Forthcoming Research Seminars and Lectures

08th November 2012: Kim Davies (Durham) - Understanding the Physical: A Transcendental Subversion of Physicalism

(10 July 2012)

Weekly Research Seminar

This seminar will be held in room 005, 48/49 Old Elvet, Durham.  Refreshments will be served from 11am with the talk commencing  at 11.30am.

Title: Understanding the Physical: A Transcendental Subversion of Physicalism

Abstract:

The aim of this talk is to motivate a new approach to dealing with the Mind/Body relationship, and with physicalism more generally.

Following a brief overview of current attempts at understanding what it is to be physical, the first section explores the pre-understanding of the physical that is at the heart of physicalism.

The second part traces the necessary conceptual links between that pre-understanding and other concepts (eg those of agent, and of communication), and then moves on to explicate the necessary conditions of the possibility of the concept of the physical required by physicalism. These are shown to include equally strong ontological commitments to the mental and the physical as mutually and irreducibly related through reflection on breakdowns in our normal engagement with the world, thereby demonstrating that physicalism is untenable.

The third part clarifies the relationships between the mental and the physical, and between mind and body, so as to encourage a kind of gestalt switch which will enable a fresh strategy for dealing with the various ‘hard problems’ of consciousness.