Topic:  Mind and Its Place in Nature

Our general topic is the ontology of mind, with our chief focus being
the relationship of mental states and properties to corresponding
physical states.  In the landscape of contemporary analytic
philosophy of mind that we will survey, these questions are much
debated:

(1) Are mental states ontologically reducible to physical states?
(And what might this question mean?)

(2) Do mental states ever make a distinctive causal contribution to
anything that happens?  (And what might this question mean?)

We, too, shall be much preoccupied with these particular questions.
But unlike many of our authors, we shall raise them from within
clearly identified general ontologies, enccouraged by the thought
that one's general ontology might constrain the plausible answers to
questions specifically about mind.  (We shall differ from many of
them also by taking seriously certain heterodox views about the
mental.  You needn't worry that we'll go so far 'round the bend as to
entertain the thought that we might all be ghosts.  But do mind that
we'll be doing our ontology from an unabashedly realist point of
view.  No swirling together of epistemological and metaphysical
theses into an unwholesome brew HERE.)

Our plan is to briskly survey some main options in general ontology,
largely restricted -- unless someone manages to provoke me in other
directions -- to issues concerning the nature of particulars,
properties, and causation.  Here we spend a lot of time in
Australia.  We'll then allow some writing by Jaegwon Kim to set us
off thinking about the problems of mental causation and reductionism,
a journey largely confined to the various burroughs and appendages of
New York City, from which ever so much writing about mind emanates.
But there will be some brief sightseeing in Boston, Memphis, perhaps
Chapel Hill, and -- if the fares are good -- we might even make a
quick, out-of-the-way stopover in the U.K.

So, the thing is, pack your bags ahead of time and have your
passports ready; we're going to be logging a lot of flyer miles; this
trip is for the adventurous and energetic.  (Has my meaning become
plain?)