Msc Management

In this paper it will be argued that it is possible to attribute concepts to nonhuman animals and consequently that they can be said to entertain propositional attitudes like 'believing'. I must make it clear from the outset that our argument is not that we can attribute specific 'particular' concepts, for it will become clear that we cannot know exactly what an animal believes (but this is not to say that they do not believe them). On a similar note, I do not attempt to hypothesise which animals may have concepts/beliefs; this is left to the ethologists. What I have tried to do in this paper is show that the sceptical position can be critiqued, that it is possible rather than impossible to attribute concepts to animals, and that we are limited in this endeavour by our human way of thinking and speaking.

This paper will explore the argument that the conservation of energy principle (CEP) proves interactionistic dualism wrong. The principle is often posited as showing that there cannot be bilateral causal interaction between a non-physical mind and physical body, because the energy transfer in such causal situations would violate the conservation law of classical physics that for any loses or gains there must be the opposite gains or losses respectively. I consider redistribution counterarguments to the CEP, primarily that of quantum indeterminacy. I believe these counterarguments show that it is far from certain that the CEP proves interactionistic dualism wrong.