Conférence autour du livre de Max Kistler : "The Material Mind"
Rencontre, en format vidéoconférence, organisée par le professeur David Teira (UNED, Madrid) autour du livre de Max Kistler The Material Mind
La conférence aura lieu sur Zoom le 7 mai à 17 h CET. Kistler présentera brièvement les principaux arguments de l'ouvrage, suivie d'un débat avec Alyssa Ney (LMU), John Bickle (MSU) et le public. Le débat sera présidé par Helen Beebe (Leeds) et modéré par David Teira (UNED), tous deux éditeurs de BSPS Open.
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Join us for the launch of Max Kistler, The Material Mind, the third volume in BSPS Open, the diamond open access collection of the BSPS and Calgary University Press. You can download the pdf here or buy your printed copy anywhere.
The Material Mind puts the issue of understanding how the mind fits into the natural order into broad perspective, linking the question of causal efficacy of cognitive properties and events with issues of their reducibility, the reality of causal powers, and with a relevant concept of emergence.
The meeting will take place on Zoom on May 7, 17h CET with a short presentation of the book's central claims by Kistler, followed by a debate with Alyssa Ney (LMU) John Bickle (MSU) and the audience. The debate will be chaired by Helen Beebe (Leeds) and moderated by David Teira (UNED), both BSPS Open editors.
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The Material Mind puts the issue of understanding how the mind fits into the natural order into broad perspective, linking the question of causal efficacy of cognitive properties and events with issues of their reducibility, the reality of causal powers, and with a relevant concept of emergence.
The idea that persons or animals possess properties of two types, physical and mental, or psychological and cognitive, inevitably raises the question of how such cognitive properties can be causally efficacious, with respect to other cognitive, physiological, or physical properties, of the person herself or her environment.
People, though composed exclusively of atoms like any other material object, have emergent properties that none of those components possess. Among them are cognitive properties. These properties give a person the power to cause both cognitive and physiological events and processes. The Material Mind defends a version of reductionist materialism. It modifies the conceptual framework of the debate by situating psychological and physiological properties of persons within a hierarchy of levels of reality.
The Material Mind develops a concept of reduction that is compatible both with scientific change and with the possibility of multiple reduction bases. It shows that cognitive and other higher-level properties can be construed as causal powers, develops a concept of emergence compatible with reduction, and shows that the integration of the mind into a scientific conception of the world does not deprive mental properties and events of causal efficacy. The book defends the possibility of downward causation of physiological effects by cognitive causes, by questioning the justification of both the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain and the principle of causal-explanatory exclusion.
Assistance in translation from the French provided by BSPS Open.
Max Kistler is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and senior member of Institut Universitaire de France. He is the author of Metaphysics of Causation and Causation and the Laws of Nature.
La conférence aura lieu sur Zoom le 7 mai à 17 h CET. Kistler présentera brièvement les principaux arguments de l'ouvrage, suivie d'un débat avec Alyssa Ney (LMU), John Bickle (MSU) et le public. Le débat sera présidé par Helen Beebe (Leeds) et modéré par David Teira (UNED), tous deux éditeurs de BSPS Open.
Pour demander le lien Zoom, inscrivez-vous ici