Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 A friend commented, privately, upon my comment a few days back on Descartes and Spinoza and how they made their livings.  I said that Spinoza's living as a lens grinder does have a bearing on his philosophy and briefly explained why.  Lenses made possible both the infinite and the infinitesimal, through both the telescope and the microscope.  The world made possible by such instruments and the sciences they enable could indeed be deified. My friend found this unsatisfying.  But ... there is no accounting for taste. What is a tad more biting ... he noted accurately that I had offered no explanation at all of how the material circumstances of Descartes' life had any connection tohis philosophy. Here, then, is that explanation.  Descartes sold real estate, which he appears to have inherited, and to have used the proceeds to buy bonds, supporting himself thereafter as a coupon clipper. Consider those two sorts of asset: real estate and bonds.  Real estate...

A few days back (Dec. 26, a day traditionally associated with two turtle doves) I offered two arguments against mind-body dualism and promised a response to each of them.  Soon thereafter, I responded to the first of them. I explained why I believe that an argument from naturalistic continuity would not necessarily render impossible an emergence at some period in paleontological history.  BUT [to get to the promised argument against dualism] for well over a century now evidence has been building up that there is indeed causation, and one can make a case that the cause-effect arrow runs in only one direction. Neuronal electrical activity is the cause of whatever I may report about such ideas. In that context I didn't really review the evidence/arguments, but acknowledged that there are plenty of sources if you want to pursue them.  If we believe that neuronal electrical activity is the necessary and sufficient cause of everything we tend to call 'mental,' we are left eithe...

  Someone asked at Quora for the best arguments against mind-body dualism. The following is a (slight) re-working of my response there.  The Quorant was not specific about whether he meant "substance dualism" or "property dualism". I will note for the record then, that property dualism was created in part as an answer to some of the standard objections of substance dualism.  I won't define those terms further now, though, because to my own mind there are two powerful arguments that must be rebutted by advocates of EITHER of the dualisms.  These are what I will discuss right now: the argument from evolutionary continuity and that from neurophysiology. First, continuity. If one accepts  the broad biological model that the human species has its origin in random variation from other primates, and the primate genus has its origin in random variations from non-primate mammals, etc. AND if one believes humans are distinctive in having a mind in principle distinct from ...