This essay begins by asking why Rorty would endorse a physicalist agenda which, on the face of it, ran counter to his aims in philosophy; and concludes both that his motivation was confused, and that he failed to detach physicalism from metaphysics and scienticism. I begin by showing the importance of metaphilosophy to Rorty’s position on consciousness, and the centrality of consciousness to...
Abstract I begin by summarizing my view of the progression that occurred from the 1950s to the 1990s on the topic of physicalism and, in terms of this, present an overview of the reconciliation I was attempting in “Conceptualizing Physical Consciousness.” I then address Byrne’s two main arguments. In the case of the first, I show that his argument turns on a third-person conception of...
"A superb and original work. Tartaglia addresses head-on the question of the meaning of life — which he calls ‘the keystone of philosophy’ — and gives an uncompromising nihilist answer to it. But rather than turning to gloom and despair, he shows how nihilism is, in a certain sense, neither good nor bad; and that it can be used to address some central traditional questions of philosophy: about...