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Abstract

Fan Zhen’s 范缜 “Shen-Mie-Lun 神灭论” can be read as a debate between a physicalist and a dualist in the philosophy of mind. Many of Fan’s arguments found in the “Shen-Mie-Lun” correspond to contemporary physicalism in Western analytic philosophy. My aim in this essay is to bring Fan's “Shen-Mie-Lun” into conversation with contemporary physicalism in the following way: (1) offer an outline of Fan’s physicalism as presented in the “Shen-Mie-Lun” (2) map his view onto the key positions and concepts of contemporary physicalism, (3) show how his view is (a) incompatible with eliminative materialism, mind-brain identity theory, and behaviourism, but only (b) partially compatible with the supervenience/grounding of mind on body, and realisation of mind by body (functionalism), (4) argue that his view is best expressed as the symmetric ontological dependence of mind and body, and (5) resolve the key problem with this view – the ontological dependence of body on mind – before arriving at his view as a conjunction of symmetric existential dependence and symmetric covariant dependence, with mind as essential function and body as material basis of some kind.

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