Terence Edward Horgan (born October 13, 1948) is an American philosopher and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His areas of expertise include

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...

and metaethics. Horgan obtained his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1970 from Stanford University. In 1974, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan under the supervision of

Jaegwon Kim Jaegwon Kim (September 12, 1934 – November 27, 2019) was a Korean-American philosopher. At the time of his death, Kim was an emeritus professor of philosophy at Brown University. He also taught at several other leading American universities ...

, with his dissertation titled "Microreduction and the Mind-Body Problem." After holding professorships in Illinois, Michigan, and Memphis, Horgan has been a professor in Tucson, Arizona since 2002.

Philosophy of mind

The focal point of Horgan's thinking is the philosophy of mind, particularly the question of the possibility of a physicalist interpretation of consciousness. Initially he criticized Frank Cameron Jackson's dualistic thought experiment known as " Mary's Room" as merely exploiting an ambiguity in the notion of physical information, rendering it inconclusive since "physical information" carries different meanings in various premises. Since 2002, Horgan has begun arguing against it using conceivability arguments in the tradition of Saul Kripke and David Chalmers. In another essay from 2002, Horgan describes his ambivalent stance towards physicalism as follows: "I remain deeply attracted to materialism in philosophy of mind; I would like to believe that mental is superdupervenient on the physical. But the hole hard problem looks very hard indeed, and I see no prospects currently in sight for dealing with it satisfactorily. ��Much as I would like to be a materialist, at present I do not know what an adequate materialist theory of mind would be."

Books

* (co-authored with J. Tienson):

Connectionism Connectionism is an approach to the study of human mental processes and cognition that utilizes mathematical models known as connectionist networks or artificial neural networks. Connectionism has had many "waves" since its beginnings. The first ...

and the Philosophy of Psychology. Bradford Books, 1996.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Horgan, Terence 1948 births Living people 21st-century American philosophers University of Arizona faculty Stanford University alumni University of Michigan alumni 20th-century American philosophers