All the Power in the World

Preface......Page 8
Contents......Page 22
1 / THE MYSTERY OF THE PHYSICAL......Page 34
1. A Brief Exposition of the Scientiphical Metaphysic......Page 37
2. Three Kinds of Basic Property and the Denial of Qualities......Page 40
3. The Denial of Qualities, Particles in Space and Spaces in a Plenum......Page 51
4. When Limited by the Denial, How to Conceive a Particle's Propensities?......Page 56
5. Can Particles Rotate, but Not Plenumate Bubbles?......Page 60
6. Simple Attempts at Clear Conception May Highlight Our Mystery......Page 62
7. Rejecting the Denial, but Postponing a Resolution of Our Mystery......Page 64
1. I Am a Real Thinking Being and You Are Another......Page 67
2. We Are Differentially Responsive Individuals......Page 71
3. Against Descartes, We Are Intermittently Conscious Individuals......Page 76
4. Our Realistic Response to Descartes Raises a Problem of Our Unconscious Quality......Page 79
5. Against Hume's Restriction, Human Understanding Transcends Human Experience......Page 80
6. We Are Experientially Varying Individuals......Page 84
7. We Are Not Bundles of Experiences, Thoughts or Perceptions......Page 86
8. We Substantial Individuals Are More Basic Than Our Thoughts and Experiences......Page 89
9. As We Communicate with Each Other, We Are Reciprocal Interaction Partners......Page 94
10. There Is Perplexity Concerning How We Commonly Communicate......Page 97
11. Much of the World Interacts with Us, But Doesn't Communicate with Us......Page 99
12. We Often Choose What to Think About, and Even What to Communicate......Page 102
1. We Recall the Denial of Quality and the Mystery of the Physical......Page 105
2. Spatially Extensible Qualities and Intelligible Propensities......Page 107
3. Spatially Extensible Qualities Are Perfectly Pervasive Properties......Page 113
4. Intelligible Physical Reality and a Principle of Constrained Contingency......Page 118
5. Extensible Qualities as a Factor in the Development of Physical Reality: A Problem......Page 121
6. The Problem of Influence for Extensible Qualities in Physical Reality: A Solution......Page 122
7. Mutually Isolated Concrete Worlds and Distinct Eons of the Actual World......Page 124
8. Mightn't the Recognized Physical Properties Just Be Spatially Extensible Qualities?......Page 129
9. The Identity Theory of Qualities and Dispositions......Page 131
10. A Limited Identity Theory?......Page 137
11. Can There Be Spatially Extensible Yellow Entities That Aren't Ever Propensitied?......Page 140
12. Can an Extensible Blue Body Be Attracted by Concreta That Aren't Blue-Attractors?......Page 142
13. Can an Extensible Blue Body Be Perceived to Be Extensible Blue?......Page 143
14. We Consider an Antinomy of Spatially Extensible Quality......Page 148
15. The Ontological Parity of Qualities and Propensities: By Contrast with Hume......Page 154
16. The Ontological Parity of Qualities and Propensities: By Contrast with Lewis......Page 164
17. What May We Learn from Our Demystification of the Physical?......Page 167
18. Remarks on What's Been Done and on What's to Come......Page 172
1. The Qualities Most Available to Me Are My Own When Consciously Experiencing......Page 176
2. Our Power to Experience Promotes Our Conceiving Concrete Individuals......Page 181
3. Our Power to Experience Visually Promotes Our Conceiving Concrete Spatial Things......Page 184
4. Might Our Idea of Spatially Extensible Color Be Our Most Central Concept of Color?......Page 188
5. Our Power to Experience Auditorally Can't Promote Such Full Spatial Conceiving......Page 190
6. Might an Extensible Red Object Be Qualitatively Like an Experiential Red Subject?......Page 193
7. The Great Range of Color for Spatially Extended Concreta......Page 198
8. Contrasting Quality Families and a Sketchy Speculation......Page 200
9. Transparently Colored Bodies and Opaquely Colored Bodies: A Neglected Distinction......Page 202
10. Is This Neglected Distinction Philosophically Significant?......Page 204
11. Conscious Perceiving as an Aid to Fuller Conceiving......Page 208
12. Full Conceiving of Concreta Is both Experiential and Intellectual......Page 210
13. Extrapolating from the Highly Experiential in Conceiving Spatial Individuals......Page 212
14. Conceiving Concreta All Qualitied Uniformly, but Propensitied Quite Variously......Page 215
15. Are Felt Bodily Qualities Well Suited to Conceiving Nonmental Individuals?......Page 222
16. How Well Do We Conceive Insensate Bodies as Pervaded with Tactile Qualities?......Page 224
17. Extensible Qualities, Experiential Qualities and Powers to Affect Experientially......Page 227
18. Why Our Idea of Spatially Extensible Color May Be Our Most Central Idea of Color......Page 230
19. We Focus on Substantive Metaphysics, Not Natural Languages or Conceptual Relations......Page 237
1. The Idea That All Propensities Concern Something as to Quality......Page 242
2. Power-directed Powers (Propensities with Respect to Propensities)......Page 244
3. Power-directed Powers May Distinctively Distinguish among Other Powers......Page 247
4. Propensity, Possibility, Accident and Probability......Page 257
5. Power-directed Powers and Probabilistic Propensities of Very Low Degree......Page 260
6. Powers are Nonconditional, Including Powers to Acquire and Lose (Other) Powers......Page 263
7. Standard Scientific Thinking and Generalistically-directed Propensities......Page 270
8. Individualistically-directed Propensities......Page 273
9. Individualistically-directed Propensities and Cartesian Dualism......Page 277
10. Individualistic Propensities and the Intellectual Aspect of Our Conceiving......Page 279
11. Self-directed Propensities: A Special Case of Individualistically-directed Propensities......Page 285
12. A Human's Self-directed Propensities with Respect to Her Own Experiencing......Page 286
13. Can There Be Any Concrete Entities That Aren't Ever Propensitied?......Page 290
14. Scientiphicalism, Self-directed Propensity and Experiential Awareness......Page 294
15. Temporal Monotony and Temporal Change......Page 297
16. Propensity for Monotony and Propensity for Change......Page 299
17. Possibility, Accident, Probability and Self-directed Propensity......Page 308
18. Basic Concreta, Propensity for Annihilation and Propensity for Continuation......Page 309
19. Self-directed Propensities with Respect to Propensities: The Basis of Stable Monotony......Page 317
20. Thinking about OTHERONS: A Good Long-Term Investment for Substantial Dualists?......Page 322
21. The Confused Idea of a World's Default Setting......Page 326
22. Time without Change......Page 329
23. Do Our Reciprocal Propensity Partners Present a Cosmic Miracle?......Page 331
6 / IS FREE WILL COMPATIBLE WITH SCIENTIPHICALISM?......Page 340
1. A Few Points about Real Choice......Page 344
2. Free Will and Determinism, Real Choice and Inevitabilism: Not an Urgent Issue......Page 347
3. A Widely Disturbing Argument Presents a More Urgent Issue......Page 349
4. Real Choice (Free Will) Is Incompatible with Inevitabilism (Determinism)......Page 350
5. Is Real Choice Incompatible with the Denial of Inevitabilism?......Page 351
6. Our Scientiphical Metaphysic and the Currently Dominant Conception of Ourselves......Page 354
7. Simple Physical Entities and Their Basic Properties......Page 356
8. Reciprocal Propensities, and Physical Laws......Page 358
9. Objective Probabilities, Random Happenings and Real Choices......Page 361
10. Can Inhering in a Field Help Us Have Real Choice?......Page 363
11. Can an -Infinitely Deep Hierarchy" of Physical Powers Help Us Have Real Choice?......Page 364
12. Radically Emergent Beings with a Radically Emergent Power to Choose......Page 366
13. Physical-and-Mental Complexes with a Radically Emergent Power to Choose......Page 372
14. The Scientiphically Supposed Causal Closure of the Physical: How Much a Side Issue?......Page 374
15. Are Physically Effective Choosing Souls Compatible with Physical Conservation Laws?......Page 378
16. Are Physically Effective Choosing Souls Compatible with Other Physical Principles?......Page 383
17. Radically Self-directed Power......Page 385
18. An Exemption from Natural Law Is Required for Real Choice......Page 387
19. The Real Reason Why an Exemption from Natural Law Is Required for Real Choice......Page 389
20. Apparent Scientiphical Incompatibilisms and Further Philosophical Explorations......Page 391
7 / WHY WE REALLY MAY BE IMMATERIAL SOULS......Page 393
1. Recalling the Problem of the Many......Page 397
2. A Couple of Comments on That Comparatively Uninteresting Problem......Page 402
3. The Experiential Problem of the Many......Page 407
4. How the Singularity of Experiencing May Favor Substantial Dualism......Page 412
5. Many Overlapping Experiencers, but Only One of Them Now Experiencing?......Page 414
6. Some Cases of Singular Causal Resolution......Page 416
7. An Immaterial Experiencer's Causally Resolved Singularity Is a Relevant Singularity......Page 423
8. These Are Metaphysical Matters, Transcending All Purely Semantic Issues......Page 425
9. These Problems Transcend Questions of Spatial Boundary: On Complex Complexes......Page 428
10. Problems of Propensitively Redundant Propensitive Contributors......Page 433
11. Our Experiential Problem Doesn't Presuppose Any Suspicious Identifications......Page 438
12. The Problem of Too Many Real Choosers......Page 445
13. Wholly Immaterial Souls Favored over Emergentist Physical-and-Mental Complexes......Page 449
14. A Singular Physical Manifestation of Many Choosers' Powers to Choose?......Page 451
15. Do These Problems Favor Substantial Dualism over Its Most Salient Alternatives?......Page 455
16. Some Less Salient Options to a Quasi-Cartesian Substantial Dualism......Page 458
17. Aren't Immaterial Souls Really Just Eliminable Middlemen?......Page 468
18. Wholly Immaterial Souls Are Generated Abruptly, Not Gradually......Page 471
19. Our Own Souls and the Wholly Immaterial Souls of Nonhuman Animals......Page 477
20. Metaphysically Material Ruminations about Extraordinarily Different Gestations......Page 479
21. People and Nonhuman Animals Again: Might All Souls Be Equally Powerful Individuals?......Page 482
22. Bodily Flexibility as Regards Individualistically-directed Soulful Propensity......Page 487
23. Taking Stock and Moving On......Page 492
Appendix: Beyond Discriminative Vagueness, Safe from Nihilistic Sorites......Page 496
8 / WHY WE MAY BECOME DISEMBODIED, BUT TO NO AVAIL......Page 501
1. Why We May Become Disembodied Souls, with the Deaths of Our Brains and Bodies......Page 502
2. Even While You May Be an Immaterial Soul, Are You really an Existential OTHERON?......Page 504
3. Immaterial OTHERONS Are Just as Problematic as Material OTHERONS......Page 508
4. Metaphysical Asymmetries and Further Forms of Substantial Dualism......Page 513
5. Some Questions about Disembodiment, and about Reincarnation......Page 516
6. Prospects for Disembodiment......Page 517
7. Even If We Disembodied Souls Last for Eons, What Are Our Prospects for Experiencing?......Page 521
8. What Are Our Prospects for Reincarnation?......Page 527
9. The Question of Disembodied Souls and the Question of an Almighty Creator......Page 532
10. Why Our Long-Term Prospects May Be Very Bleak Prospects......Page 539
9 / THE PROBLEM OF OUR UNCONSCIOUS QUALITY......Page 542
1. Physical Objects Aptly Qualitied, Experiencers Differently Qualitied Just as Aptly......Page 543
2. Every Individual Is Qualitied, Including You and Me......Page 544
3. We Reconsider the Problem of Our Unconscious Quality......Page 545
4. We Notice How Descartes Heroically Denies this Problem......Page 549
5. A Quasi-Humean Substantial Dualist May Heroically Deny the Problem......Page 551
6. A •"Compositist" Substantial Dualist May Similarly Deny the Problem......Page 552
7. Will Unconscious Experiential Quality Provide a Less Heroic Dualistic Answer?......Page 554
8. How Fully May Dualists Offer a Speculative Answer to the Problem?......Page 557
10 / HOW RICH IS CONCRETE REALITY?......Page 559
1. Sameness and Difference of Concrete Individuals......Page 560
2. Conceiving Nonspatial Simultaneous Souls, Always Precisely Alike......Page 563
3. Berkeleyan Idealism: Even If Just Modestly Grasped, It Might Be True......Page 567
4. Cartesian Dualism: Even If Just Modestly Grasped, It Also Might Be True......Page 568
5. Substantial Individuals and Our Conceptions as to Such Concrete Particulars......Page 571
6. We Prepare an Analogy between the Properly Spatial and the Relevantly Spacelike......Page 573
7. The Hypothesis of Spacelike Extension: An Analogical Speculation......Page 576
8. The Deflationary Approach: An Apparent Alternative......Page 579
9. An Hypothesized Dimension Far More Like Space Than Like Time......Page 581
10. Our Fullest Conceptions of Spatial Bodies......Page 585
11. An Analogical Conception of Nonspatial Souls......Page 588
12. Our Hypothesis Allows More Fully Conceivable Substantial Dualist Views......Page 591
13. Nondualistic Forms of This Hypothesis: Integrated and Nonintegrated Dimensions......Page 594
14. How Might We Nonspatial Souls Precede Even Our Initial Physical Embodiment?......Page 598
15. Do Immaterial Souls Ever Change Propensitively?......Page 607
16. A More Complex Quasi-Emergentive Dualism: A Constitutional View of Souls......Page 612
17. Drawbacks of This Constitutional View......Page 616
18. Fusional Dualism......Page 618
19. Our Hypothesized Dualism and the Mental Problems of the Many......Page 620
20. Our Hypothesized Dualism and the Problem of Our Unconscious Quality......Page 623
21. Recalling and Addressing the Question of Nicely Matched Propensity Partners......Page 625
22. Our Hypothesized Dualism and the Question of Nicely Matched Propensity Partners......Page 632
23. Does Our Hypothesized Dualism Make My Current Quality Too Inaccessible?......Page 637
24. Two Cartesian Arguments for Some Spacelikely Substantial Dualism......Page 641
25. Is Reality's Temporal Aspect Uniquely Distinctive?......Page 647
26. Why Are Our Concrete Conceptions of Such Limited Variety?......Page 649
Bibliography......Page 654
Index......Page 660