Abstract Which beings have moral status? This chapter argues that moral status requires some capacity for hedonic feelings of pleasure or displeasure. David Chalmers rejects this view on the grounds that it denies moral status to Vulcans, which are defined as conscious creatures with no capacity for hedonic feelings. On his more inclusive view, all conscious beings have moral status. Both views...
Abstract How do we know about other people’s minds? The most plausible answer is that hypotheses about others’ mental states figure in the best explanations for other people’s behavior. This answer clashes with prominent views in philosophy of mind, including epiphenomenalism, the mind/brain identity theory, and functionalism. Partisans of those views hold that the ascription of mental states...
Abstract The Perennial Philosophy centres around what is said to be a recurring mystical insight: that our inherent nature is actually pure, unconditioned consciousness, identical to the ground of all being. Perennial Idealism, the name the author gives to a metaphysical system she has been building, extrapolates from the Perennial Philosophy to explain how the world could be configured if it...
Abstract According to Idealism, every fundamental entity is conscious, and moreover every fundamental property is a phenomenal property. The goal of this chapter is to defend “Modal Idealism,” which is the thesis that Idealism is metaphysically necessary. In particular, I give four different arguments for Modal Idealism. First, I argue that, if at least some possible fundamental properties are...