Andrew M. Winters

The Evolutionary Relevance of Abstraction and Representation

This paper investigates the roles that abstraction and representation have in activities associated with language. Activities such as associative learning and counting require both the abilities to abstract from and accurately represent the environment. These activities are successfully carried out among vocal learners aside from humans, thereby suggesting that nonhuman animals share something like our capacity for abstraction and representation. The identification of these capabilities in other species provides additional insights into the development of language.

Cognitive Processes and Asymmetrical Dependencies, or How Thinking is Like Swimming

Where does the cognitive system begin and end? Intracranialists (such as Rupert, Adams, and Aizawa) maintain that the cognitive system is entirely identifiable with the biological central nervous system (CNS). Transcranialists (such as Clark and Chalmers), on the other hand, suggest that the cognitive system can extend beyond the biological CNS. In the second division of Supersizing the Mind, Clark defends the transcranial account against various objections. Of interest for this paper is Clark’s response to what he calls “asymmetry arguments.” Asymmetry arguments can be summarized as follows: subtract the props and aids, and the organism may create replacements. But subtract the organism, and all cognitive activity ceases. Although I am sympathetic to Clark’s overall project, I find his response to the asymmetry arguments inadequate in light of his responses to other objections. For this reason, I maintain that Clark’s response requires revision. By adopting a process metaphysics and appealing to mereological dependencies, I believe that Clark can provide a substantive response to asymmetry arguments that is consistent with his overall theory. This paper unfolds as follows: after summarizing Clark’s response to the asymmetry objection in (§2), I will argue that his response is unsuccessful in (§3). My argument hinges on the claim that Clark does not take into account the full intent of Rupert’s asymmetry argument. In (§4) I modify Clark’s response by appealing to mereology and the asymmetrical dependencies found therein. I conclude in (§5) that this modification provides Clark with an adequate response Essays in Philosophy 17(2) 9 to the asymmetry argument and is consistent with his overall transcranialist account. The further question of whether this account assists Clark in responding to other intracranialist objections is beyond the scope of this paper. Essays Philos (2016)17:8-37 | DOI: 10.7710/1526-0569.1555 Published online: 8 July 2016.

A Substance Metaphysics Primer

This chapter provides a summary of the similarities between Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of the category SUBSTANCE and substances . I assume that Lowe’s account is the best candidate for a comprehensive neo-Aristotelian account. I clarify Lowe’s theory of SUBSTANCE in the context of his four-category ontology to better understand the plausibility of developing a successful substance metaphysics.

Metaphysics Without Substance

This chapter is a positive contribution to the debate regarding ontological priority. It aims to show that we should not dismiss process metaphysics and that we have naturalistic reasons for further developing a process metaphysics. In doing so, I first show how process metaphysics has been too easily dismissed for, what are likely to be, sociological reasons. I then argue that the very naturalistic developments in physics and biology that resulted in the questioning of substance metaphysics provide support for process metaphysics.

Conclusion: The Direction of Process Metaphysics

This chapter concludes the discussion by summarizing the main arguments, lingering issues, and possibilities for future research in process metaphysics.

Naturalistic Problems with Substance

This chapter argues that a neo-Aristotelian account of substance faces challenges from the natural sciences. I consider Lowe’s account of substances as being categorized as either material bodies or living organisms. To assess these two categories of substances, I consider developments from physics (esp., quantum field theory), and biology (esp., the evolutionary extended synthesis).

Introduction: Ontological Frameworks

The chapter traces the historical development of the ontological priority debate through the works of Thales of Miletus, Anaximander of Miletus, Anaximenes of Miletus, and Heraclitus of Ephesus. In doing so, I argue that the ontological priority debate has been framed in terms of either substances of processes. This claim serves as the basis of subsequent chapters to show that the substance framework and its respective methods have been adopted without having given adequate consideration to the process framework.

Attenuated Methodological Naturalism

My aim in this chapter is to develop and defend attenuated methodological naturalism, which holds that we should allow metaphysical theories to be defeasible in light of scientific claims, but we should not immediately assess those metaphysical theories as being false given defeater instances—instead, we should suspend judgment to the theory. The upshot being that even though neo-Aristotelianism is a problematic theory, we should not reject it as being false, but should instead allow for the possibility of exploring other metaphysical theories.

Commonsense Problems with Substance

In this chapter, I analyze the neo-Aristotelian account of substances, as requiring substances to be ontologically fundamental, independent, and non-relational. I argue that these requirements are interdependent and that a problem for any one of these requirements poses challenges to the others. By looking at the problem of substantial change, and how it poses challenges for the requirement of ontological fundamentality, the neo-Aristotelian’s requirement of ontological independence becomes difficult to fulfill. The result being that the neo-Aristotelian account of substance requires refinement if we are to accept it as a metaphysical theory.

Not So Exceptional: Away from Chomskian Saltationism and Towards a Naturally Gradual Account of Mindfulness

It is argued that a chief obstacle to a naturalistic explanation of the origins of mind is human exceptionalism, as exemplified in the seventeenth century by Rene Descartes and in the twentieth century by Noam Chomsky. As an antidote to human exceptionalism, we turn to the account of aesthetic judgment in Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, according to which the mental capacities of humans differ from those of lower animals only in degree, and not in kind. Thoroughgoing naturalistic explanation of these capacities is made easier by shifting away from the substance-metaphysical implications of the search for an account of mind, toward a dispositional account of the origins of mindfulness.