Carl Gillett – författare

Physicalism, a topic that has been central to modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics, is the philosophical view that everything in the space-time world is ultimately physical. The physicalist will claim that all facts about the mind and the mental are physical facts and deny the existence of mental events and state insofar as these are thought of as independent of physical things, events and states. This collection of essays, first published in 2001, offers a series of perspectives on this important doctrine and brings depth and breadth to the philosophical debate. A group of distinguished philosophers, comprising both physicalists and their critics, consider a wide range of issues including the historical genesis and present justification of physicalism, its metaphysical presuppositions and methodological role, its implications for mental causation, and the account it provides of consciousness.

Physicalism, a topic that has been central to modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics, is the philosophical view that everything in the space-time world is ultimately physical. The physicalist will claim that all facts about the mind and the mental are physical facts and deny the existence of mental events and state insofar as these are thought of as independent of physical things, events and states. This collection of essays, first published in 2001, offers a series of perspectives on this important doctrine and brings depth and breadth to the philosophical debate. A group of distinguished philosophers, comprising both physicalists and their critics, consider a wide range of issues including the historical genesis and present justification of physicalism, its metaphysical presuppositions and methodological role, its implications for mental causation, and the account it provides of consciousness.

This Element offers a fresh treatment of the two cycles of reduction-emergence debates in the sciences and their 'reductionist' and 'emergentist' positions. It suggests philosophers have neglected the compositional models/explanations, and 'endogenous' kind of metaphysics, central to these debates. It highlights how such endogenous metaphysics underpins what is termed the 'Dynamic Cycle,' by which scientists develop novel ontological concepts to underwrite new models/explanations to solve scientific problems. And it subsequently shows that the 'reductionist' and 'emergentist' views in the scientific debates follow the Dynamic Cycle. In the first cycle of debates, in the early twentieth century, the Element outlines how 'everyday reductionism' pioneered a novel family of compositional models/explanations in one of the most successful research movements in twentieth-century science. And, in present debates, it frames contemporary emergentist positions offering ontological innovations, underwriting new families of models, to address problems at the cutting-edge of twenty-first-century science.

This Element offers a fresh treatment of the two cycles of reduction-emergence debates in the sciences and their 'reductionist' and 'emergentist' positions. It suggests philosophers have neglected the compositional models/explanations, and 'endogenous' kind of metaphysics, central to these debates. It highlights how such endogenous metaphysics underpins what is termed the 'Dynamic Cycle,' by which scientists develop novel ontological concepts to underwrite new models/explanations to solve scientific problems. And it subsequently shows that the 'reductionist' and 'emergentist' views in the scientific debates follow the Dynamic Cycle. In the first cycle of debates, in the early twentieth century, the Element outlines how 'everyday reductionism' pioneered a novel family of compositional models/explanations in one of the most successful research movements in twentieth-century science. And, in present debates, it frames contemporary emergentist positions offering ontological innovations, underwriting new families of models, to address problems at the cutting-edge of twenty-first-century science.

Grand debates over reduction and emergence are playing out across the sciences, but these debates have reached a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory on empirical grounds. In this book, Carl Gillett provides theoretical frameworks with which to understand these debates, illuminating both the novel positions of scientific reductionists and emergentists and the recent empirical advances that drive these new views. Gillett also highlights the flaws in existing philosophical frameworks and reorients the discussion to reflect the new scientific advances and issues, including the nature of 'parts' and 'wholes', the character of aggregation, and thus the continuity of nature itself. Most importantly, Gillett shows how disputes about concrete scientific cases are empirically resolvable and hence how we can break the scientific stalemate. Including a detailed glossary of key terms, this volume will be valuable for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and scientific researchers working in the area.

Grand debates over reduction and emergence are playing out across the sciences, but these debates have reached a stalemate, with both sides declaring victory on empirical grounds. In this book, Carl Gillett provides theoretical frameworks with which to understand these debates, illuminating both the novel positions of scientific reductionists and emergentists and the recent empirical advances that drive these new views. Gillett also highlights the flaws in existing philosophical frameworks and reorients the discussion to reflect the new scientific advances and issues, including the nature of 'parts' and 'wholes', the character of aggregation, and thus the continuity of nature itself. Most importantly, Gillett shows how disputes about concrete scientific cases are empirically resolvable and hence how we can break the scientific stalemate. Including a detailed glossary of key terms, this volume will be valuable for researchers and advanced students of the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and scientific researchers working in the area.

We find “vertical” relations in many different realms, whether between atoms and molecules, words and sentences, neurons and brains, or individuals and societies. This book is the first to bring together, and comparatively assess, the exciting array of philosophical approaches to vertical relations that have independently sprung up in analytic metaphysics, the metaphysics of mind, and the philosophy of science.  Analytic metaphysicians have recently focused on a relation of ‘Ground’ that is claimed to be found in aesthetics, ethics, logic, mathematics, science, and semantics.  Metaphysicians of mind have focussed on a vertical relation of ‘realization’ between properties, whilst philosophers of science associated with the rise of the ‘New Mechanism’ have renewed interest in vertical relations of scientific composition found in so-called “mechanistic explanations”. This volume analyses the inter-relations between these different approaches to spark a range of new debates, including whether the various frameworks for vertical relations are independent, complementary or in even competition.