WINNERS 2025

Beliefs can be manifested in various ways. Primarily, they are manifested through dispositions to act in particular ways and to have particular experiences. Some theories claim that beliefs are nothing over and above these manifestations — I call these theories “superficial.” Other theories claim that beliefs are something beyond these visible manifestations — I call them “deep” theories. The main form of deep theory is psychofunctionalism, which holds that beliefs depend on computational processes in the brain. 

In this essay, I argue against both superficial theories and psychofunctionalism. Superficial theories, I contend, cannot account for the explanatory role of belief, whereas psychofunctionalism fails to account for its multiple realizability. Finally, I argue that if we want to simultaneously account for multiple realizability and explanatory depth, we should embrace a different kind of deep theory — one that explains beliefs in terms of their evolutionary history. 

According to an influential formulation, property dualism is the view that there are fundamental mental facts. In this paper, I argue against property dualism, formulates as such. The main argument is that property dualism falsifies the principle of purity, according to which fundamental mental facts contain only fundamental objects and properties. To see this, note that fundamental mental facts always contain a non-fundamental element. Atomic mental facts contain the subject of the mental state; this subject cannot be a mental substance according to property dualism. Other candidates--a brain, a body, or an organism--are arguably non-fundamental. All features of an organism, for instance, depend on the features of its parts. Psychophysical laws contain the neurophysical correlate of the mental state, which is a non-fundamental property. The upshot is that property dualists should either reject the fundamentality formulation or adopt other positions, such as substance dualism.