A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to (...) save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism. We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics. Key Words: explanation; functionalism; mental causation; metaphysics; reductionism. (shrink)

We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In showing how to recover an approximation to Russell's conclusion (...) while explaining scientists' continuing appeal to causal ideas (without violating naturalism by philosophically correcting scientists) we illustrate a general naturalist strategy for handling problems around the unification of sciences that assume different levels of naïveté with respect to folk conceptual frameworks. We do this despite rejecting one of the premises of Russell's argument, a version of reductionism that was scientifically plausible in 1913 but is not so now. (shrink)

The primacy of physics generates a philosophical problem that the naturalist must solve in order to be entitled to an egalitarian acceptance of the ontological commitments he or she inherits from the special sciences and fundamental physics. The problem is the generalized causal exclusion argument. If there is no genuine causation in the domains of the special sciences but only in fundamental physics then there are grounds for doubting the existence of macroscopic objects and properties, or at least the concreteness (...) of them. The aim of this paper is to show that the causal exclusion problem derives its force from a false dichotomy between Humeanism about causation and a notion of productive or generative causation based on a defunct model of the physical world. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Rd., Bristol BS8 1TB, UK. (shrink)

A popular approach in philosophy, the so-called Canberra Plan, is critically scrutinized. Two aspects of this research program, the formal and the informal program, are distinguished. It is argued that the formal program runs up against certain serious technical problems. It is also argued that the informal program involves an unclear leap at its core. Consequently, it is argued that the whole program is much more problematic than its advocates recognize.

Bas van Fraassen claims that materialism involves false consciousness. The thesis that matter is all that there is, he says, fails to rule out any kinds of theories. The false consciousness consists in taking materialism to be cognitive rather than an existential stance, or attitude, of deference to the current content of science in matters of ontology, and a favourable attitude to completeness claims about the content of science at a time. The main argument Van Fraassen provides for saying that (...) materialism is not cognitive is an account according to which materialism has responded, so far, to changes in science by abandoning previous hallmarks of the material, and accepting new ones instead of by taking materialism to have been refuted. I argue that van Fraassen’s conclusions run far ahead of what his arguments establish. The fact of revision and revolution in the history of science, and the undoubted provisionality and incompleteness of science as we have it, do indeed tell against simply letting current science determine what the physical is for philosophical purposes. But the alternative to betting on current science need not be unconditional open-endedness. The changes that materialists have accepted so far do not, furthermore, support the false consciousness interpretation. The reason for this is not that materialists will swallow anything, but rather that the changes accepted are consistent with the truth of materialism when appropriately characterized. (shrink)

Arguably, there is no substantial, general answer to the question of what makes for the approximate truth of theories. But in one class of cases, the issue seems simply resolved. A wide class of applied dynamical theories can be treated as two-component theories—one component specifying a certain kind of abstract geometrical structure, the other giving empirical application to this structure by claiming that it replicates, subject to arbitrary scaling for units etc., the geometric structure to be found in some real-world (...) dynamical phenomenon. In such a case, a theory is approximately true just if the one geometric structure approximately replicates the other (and if problems remain here, they are problems in geometry, of specifying suitable metric approximation relations, not conceptual problems). This article amplifies and defends this simple approach to approximate truth for dynamical theories. (shrink)

This paper tries to get a grip on two seemingly conflicting intuitions about reductionism in quantum mechanics. On the one hand it is received wisdom that quantum mechanics puts an end to ‘reductionism’. Quantum-entanglement is responsible for such features of quantum mechanics as holism, the failure of supervenience and emergence. While I agree with these claims I will argue that it is only part of the story. Quantum mechanics provides us with thorough-going reductionist explanations. I will distinguish two kinds of (...) micro-explanation (or micro-‘reduction’). I will argue that even though quantum-entanglement provides an example for the failure of one kind of micro-explanation it does not affect the other. Contrary to a recent paper by Kronz and Tiehen I claim that the explanation of the dynamics of quantum mechanical systems is just as reductionist as it used to be in classical mechanics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLadyman and Ross’s account of the metaphysical component of ontic structural realism was associated with a unificationist view of the connection between fundamental physics and special sciences. The aim of the present article is to assess the sense of unification that is at issue in Ladyman and Ross’s definition of metaphysics. Given the ontic core of Ladyman and Ross’s version of structural realism, it should be assumed that the unifying endeavour is worthwhile only if the connective links that underpin unification (...) are metaphysically significant. Ladyman and Ross employed information-theoretic notions, e.g. ‘projectibility’, to account for the significance of real patterns, which underpin unification. I build upon McAllister’s engagements with the same topic, to argue that these notions fail to accomplish this objective. (shrink)

Debates about explanation in the social sciences often proceed without any clear idea what an 'account' of explanation should do. In this paper I take a stance - what I will call contextualism - that denies there are purely formal and conceptual constraints on explanation and takes standards of explanation to be substantive empirical claims, paradigmatically claims about causation. I then use this standpoint to argue for position on issues in the philosophy of social science concerning reduction, idealized models, social (...) mechanisms, functional explanations, inference to the best explanation and interpretive understanding. (shrink)

Opinionated state of the art paper on scientific explanation. Analysis and discussion of the most relevant models and theories in the contemporary literature, namely, the deductive-nomological model, the models of inductive-statistical and statistical relevance, the pragmatic theory of why questions, the unifying theory of standard arguments, and the causal/non-causal counterfactual theory.

The paper first argues that if one takes current fundamental physics seriously, one gets to a metaphysics of events and relations in contrast to substances and intrinsic properties. Against that background, the paper discusses Heil’s theory of properties being both categorical and dispositional and his rejection of levels of being. I contrast these views with a Humean metaphysics. My concluding claim is that Heil’s account of properties opens up the perspective of a conservative reductionism, which avoids the common reservations against (...) reductionism. (shrink)

In resisting attempts to explain the unity of a whole in terms of a multiplicity of interacting parts, quantum mechanics calls for an explanatory concept that proceeds in the opposite direction: from unity to multiplicity. Being part of the Scientific Image of the world, the theory concerns the process by which (the physical aspect of) what Sellars called the Manifest Image of the world comes into being. This process consists in the progressive differentiation of an intrinsically undifferentiated entity. By entering (...) into reflexive spatial relations, this entity gives rise to (i) what looks like a multiplicity of relata if the reflexive quality of the relations is not taken into account, and (ii) what looks like a substantial expanse if the spatial quality of the relations is reified. If there is a distinctly quantum domain, it is a non-spatial and non-temporal dimension across which the transition from the unity of this entity to the multiplicity of the world takes place. Instead of being constituents of the physical world, subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules are instrumental in its manifestation. These conclusions are based on the following interpretive principle and its more direct consequences: whenever the calculation of probabilities calls for the addition of amplitudes, the distinctions we make between the alternatives lack objective reality. Applied to alternatives involving distinctions between regions of space, this principle implies that, owing to the indefiniteness of positions, the spatiotemporal differentiation of the physical world is incomplete: the existence of a real-valued spatiotemporal background is an unrealistic idealization. This guarantees the existence of observables whose values are real per se, as against “real by virtue of being indicated by the values of observables that are real per se.” Applied to alternatives involving distinctions between things, it implies that, intrinsically, all fundamental particles are numerically identical and thus identifiable with the aforementioned undifferentiated entity. (shrink)

I show how Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretation of classical mechanics. I argue that Hamilton’s metaphysics of causation was injected into his dynamics by way of a causal interpretation of force. I then detail how forces are indispensable to both Hamilton’s formulation of classical mechanics and what we now call Hamiltonian mechanics (i.e., the modern formulation). On this point, my efforts primarily consist of showing that the contemporary orthodox interpretation of potential energy is (...) the interpretation found in Hamilton’s work. Hamilton called the potential energy function the “force-function” because he believed that it represents forces at work in the world. Various non-historical arguments for this orthodox interpretation of potential energy are provided, and matters are concluded by showing that in classical Hamiltonian mechanics, facts about the potential energies of systems are grounded in facts about forces. Thus, if one can tolerate the view that forces are causes of motion, then Hamilton provides one with a road map for transporting causation into one of the most mathematically sophisticated formulations of classical mechanics, viz., Hamiltonian mechanics. (shrink)

Our point of departure is Russell’s (1913) argument for the ‘complete extrusion’ of the word ‘cause’ from the philosophical vocabulary. We argue that at least three different types of philosophical project concerning ‘cause’ should be carefully distinguished, and that failures to distinguish them lie at the root of some apparently recalcitrant problems. We call them the ‘cognitive’, the ‘scientific’ and the ‘metaphysical’.

In a series of articles, Paul Thagard has developed a connectionist''s modelfor the evaluation of explanatory coherence for competing systems ofhypotheses. He has successfully applied it to various examples from thehistory of science and common language reasoning. However, I will argue thathis formalism does not adequately represent explanatory relations betweenmore than two propositions.In this paper, I develop a generalization of Thagard''s approach. It is notsubject to the connectionist paradigm of neural nets, but is based on fuzzylogic: Explanatory coherence increases with (...) the fuzzy truth value of theconjunction of explanans and explanandum and decreases with the value of theconjunction of explanans and the negation of the explanandum. (shrink)

Philosophical work on explanation has focused on the following two topics: theories of explanation, intended to enumerate necessary and sufficient conditions for explanation, and inference to the best explanation as the strongest form of justification for ontological or metaphysical claims. I critically examine the most important philosophical work in both of these areas and defend my own conclusions about the connections between explanation and ontology. I argue that all of our inferences about the nature of the world, in ontology or (...) metaphysics, presuppose criteria for acceptable explanation. I first examine the metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, and Leibniz, arguing that their metaphysical reasoning was guided by assumptions about the nature of explanation. I also survey some recent work in ontology and find inference to the best explanation offered as the strongest available method of defending existence claims. To conclude this discussion, I offer an original argument for the thesis that all reasoning about existence claims, being nondeductive, presupposes some criteria for acceptable explanations, or a theory of explanation. Carl Hempel and Wesley Salmon have been two of the most influential philosophers offering theories of explanation, and I examine their work with the intention of discovering ontological or metaphysical assumptions shaping their theories of explanation. I argue that Hempel's theory rests on deterministic assumptions, and I argue the Salmon's theory of causality, which he admits supports his theory of explanation, is subject to empiricist criticisms. Theories of explanation typically rest on assumptions about the nature of the world, I argue, and I explain why this is so with an original theory of explanation connecting it to the psychological phenomenon of understanding. We rely on understanding in the identification of explanations, and understanding requires establishing a metaphysical context for an explanandum-event. I end by indicating the possibility of generating vicious justificatory circles through the reciprocal relationship of support between explanation and ontology, and I argue that vicious circles can be avoided only by grounding all ontological reasoning in a fundamental explanatory task of giving order to experience through a system of categories. (shrink)