remarkably exhaustive assault on the logical implausibilities of all the different forms of materialism, and it would be hard to think of a better volume on the topic. It would also be difficult for any impartial and intelligent reader to come away from this volume without realizing that, at the purely logical level, materialism is among the more incredible metaphysical propositions ever advanced. It would have been nice if there had been more essays on the issues of ontology, in the classical sense, but that may be a lot to ask from a volume emerging from the Anglo-American tradition.
