Common Sense Metaphysics

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.

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.

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