Naturalism, panpsychism, and functionalism

Abstract

(in lieu of an abstract, the preface is presented) Naturalism in the philosophy of mind—and in philosophy generally—covers quite a wide range of ideas and commitments. This thesis had its genesis in the problems that arise when we ask what it concretely means to hold a naturalistic position in the philosophy of mind. Given the differing conceptions of naturalism that are put forward in the philosophy of mind, we might ask what substantively differentiates a naturalistic position from a non-naturalistic one. To put it roughly, the purpose of this thesis is to inquire into what it means to operate in a naturalistic framework and to evaluate two broad trends I see in naturalistic frameworks put forward in the philosophy of mind. This thesis has three chapters. In the first, I broadly outline and explicate the naturalistic frameworks of Galen Strawson and Daniel Dennett. Both claim to operate according to the dictates of naturalism but have radically different accounts of the mental (that is, the category that includes such things as ‘experience’, ‘belief’, ‘understanding’, etc.) and consciousness or experience (which I use interchangeably). This chapter serves to survey two, mutually exclusive approaches to and accounts of the mental. Its purpose is both to highlight some of the ways in which the mental is accounted for and to display the points of departure that lead to those accounts. It also serves to outline two distinct kinds of naturalism, what I will ultimately call liberal and restrictive naturalism, as described by Hillary Putnam and John McDowell, for example. In this chapter, I also introduce a number of problems in the philosophy of mind that I revisit in the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, I critically analyze the positions put forward by Strawson and Dennett by evaluating the plausibility of panpsychism—which Strawson accepts—versus functionalism/behaviourism—which, in a special form to be discussed in this thesis, Dennett accepts. I characterize what I think a substantive naturalism consists in and then argue that panpsychism falls well within its range. I then argue, in part through considering a number of problems in the philosophy of mind (notably radical emergence and reductionism) that panpsychism provides the most felicitous framework for approaching and accounting for the mental. I also consider Dennett’s alternative proposal for accounting for mental terms within a particular kind of materialist worldview, though I argue that it does not adequately deal with a number of concrete problems that arise. In the last chapter, I characterize the two naturalistic systems of Strawson and Dennett in terms of liberal and restrictive naturalism, respectively, focusing on the former. Put simply, liberal naturalists wish to maintain the integrity of the concepts in what Wilfrid Sellars called the ‘manifest image’: the concepts of the mental outlined (not exclusively) above. Restrictive naturalists do not handle these categories in a way that would satisfy the liberal naturalist, since their program, broadly speaking, is characterized by the effort to reduce the concepts of the space of reasons into the space of causes. I argue in favour of a liberal naturalist approach in the philosophy of mind and demonstrate that the kind of reductionism that is popular in the philosophy of mind is neither possible nor auspicious for our understanding of the mental. To this end, I also show how I think we might be able to take some of Strawson’s insights regarding panpsychism as a way to provide support for the idea that the concepts of the mental can be dealt with on their own merits rather than simply accounting for them behaviouristically. I would also like to express a brief word of thanks to the Department of Philosophy for their support over the last years. Special thanks also to my supervisor, Dr. Robbie Moser.