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A capacity is kind of power, but it is not the same as an ability. An ability is a power that an agent has to perform some action. In contrast, a capacity is “a causal power…an invariable disposition to react to certain determinate changes in the environment in certain determinate ways.” (Van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will, 10-11). However, an ability is “a power to originate changes in the environment.” For example, Van Inwagen distinguishes between the capacity to understand and the ability to speak.  The distinction lies in the fact that though someone who can understand French has no choice over whether or not to understand French sentences when he hears them. In contrast, his ability to speak French does not entail that he utter a word in French. Sentences in French uttered or inscribed cause a person with the capacity to understand French to grasp the correct meanings of the sentences. But a person who can speak French is not caused to do so merely by having such...

The famed puzzle about the Theseus' ship getting its parts replaced involves an assumption: the ship is made of wood and so are the replacement parts. But what if the parts used to replace the old parts are not wood, but plastic? Perhaps, over time, each wooden part of the ship is replaced with a plastic part. We can even follow the story where it usually goes: the old parts are reassembled in some warehouse somewhere. There lies in the warehouse an old ship with all the old wooden parts while at sea a plastic ship goes about its business bearing the famous name. The question is: does this alter one's judgement about persistence? Would we think of the old wooden parts having a better claim to being the ship of Theseus or are we prepared to allow grandeur to attach to a plastic ship? If you want to make the story more clashing, just imagine the plastic ship being bright yellow, you know, lego yellow. If you are partial to the plastic ship, consider the following: What if ...

“There are no visible objects but men and women and cats and other living organisms… There are no tables or books or rocks or hands or legs.” [1] 10 metaphysical presuppositions: 1. The identity relation is absolute and allows for no relative identity. Absolute identity holds that for any x, x is identical to y iff all that is true of x is true of y. Relative identity is the denial of absolute identity and suggests that identity is sortal relative. 2. Four dimensionalism, the thesis that an object’s parts include its temporal parts (time-slices) is false. 3. Logic is an ideal but the use of non-standard logics in consideration of vagueness should not impinge on the general use of traditional logic. 4. Lewis’s counterpart theory about modal statements is false. 5. Material things are ultimately composed of simples, irreducible parts. 6. The constitutionalist theory of objects is false. The constitutionalist theory holds that a concrete particular c...

Does the private language argument succeed if we apply it to God? Could God have a private language? A private mental entity (PME) is an entity only accessible by the mind that has it. A sensation, like toothache, is a good example (L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ). No one apart from the person with toothache has access to that toothache. But a thought might also count as a PME. A human thought is usually about something public, a tree perhaps, but it might be about something private like a sensation. Thoughts like these are privately owned.  My thought that the Christmas tree looks good is my thought; I own it, it is had by me, and only I know I am having it (of course, God knows I have this thought and now I have hit "publish" you know that I have had this thought). However, the only way for you to know that I have had the thought is through my expression of it through a sentence in natural language. Consider now a singular mind. Call it the Divine ...

Micheal Graziano thinks that consciousness, the apparent ability of human beings to have qualitative experiences, is not mysterious, at least it can't be explained by mysterious methods. By mysterious, he means any method of enquiry that is not a hard science: The study of consciousness needs to be lifted out of the mysticism that has dominated it. Consciousness is not just a matter of philosophy, opinion, or religion . It’s a matter of hard science. It’s a matter of understanding the brain and the mind—a trillion-stranded sculpture made out of information. It’s also a matter of engineering. If we can understand the functionality of the brain, then we can build the same functionality into our computers. Artificial consciousness may just be a hard problem within our grasp. Grazanio is an optimist about the hard sciences and thinks it is in no need of assistance. It is better off left alone. Although the problem consciousness has not be solved by the hard sciences yet, Gra...

David Eagelman's suggestion that judicial systems should be re-organized to reflect known environmental and physical conditions that diminish the responsibility of criminals for their actions has been on my mind lately. I wrote about it a few years ago ( here ). The basic story is as follows: A man is convicted of pedophilia discovers that he has a brain tumor. The tumor is removed and the man says he no longer has any impulses for pedophilia. After his release he forms a normal life until he begins to feel the return of his impulses. He goes to the doctor and discovers that the tumor has returned. The story shows us that conditions that are not up to the person are determining actions that are criminal. Since the man bears no responsibility for his tumor it follows that he bears no responsibility for his criminal actions.  The implication  of the story is that conditions should play a greater role in criminal justice. Being brought up in certain conditions, envi...

A physicalist wants to be able to say the following: (A) There are no mental properties.  (B) S believes p. There is an apparent inconsistency in these two claims. Most physicalists consider it implausible to suggest that (B) is false and so concede that (A) is false. In order to maintain the physicalist worldview they say that mental properties are nothing over and above physical properties. This is usually stated in terms of  supervenience,  something like this: a set A of properties supervenes on set B of properties if for any change to A properties there is a corresponding change to B properties and in every possible world in which A properties and B properties are instantiated there cannot be a change in A properties without a corresponding change in B properties.

The problem of exclusion suggests that one or other of the following theses should be abandoned: all non-physical properties depend on physical properties without being reduced to physical properties and all entities that exist are physical entities. In response to the problem many physicalists have subscribed to a form of property dualism or reductive physicalism (eliminativism). Others hold that properties that are non-physical are identical to physical properties yet remain legitimate features for analysis. [1] There are some, however, who have found promising theories that draw on finding coherent ways to analyze the structural relationship between properties. Properties, on their view, are hierarchically arranged, one depending on another, being realized by another or inherent in the other. Though promising, these arguments fail for a simple reason. Although their theories work well when talking about physical properties—one physical property can be seen to supervene on anoth...

Are we living in a machine? Mechanism is the view that the fundamental substance of the world exists independently of anything else. It is physical and independent of minds or other psychological properties. It is analyzed according to physical properties, causes and a like. If one is a mechanist one can either be a dualist or a materialist. Either there are entities that operate over and above the material or matter is all there is.