Robert Hanna (USA, Independent Philosopher)

Co-organised by the Chair of Philosophy, especially Metaphysics and Ontology, and the MCMP

Location: Geschwister-Scholl-Pl. 1, main building, room M210

Abstract:

Back in 2009, Michelle Maiese and I published Embodied Minds in Action (OUP). That book worked out what we still continue to think is a radically original and paradigm-shifting theory of the mind-body relation and mental causation, the essential embodiment theory. In this talk, I’ll do four things. First, I’ll briefly re-motivate the essential embodiment theory. Second, I’ll equally briefly present three later significant elaborations and extensions of the essential embodiment theory: (i) a radically original and paradigm-shifting theory of free agency that I call natural libertarianism, (ii) a correspondingly a radically original and paradigm-shifting conception of nature and the formal and natural sciences that I call the neo-organicist worldview, and, as directly entailed by the neo-organicist worldview, (iii) the metaphysical doctrine of liberal naturalism. Third, I’ll critically compare and contrast the essential embodiment theory with a popular contemporary theory of the mind-body relation that’s commonly known as Analytic panpsychism. And fourth and finally, I’ll conclude with something I call a semi-autobiographical quasi-Whiteheadian postscript.