[SydPhil] Current Projects: Lok-Chi Chan

[Kristie Miller]

Dear all

Tomorrow’s current projects seminar @ 3.00 in the Muniment Room will be Lok-Chi Chan giving the following paper:

Can the Russellian monist escape the epiphenomenalist’s paradox?

Lok-Chi Chan

University of Sydney

Abstract: Russellian monism – an influential doctrine proposed by Russell (1927) – is roughly the view that physics can only ever tell us about the causal, dispositional, and spatiotemporal properties of physical entities and not their categorical (or intrinsic) properties, whereas our qualia are constituted by those categorical properties. In this paper, I will discuss the relation between Russellian monism and a seminal paradox facing epiphenomenalism, the paradox of phenomenal judgment. The paradox is (roughly) as follows: if epiphenomenalism is true – qualia are causally inefficacious – then any belief or memory about qualia, including epiphenomenalism itself, cannot be caused by qualia. For many writers, including Hawthrone (2001), Smart (2004), and Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson (2007), Russellian monism faces the same paradox as epiphenomenalism does. I will assess Chalmers (1996) and Seager’s (2009) defences of Russellian monism against the paradox, and will put forward a novel argument against those defences.

All are welcome.

Associate Professor Kristie Miller
Senior ARC Research Fellow
Joint Director, the Centre for Time
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room S212, A 14

kmiller at usyd.edu.au
kristie_miller at yahoo.com
Ph: +612 9036 9663
http://www.kristiemiller.net/KristieMiller2/Home_Page.html

















-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20170510/551ca085/attachment.html>