#132 David Papineau: Naturalism, Mind-Brain Dualism, and Consciousness
Dr. David Papineau is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London and at the City University of New York Graduate Center, having previously taught for several years at Cambridge University where he was a fellow of Robinson College. He was President of the British Society for Philosophy of Science for 1993-5, President of the Mind Association for 2009-10, and President of the Aristotelian Society for 2013-14. He’s also the author of 9 books, including Philosophical Naturalism, Thinking About Consciousness, and Knowing the Score.
In this episode, we talk about naturalism, and consciousness and mental phenomena. We start by discussing what naturalism is; if there are problems that science can’t deal with; and how philosophy can contribute to science and the scientific method. Then, we move on to talking about consciousness. We first tackle the issues with mind-brain dualism, and then we discuss consciousness and action, and the Libet experiments in the 1980’s; we also deal with the hard problem of consciousness, and the issues with emergentism. Finally, we debate the possibility of mental phenomena being nothing more than illusions, and what is real in how we experience the world, with a focus on our perceptual systems.
Time Links:
What is naturalism?
Are there problems science can’t deal with?
What role can philosophy play in science?
Mind-brain dualism
Consciousness, action, free will
Consciousness, and post hoc justifications to our behavior
Is there really a hard problem of consciousness?
The issues with the discussion of emergentism vs. reductionism
About the possibility of mental phenomena being just illusions
What is “real” in our experience of the world?
Follow Dr. Papineau’s work!
Follow Dr. Papineau’s work:
Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/yb5ledrx
Personal website: http://www.davidpapineau.co.uk/
Books: https://tinyurl.com/yalc4gdf
Twitter handle: @davidpapineau