1st Edition
Common Sense Metaphysics Essays in Honor of Lynne Rudder Baker
This book celebrates the research career of Lynne Rudder Baker by presenting sixteen new and critical essays from admiring students, colleagues, interlocutors, and friends. Baker was a trenchant critic of physicalist conceptions of the universe. She was a staunch defender of a kind of practical realism, what she sometimes called a metaphysics of everyday life. It was this general “common sense” philosophical outlook that underwrote her famous constitution view of reality. Whereas most of her contemporaries were in general given to metaphysical reductionism and eliminativism, Baker was unapologetic and philosophically deft in her defense of ontological pluralism. The essays in this book engage with all aspects of her unique and influential work: practical realism about the mind; the constitution view of human persons; the first-person perspective; and God, Christianity, and naturalism.
Common Sense Metaphysics will be of interest to scholars of Baker’s work, as well as scholars and advanced students engaged in research on various topics in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion.
Introduction 1
KEVI N J. CORCORAN AND LUIS R.G. OLIVEIRA
PART I
On Practical Realism about the Mind 11
1 What Is a Concept? 13
CHRISTOPHER HILL
2 Practical Realism about the Self 39
CAROLYN DICEY JENNINGS
3 Propositional Attitudes as Self-Ascriptions 54
ANGELA MENDELOVICI
4 Saving Physicalism 75
JANET LEVIN
PART II
On the Constitution View 93
5 Constitution, Non-reductivism, and Emergence 95
DERK PEREBOOM
6 The Threat of Thinking Things into Existence 114
KATHRIN KOSLICKI
7 Unkind Persons: A Critique of Baker’s Constitution View 137
KEVIN CORCORAN AND PAUL MANATA
8 Constitution and Personal Identity 158
MARYA SCHECHTMAN
PART III
On the First-Person Perspective 175
9 On Baker on the First Person 177
JOSEPH LEVINE
10 The Missing Self 194
JOHN PERRY
11 Naturalism and Non-qualitative Properties 209
SAM COWLING
12 Persons First Metaphysics 239
EINAR DUENGER BOHN
PART IV
On God, Christianity, and Naturalism 253
13 Speaking about Things Independently of Whether
They Exist 255
PETER VAN INWAGEN
14 Constitution, Persons, and the Resurrection of the Dead 271
THOMAS D. SENOR
15 Putnam and Baker on Naturalism 292
MARIO DE CARO
16 Naturalism and “Robust” Subjectivity: A Critique of Baker 306
LOUISE ANTONY
Notes on Contributors 331
Index 333
Biography
Luis R.G. Oliveira is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. He has published numerous articles in refereed journals, on topics in epistemology, ethics, and religion. He is also the director of the LATAM Bridges in the Epistemology of Religion, an international project focused on connecting Latin American philosophers to the Anglophone philosophical world.
Kevin J. Corcoran is professor of philosophy at Calvin University. He is the author of Rethinking Human Nature (2006), the co-author of Church in the Present Tense (2011), and the editor of Soul, Body and Survival (2001). He has also published numerous articles in refereed journals, on topics in metaphysics, mind, and religion.
"Lynne Rudder Baker was one of the foremost metaphysicians of her time. Opposing the contemporary trend to explain aspects of our world in terms of posits of fundamental physics, Baker defended important nonreductive views about a range of phenomena including persons, minds, and ordinary material objects. In this new collection, eminent scholars in philosophy discuss various aspects of Baker’s thought—from her Constitution View of human persons to her positions on arguments about the existence of God. Whether or not one is persuaded by Baker’s common-sense approach, it is clear that her ideas warrant deep attention. This volume will be of interest to theorists and students of metaphysics for years to come." – Jacob Berger, Lycoming College, USA
