Dan Giberman: How to Bear Pain

Abstract

Constitutive Russellian panprotopsychism (CRP) addresses the mind-body problem by maintaining that non-phenomenal sui generis fundamental quiddities are metaphysically responsible for both the physical and the phenomenal statuses of a given individual. Whether those statuses are understood in terms of instantiated properties or nominalist classifications, they are subject to a Bradleyan regress worry, whereby contingent statuses and their bearers can only appropriately co-relate by deference to further unexplained instances of contingent status bearing (such as instantiation, compresence, or set membership). Of course, the Bradleyan challenge is a problem for everyone, not just friends of CRP; what matters here is that it is widely agreed to be a serious problem. The present essay argues for a tidy fix on behalf of CRP. The properties literature already contains several ‘robust’ theories of status-bearing designed in part to address the Bradleyan worry. The fix is to recognize an identity: the best version of CRP just is a robust theory of status-bearing. The upshot is that CRP enjoys several significant features that have gone unnoticed pertaining to its motivation, explanatory scope, modal status, and dialectical strength.