My objective here is to show that the case for physicalism about the mind is an instance of historical and interpretive science – a case methodologically analogous to the empirical case for the claim that the human-chimp divergence occurred 5-7 million years ago, for instance. Indeed, our understanding of the case for physicalism about the mind can be illuminated by a presentation that more explicitly reveals its metaphysical underpinnings. In particular, I aim to show that (1) although recent physicalists tend to present (at least one of) three different arguments for physicalism, the strongest case for physicalism treats these as multiple independent lines of empirical evidence, and (2) while alternative views about the relation between mental and physical states are consistent with the evidence given, principles of theory-preference used in science favor physicalism. The result is one argument that raises the plausibility of physicalism as high as it can go on our evidence.

Within every perceptual experience we find that more subjectively interesting percepts stand out in the foreground, whereas less subjectively interesting percepts are relegated to the background. The sight of a sycamore often gains the visual foreground for a nature lover, whereas the sound of a violin often gains the auditory foreground for a music lover, but not necessarily vice versa. How does the perceptual system organize early sensory processing according to the subject’s interests? The current paper reveals how this subject-based organization is brought about and maintained through top-down attention. In fact, the current paper argues that top-down attention is necessary for conscious perception in so far as it is necessary for bringing about and maintaining the subject-based organization of perceptual experience.

In the note to Explication 7 of the Dynamics in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant claims that “original attraction, which makes matter itself possible,… [is] a penetrating force, and for this reason alone is always proportional to the quantity of matter” (4:516). In this paper, I am going to argue that, although plausible, this claim does not shut the door against a weaker alternative conception of original attraction, according to which its degree can vary in different types of matter (in other words, a quantity of water-matter, for example, could have a very weak force of attraction whereas, say, the same quantity of mercury-matter could have a very strong force of attraction).

The evolutionarily significant impact that diverse routes of genetic and extragenetic inheritance (including the inheritance of acquired resources) may have on organisms and their environments has been a topic of intense discussion. In Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb (2005) maintain that considering routes of inheritance besides just that of genes constitutes a dramatic shift from a gene-centred view of heredity and evolution to one that is multidimensional.

This paper considers some conceptual consequences of what rethinking evolution as a multidimensional process might entail. I discuss one upshot of the shift from the gene-centred view to this multidimensional view, namely, how this shift leads to a reconception of the products of natural selection—natural lineages, natural groupings, and species.

This paper argues against a particular claim made in Restall (forthcoming). The claim that I contest is that the meanings of the logical connectives can be constituted by their left and right logical rules in a sequent calculus. In particular, I show that sometimes a change in the meaning of the comma on the left and right results in a change in meaning of the connectives. In the final section, I sketch a more general argument to the effect that the commonly held view that structural rule changes do not change the meanings of the connectives is misguided.