In Mumford’s Dispositions, the reader will find an extended treatment of the recent debate about dispositions from Ryle and Geach to the present. Along the way, Mumford presents his own views on several key points, though we found the book much more thorough in its assessment of opposing views than in the development of a positive account. As we’ll try to make clear, some of the ideas endorsed in Dispositions are certainly worth pursuing; others are not. Following Mackie, Shoemaker, and (...) others,1 Mumford stresses that it’s one thing to distinguish between dispositional and categorical ascriptions and quite another to draw an ontological line between dispositional and categorical properties. The book itself can be divided roughly into those chapters that deal with the relationship between dispositional ascriptions and corresponding conditionals (like ‘is fragile’ and ‘would break if struck’); and those chapters that deal with the relationship between dispositions and their categorical bases (like fragility and having internal structure XYZ). We shall examine each cluster of issues in turn. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the content of the causal proportionality constraint. It investigates two general versions of the constraint, namely “horizontal” and “vertical” proportionality. Moreover, it discusses whether proportionality is considered an ontic or an epistemic, i.e. explanatory, constraint on causation in the context of some of the most prominent theories of causation. The following main claims are defended: (1) The horizontal (HP) and the vertical version (VP) of the proportionality constraint are logically independent. (2) HP is implied by (...) some prominent theories of causation, not by others. (3) None of the discussed popular theories of causation contradicts either HP or VP. (4) HP and VP are not ontic or epistemic principles as such; rather, whether they are ontic or epistemic depends on the theories chosen plus background assumptions about the existence of higher-level causes and their non-identity to lower-level ones. (shrink)

This paper develops two ideas with respect to dispositional properties: (1) Adapting a suggestion of Sungho Choi, it appears the conceptual distinction between dispositional and categorical properties can be drawn in terms of susceptibility to finks and antidotes. Dispositional, but not categorical properties, are not susceptible to intrinsic finks, nor are they remediable by intrinsic antidotes. (2) If correct, this suggests the possibility that some dispositions—those which lack any causal basis—may be insusceptible to any fink or antidote. Since finks and (...) antidotes are a major obstacle to a conditional analysis of dispositions, these dispositions that are unfinkable may be successfully analysed by the conditional analysis of dispositions. This result is of importance for those who think that the fundamental properties might be dispositions which lack any distinct causal basis, because it suggests that these properties, if they exist, can be analysed by simple conditionals and that they will not be subject to ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

Saying so can make it so, J. L. Austin taught us long ago. Famously, John Searle has developed this Austinian insight in an account of the construction of institutional reality. Searle maintains that so-called Status Function Declarations, allegedly having a “double direction of fit”, synchronically create worldly institutional facts, corresponding to the propositional content of the declarations. I argue that Searle’s account of the making of institutional reality is in tension with the special theory of relativity—irrespective of whether the account (...) is interpreted as involving causal generation or non-causal grounding of worldly institutional facts—and should be replaced by a more modest theory which interprets the results of Status Function Declarations in terms of mere Cambridge change and institutional truth. I end the paper by indicating the import of this more modest theory for theorizing about the causal potency of institutional phenomena generated by declarations. (shrink)

Setting off from a familiar distinction in the philosophy of properties, this paper introduces a tripartite distinction between sparse causation, abundant causation and mere abundant causation. It is argued that the contrast between sparse and mere abundant causation allows us to resolve notorious philosophical issues having to do with negative causation, causation involving institutional properties and physical macro-causation in a way that is unified, intuitive and in line with scientific doctrines and practices.

I argue that Mumford and Anjum’s recent theory of simultaneous causation among powerful meso-level objects is problematic in several respects: it is based on a false dichotomy, it is incompatible with standard meso-level physics, it is explanatory deficient, and it threatens to render the powers metaphysics incoherent. Powers theorists are advised, therefore, to adopt a purely sequential conception of causation.

Over the last few decades, philosophers and social scientists have applied the so-called powers ontology to the social domain. I argue that this application is highly problematic: many of the alleged powers in the social realm violate the intrinsicality condition, and those that can be coherently taken to be intrinsic to their bearers are arguably causally redundant. I end the paper by offering a diagnosis of why philosophers and social scientists have been tempted to think that there are powers in (...) social realm. (shrink)

Necessitarian accounts of the laws of nature meet an apparent difficulty: for them, counterlegal conditionals, despite appearing to be substantive, seem to come out as vacuous. I argue that the necessitarian may use the presuppositions of counterlegal discourse to explain this. If the typical presupposition that necessitarianism is false is made explicit in counterlegal utterances, we obtain sentences such as 'If it turns out that the laws of nature are contingent, then if the laws had been otherwise, then such and (...) such would have been the case', which are non-vacuous and very often true. This goes a long way towards resolving the difficulty for necessitarianism. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that properties play causal roles: they capture the causal powers of things. But do properties have their causal roles essentially? David Lewis did not think so. He adhered to the doctrine of quidditism, namely the doctrine that the identity of properties is primitive and that they can trade their causal roles. Quidditism is controversial. But Lewis did not see why he should want to reject it. He knew that he could avoid quidditism on the cheap by (...) treating individuals and properties alike in rejecting transworld multilocation of properties and endorsing a counterpart theory for properties. But he did not see why he should want to do so. In this article, I argue that Lewis should have wanted to endorse a counterpart theory for properties in order to reject quidditism. My argument concerns resemblance relations among properties. Another constitutive role of properties is that they capture objective resemblances between their instances. The premises of my argument are intuitive claims about resemblances among some properties that Lewis held on Humean grounds. (shrink)

This paper argues that Dummett’s interpretation of the relationship between Frege’s anti-psychologism and Wittgenstein’s doctrine that meaning is use results in a misreading of Frege. It points out that anti-mentalism is a form of anti-psychologism, but that mentalism is not the only version of psycholgism. Thus, while Frege and Wittgenstein are united in their opposition to mentalism, they are not equally opposed to psychologism, and from Frege’s point of view, the doctrine that meaning is use could also imply a version (...) of psychologism. It then offers a realist and externalist reading of Frege’s understanding of concepts, which is more in line with what Frege intended by anti-psychologism. (shrink)

Risk is an ubiquitous entity in the biomedical domain. Thus, a coherent ontological characterization of risk, which can be used by informatical tools named "applied ontologies", is necessary to help with the exchange and the collection of data for clinical and research uses. We analyze some definitions of risk and draw two general characteristics that risks and dispositions share. We thus suggest that a risk is a disposition which has an undesirable realization for an agent. This definition conciliates the objective (...) dimension and the subjective dimension of risk : a risk exist independantly of our knowledge about it, but the status of risk of a given disposition for an agent depends of the preferences of this agent. (shrink)

The metaphysics of powers (Shoemaker, 1980; Mumford, 2004; Marmodoro, 2009; Heil, 2012 among many others) is a promising conceptual framework that has been successfully put to use in many philosophical and scientific domains, but surprisingly its potential applications in the contemporary philosophy of mind are still under-investigated. This thematic issue aims to show that power ontology has implications concerning major questions in the contemporary philosophy of mind, such as: what is the metaphysical relationship between consciousness and the physical? Are phenomenal (...) properties reducible to physical properties, fundamental, or emergent? How are we to explain notions such as belief, agency, and free will? (shrink)

In recent years Jaegwon Kim has offered an argument – the ‘supervenience argument’ – to show that supervenient mental properties, construed as second- order properties distinct from their first-order realizers, do not have causal powers of their own. In response, several philosophers have argued that if Kim’s argument is sound, it generalizes in such a way as to condemn to causal impotency all properties above the level of basic physics. This paper discusses Kim’s supervenience argument in the context of his (...) reply to this so-called ‘generalization argument’. In particular, the paper focuses on the level/order distinction, to which Kim appeals in his reply to the generalization argument, and on the relation between this distinction and two varieties of functionalism, ‘realizer’ vs. ‘role’ functionalism. The author argues that a proper analysis of the notions of levels and orders undermines Kim’s response to the generalization argument, and suggests that Kim’s reductionist strategy for vindicating the causal powers of mental properties is better served if mental properties are construed as first-order properties, as realizer-functionalism recommends. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue in favor of necessitarianism, the view that dispositions, when stimulated, necessitate their manifestations. After introducing and clarifying what necessitarianism does and does not amount to, I provide reasons to support the view that dispositions once stimulated necessitate their manifestations according to the stimulating conditions and the relevant properties at stake. In this framework, I will propose a principle of causal relevance and some conditions for the possibility of interference that allow us to avoid the use (...) of ceteris paribus clauses. I then defend necessitarianism from recent attacks raised by, among others, Mumford and Anjum, noting that the antecedent strengthening test is a test for causal relevance that raises no difficulties for necessitarianism. (shrink)

According to non-reductive physicalism, mental properties of the phenomenal sort are essentially different from physical properties, and cannot be reduced to them. This being a quarrel about properties, I draw on the categorical / dispositional distinction to discuss this non-reductive claim. Typically, non-reductionism entails a categorical view of phenomenal properties. Contrary to this, I will argue that phenomenal properties, usually characterized by what it is like to have them, are mainly the manifestation of dispositional properties. This paper is thus divided (...) into two parts. In the first part, after tracing a working distinction between categorical and dispositional properties, I argue that there is a form of incoherence looming behind the idea of taking phenomenal properties as categorical. In the second part, I argue in favor of the view that phenomenal properties are dispositional properties with an essential manifestation. This interpretation allows us to broaden dispositionalism so as to include the sciences of mind, thus ultimately favoring a physicalist view on the mind. (shrink)

An electron clearly has the property of having a charge of þ1.6 10 19 coulombs, but does it also have the property of being charged ? Philosophers have worried whether so-called ‘determinable’ predicates, such as ‘is charged’, actually refer to determinable properties in the way they are happy to say that determinate predicates, such as ‘has a charge of þ1.6 10 19 coulombs’, refer to determinate properties. The distinction between determinates and determinables is itself fairly new, dating only to its (...) definition by the Cambridge logician W. E. Johnson early in the last century.1 But despite its newly minted condition the distinction has found little currency in on-going philosophical debates. Or at least until recently. Renewed interest in realist positions about properties, and arguments that the determinable-determinate relation may hold the key to understanding mental causation, have thrust Johnson’s distinction to the fore. With this new attention has also come new ‘optimistic’ positions that endorse the existence of determinable properties. David Armstrong, Evan Fales, and Sydney Shoemaker, among others, have all defended such optimistic accounts that take determinable predicates, such as ‘is charged’, to refer to determinable properties.2 In this paper, our goal is to carefully assess optimism and to argue that a pessimistic view, which rejects the existence of determinable properties, is actually the appropriate default position. (shrink)

Samuel Alexander was one of the foremost philosophical figures of his day and has been argued by John Passmore to be one of ‘fathers’ of Australian philosophy as well as a novel kind of physicalist. Yet Alexander is now relatively neglected, his role in the genesis of Australian philosophy if far from widely accepted and the standard interpretation takes him to be an anti-physicalist. In this paper, I carefully examine these issues and show that Alexander has been badly, although understandably, (...) misjudged by most of his contemporary critics and interpreters. Most importantly, I show that Alexander offers an ingenious, and highly original, version of physicalism at the heart of which is a strikingly different view of the nature of the microphysical properties and associated view of emergent properties. My final conclusion will be that Passmore is correct in his claims both that Alexander is significant as one of the grandfather’s of Australian philosophy and that he provides a novel physicalist position. I will also suggest that Alexander’s emergentism is important for addressing the so-called ‘problem of mental causation’ presently dogging contemporary non-reductive physicalists. (shrink)

Understanding the 'making-up' relations, to put things neutrally, posited in mechanistic explanations the sciences is finally an explicit topic of debate amongst philosophers of science. In particular, there is now lively debate over the nature of the so-called 'realization' relations between properties posited in such explanations. Despite criticism (Gillett, Analysis 62: 316-323, 2002a), the most common approach continues to be that of applying machinery developed in the philosophy of mind to scientific concepts in what is known as the 'Flat' or (...) 'Subset' model of 'realization' (Kim, Mind in a physical world, 1998; Shapiro, J Philos XCVII: 635-654, 2000; Clapp, J Philos XCVIII: 111-136,2001 ; Wilson, Philos Stud 145: 149-169,2009). My primary goal in this paper is to show in still more detail that the Subset model of realization is inadequate for the descriptive task of describing the 'making-up' relations posited between properties or their instances in mechanistic explanations in the higher sciences. And my secondary goal is to highlight why this critique of the Subset view as a first-order descriptive account also shows there are deep difficulties in using the Subset account to address second-order issues in the philosophy of science as well. (shrink)

By quantifying over properties we cannot create new properties any more than by quantifying over individuals we can create new individuals. Someone murdered Jones, and the murderer is either Smith or Jones or Wang. That “someone,” who murdered Jones, is not a person in addition to Smith, Jones, and Wang, and it would be absurd to posit a disjunctive person, Smith‐or‐Jones‐or‐Wang, with whom to identify the murderer. The same goes for second‐order properties and their realizers. (Kim 1997a, 201).

Inter-level mechanistic explanations in the sciences have long been a focus of philosophical interest, but attention has recently turned to the compositional character of these explanations which work by explaining higher level entities, whether processes, individuals or properties, using the lower level entities they take to compose them. However, we still have no theoretical account of the constitution or parthood relations between individuals deployed in such explanations, nor any accounts of multiple constitution. My primary focus in this paper is to (...) outline a positive account of the constitution/part-whole relations between individuals posited in inter-level mechanistic explanations that takes constituents in the sciences to be ‘working parts’. Using this account, I then go on to illuminate the nature, and varieties, of multiple constitution that we find in the sciences and provide a starting theoretical framework for multiple constitution as well. (shrink)

The neuroscience revolution has led many scientists to posit “expansive” or “thinking” brains that instantiate rich psychological properties. As a result, some scientists now even claim you are identical to such a brain. However, Eric Olson has offered new arguments that thinking brains cannot exist due to their intuitively “abominable” implications. After situating the commitment to thinking brains in the wider scientific discussions in which they are posited, I then critically assess Olson's arguments against such entities. Although highlighting an important (...) insight, I show that Olson's objections to the existence of thinking brains fail and that a wider discussion engaging our new empirical findings is actually required in order to resolve the deeper issues. (shrink)

Causal essentialists hold that a property essentially bears its causal and nomic relations. Further, as many causal essentialists have noted, the main motivations for causal essentialism also motivate holding that properties are individuated in terms of their causal and nomic relations. This amounts to a kind of identity of indiscernibles thesis; properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations are identical. This can be compared with the more well-known identity of indiscernibles thesis, according to which particulars (...) that are qualitatively indiscernible are identical. Robert Adams has developed a well-known objection to this thesis by considering a series of possibilities involving nearly qualitatively indiscernible particulars that naturally leads to a possibility involving qualitatively indiscernible particulars. I argue that we can construct parallel cases involving a series of possibilities involving properties that are nearly indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations that naturally lead to possibilities involving properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations. The same features that make Adams’ argument forceful also carry over to my cases, giving us a powerful objection to the causal essentialist identity of indiscernibles thesis. (shrink)

I examine different strategies involved in stating anti-theistic arguments from natural evil, and consider some theistic replies. There are, traditionally, two main types of arguments from natural evil: those that purport to deduce a contradiction between the existence of natural evil and the existence of God, and those that claim that the existence of certain types or quantities of natural evil significantly lowers the probability that theism is true. After considering peripheral replies, I state four prominent theistic rebutting strategies: skeptical (...) theism; Richard Swinburne's view that moral knowledge entails natural evil; the soul-making theodicy; and the natural law theodicy. (shrink)

Tropes, as distinguished from other possible kinds of entities such as universals, states of affairs, events and bare particulars, are best-suited to play the role of causal relata.

Although many philosophers think backwards causation possible, puzzles arise when we consider worlds containing both backwards causal chains and agents capable of intervening in, and initiating, such chains. In these worlds, agents have the power to bilk, that is, the power to prevent an event from occurring which, had it occurred, would have been the cause of an earlier event. I argue, appealing to Max Black’s example and one other, that this power is absurd and hence that there are no (...) worlds containing both agents and manipulable backwards causal chains. (shrink)

Beyond Vision: Philosophical Essays By O’CallaghanCaseyOxford University Press, 2017. xii + 204 pp.

Fodor argue that Darwinism cannot be true on the grounds that there are no laws of selection to support counterfactuals about why traits are selected-for. Darwinian explanations, according to this objection, amount to mere ‘plausible historical narratives’. I argue that the objection is predicated on two problematic assumptions: A nomic-subsumption account of causation and causal explanation, and a fine-grained view of the individuation of selected-for effects. Against the former, I argue that Darwinian explanations are a historical species of mechanistic explanation (...) and that mechanisms are causally productive and counterfactual supporting in the absence of appropriate laws. Once this mechanistic framework is in place, the demand for laws of selection vanishes and the historical cum causal coherence of Darwinism is restored. As for the second assumption, I argue that it is an artefact of the teleosemantic program with no basis in evolutionary biology and that properly understood, Darwinian evolutionary biology shows just why teleosemantics cannot succeed. (shrink)

A crucial question for libertarians about free will and moral responsibility concerns how their accounts secure more control than compatibilism. This problem is particularly exasperating for event-causal libertarianism, as it seems that the only difference between these accounts and compatibilism is that the former require indeterminism. But how can indeterminism, a mere negative condition, enhance control? This worry has led many to conclude that the only viable form of libertarianism is agent-causal libertarianism. In this paper I show that this conclusion (...) is premature. I explain how event-causal libertarianism secures more control than compatibilism by offering a novel argument for incompatibilism. Part of the reason my solution has gone unnoticed is that it is often mistakenly assumed that an agent's control is wholly exhausted by the agent's powers and abilities. I argue, however, that control is constituted not just by what we have the ability to do, but also by what we have the opportunity to do. And it is by furnishing agents with new opportunities that event-causal libertarianism secures enhanced control. In order to defend this claim, I provide an analysis of opportunities and construct a novel incompatibilist argument to show that the opportunity to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker’s causal theory of properties is an important starting place for some contemporary metaphysical perspectives concerning the nature of properties. In this paper, I discuss the causal and intrinsic criteria that Shoemaker stipulates for the identity of genuine properties and relations, and address George Molnar’s criticism that holding both criteria presents an unbridgeable hypothesis in the causal theory of properties. The causal criterion requires that properties and relations contribute to the causal powers of objects if they are to be (...) deemed genuine rather than ‘mere-Cambridge’. The intrinsic criterion requires that all genuine properties and relations be intrinsic. Molnar’s S-property argument says that these criteria conflict if one considers extrinsic spatiotemporal properties and relations to contribute causally. In this paper, I argue that a solution to the contradiction that Molnar identifies involves a denial of discreteness between objects, leading to a power holist perspective and a resulting deflationary account of intrinsicality. (shrink)

Whilst the concept of causal powers is central to much post-positivist social science in general, and to critical realism in particular, it has not been significantly developed by critical realists since the initial work of Harré and Madden and Bhaskar in the mid-1970s. To deepen our understanding of powers we need to start with a ‘package’ of related terms. In §1 of the paper I introduce this package, clear up some terminological ambiguity and inconsistency, and focus the discussion upon things, (...) properties and powers. The real problems begin when we try to figure out how things, properties and powers relate to one another. In §2 I introduce and evaluate three possible ontologies: an ontology where powers are primary; an ontology where properties are primary; and an ontology where neither properties, powers are primary, but all emerge to form a unity. The last ontology is defended. §3 deals with ambiguities surrounding three other terms that often crop up when discussing powers, namely, dispositional properties, transfactuals and processes. The net result is a far less ambiguous concept of powers, firmly anchored in an ontology of things, properties and powers as a unity. (shrink)

Hempel first introduced the paradox of confirmation in (Hempel 1937). Since then, a very extensive literature on the paradox has evolved (Vranas 2004). Much of this literature can be seen as responding to Hempel’s subsequent discussions and analyses of the paradox in (Hempel 1945). Recently, it was noted that Hempel’s intuitive (and plausible) resolution of the paradox was inconsistent with his official theory of confirmation (Fitelson & Hawthorne 2006). In this article, we will try to explain how this inconsistency affects (...) the historical dialectic about the paradox and how it illuminates the nature of confirmation. In the end, we will argue that Hempel’s intuitions about the paradox of confirmation were (basically) correct, and that it is his theory that should be rejected, in favor of a (broadly) Bayesian account of confirmation. (shrink)

A number of authors have suggested that a conditional analysis of dispositions must take roughly the following form: Thing X is disposed to produce response R to stimulus S just in case, if X were exposed to S and surrounding circumstances were auspicious, then X would produce R. The great challenge is cashing out the relevant notion of ‘auspicious circumstances’. I give a general argument which entails that all existing conditional analyses fail, and that there is no satisfactory way to (...) define ‘auspicious circumstances’ just in terms of S, R, and X. Instead, I argue that the auspicious circumstances C for the manifestation of a disposition constitute a third irreducible element of that disposition, and that to pick out (or to ‘individuate’) that disposition one must specify C along with S and R. This enables a new conditional analysis of dispositions that gives intuitively satisfying answers in cases that pose problems for other approaches. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two issues related to ontological emergence: whether it is a coherent notion, and its relation to the doctrine of physicalism. First, it is argued that ontological emergence is best understood as a thesis relying on three fundamental tenets claiming that emergents are basic, genuinely causal, and determined by the physical realm. The paper elucidates the roles of these tenets, and introduces an interpretation that is able to resolve any apparent contradiction between the tenets, thereby supporting the (...) claim that the commitments of ontological emergence form a consistent view. The proposed understanding also hints that telling physicalism and emergentism apart is not a problem even if one subscribes to a supervenience-based formulation of physicalism. The difference in the modal strength of the supervenience relation physicalism and emergentism endorse readily distinguishes them – the former is committed to metaphysical determination whereas the latter to nomological determination. However, in a recent paper, Jessica Wilson has posed an objection to this way of differentiating physicalism from emergentism on the ground that the metaphysical/nomological distinction cannot be drawn in this context. The second part of this paper introduces Wilson's objection, and argues in detail that it fails to disqualify the modal strength-based distinction. (shrink)

Objects have dispositions. As Nelson Goodman put it, “a thing is full of threats and promises”. But sometimes those threats go unfulfilled, and the promises unkept. Sometimes the dispositions of objects fail to manifest themselves, even when their conditions of manifestation obtain. Pieces of wood, disposed to burn when heated, do not burn when heated in a vacuum chamber. And pastries, disposed to go bad when left lying around too long, won’t do so if coated with lacquer and put on (...) display in a baker ’s window. Any account of what a disposition is, or of what it takes for an object to have a disposition, should be compatible with these commonplace observations. To date, I believe, no adequate account of dispositions has been given, and the aim of this paper is to defend one. (shrink)

This article investigates the causal efficacy of social properties, which faces the following puzzle. First, for both intuitive and scientific reasons, it seems social properties have causal import. But, second, social properties are also characteristically extrinsic: to have some social property depends, in typical cases, on what one’s society is like around them. And, third, there is good reason to doubt that extrinsic properties make a genuine causal contribution. After elaborating on these three claims, I defend the following resolution to (...) the puzzle: social causation occurs at the level at which social properties are intrinsic. (shrink)

The paper sets out a new strategy for theory reduction by means of functional sub-types. This strategy is intended to get around the multiple realization objection. We use Kim's argument for token identity (ontological reductionism) based on the causal exclusion problem as starting point. We then extend ontological reductionism to epistemological reductionism (theory reduction). We show how one can distinguish within any functional type between functional sub-types. Each of these sub-types is coextensive with one type of realizer. By this means, (...) a conservative theory reduction is in principle possible, despite multiple realization. We link this account with Nagelian reduction, as well as with Kim's functional reduction. (shrink)

The paper argues for four claims: (1) The problem of mental causation and the argument for its solution in terms of the identity of mental with physical causes are independent of the theory of causation one favours. (2) If one considers our experience of agency as described by folk psychology to be veridical, one is committed to an anti-Humean metaphysics of causation in terms of powers that establish necessary connections. The same goes for functional properties in general. (3) A metaphysics (...) of causation in terms of powers is compatible with physics. (4) If combined with the argument for mental causes being identical with physical causes, that metaphysics leads to a conservative reductionism. (shrink)

This paper points out the merit of Nagelian reduction, namely to propose a model of inter-theoretic reduction that retains the scientific quality of the reduced theory and the merit of functional reduction, namely to take multiple realization into account and to offer reductive explanations. By considering Lewis and Kim’s proposal for local reductions, we establish that functional reduction fails to achieve a theory reduction and cannot retain the scientific quality of the reduced theory. We improve on that proposal by showing (...) how one can build functional sub-types that are coextensive with physical realizer types and thereby obtain a theory reduction that is explanatory and that vindicates the scientific quality of the special sciences. (shrink)

Ontic structural realism is the view that structures are what is real in the first place in the domain of fundamental physics. The structures are usually conceived as including a primitive modality. However, it has not been spelled out as yet what exactly that modality amounts to. This paper proposes to fill this lacuna by arguing that the fundamental physical structures possess a causal essence, being powers. Applying the debate about causal vs categorical properties in analytic metaphysics to ontic structural (...) realism, I show that the standard argument against categorical and for causal properties holds for structures as well. Structural realism, as a position in the metaphysics of science that is a form of scientific realism, is committed to causal structures. The metaphysics of causal structures is supported by physics, and it can provide for a complete and coherent view of the world that includes all domains of empirical science. (shrink)

The paper argues in favour of a causal-functional theory of all properties including the physical ones and a conception of properties as tropes or modes in the sense of particular ways that objects are. It shows how these premises open up a version of functionalism according to which the properties on which the special sciences focus are identical with configurations of physical properties and thereby causally efficacious without there being any threat of eliminativism.

Recently the functional model of reduction has become something like the standard model of reduction in philosophy of mind. In this paper, I argue that the functional model fails as an account of reduction due to problems related to three key concepts: functionalization, realization and causation. I further argue that if we try to revise the model in order to make it more coherent and scientifically plausible, the result is merely a simplified version of what in philosophy of science is (...) known as mechanistic explanation. Hence, instead of analyzing reduction in philosophy of mind in terms of functional reduction, it should be analyzed in terms of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

This essay outlines an explanatory virtue of presentism: its unique ability amongst temporal metaphysics to deliver a partial explanation of the conservational character of natural laws. That explanation relies on presentism, uniquely amongst temporal metaphysics, being able to support an endurantist account of persistence. In particular, after reconsidering a former argument for endurantism entailing presentism by Merricks, a new argument for this entailment, is expounded. Before delivering the explanation of the conservational character of natural laws, a brief account of that (...) explanandum is given, followed by an elaboration of the wider significance of an explanation for the conservational character for natural laws, particularly for the dispositional essentialist project of nomic reductionism, and explaining the non-simultaneity of causation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to motivate a view on dispositions according to which dispositions and their manifestations are partially identical, the DM identity theory. It sets out by extrapolating the desiderata of a dispositionalist account of properties. It then shows that the previous theories are burdened with different problems, whose common cause, so the argument goes, is the separation assumption, which almost all share. It states that dispositions and their manifestations are numerically distinct. The paper then explores whether (...) the separation assumption can be abandoned and shows that there are precursors of a DM identity theory. The DM identity theory is then outlined in its central features and it is outlined how they can fulfil the desiderata of dispositionalism. (shrink)

I resolve an argument over “flat” versus “dimensioned” theories of realization. The theories concern, in part, whether realized and realizing properties are instantiated by the same individual (the flat theory) or different individuals in a part-whole relationship (the dimensioned theory). Carl Gillett has argued that the two views conflict, and that flat theories should be rejected on grounds that they fail to capture scientific cases involving a dimensioned relation between individuals and their constituent parts. I argue on the contrary that (...) the two types of theory complement one another, even on the same range of scientific cases. I illustrate the point with two popular functionalist versions of flat and dimensioned positions – causal-role functionalism and a functional analysis by decomposition – that combine into a larger picture I call “comprehensive functional realization.” I also respond to some possible objections to this synthesis of functionalist views. (shrink)

I use Carl Gillett’s much heralded dimensioned theory of realization as a platform to develop a plausible part–whole theory. I begin with some basic desiderata for a theory of realization that its key terms should be defined and that it should be explanatory. I then argue that Gillett’s original theory violates these conditions because its explanatory force rests upon an unspecified “in virtue of” relation. I then examine Gillett’s later version that appeals instead to theoretical terms tied to “mechanisms.” Yet (...) I argue that it too violates the desiderata, since it defines realization for mechanisms in terms of two undefined ideas whose explanatory credentials have not been established—“implementation” and “grounds.” Thus I drop those ideas in favor of an explicit constraint that the parts and properties provide a mechanistic explanation. I also distinguish a special mechanistic theory from a preferred general theory that incorporates other kinds of part–whole explanations that target causal powers or capacities. The result is a theory that has the explanatory virtues of mechanistic theories as well as a broader scope desired by Gillett. I also compare the result to a similar idea from Robert Cummins that has been neglected in recent discussions of realization, namely, his general property analysis rather than his functional analysis. Finally, I defend the preferred general theory against possible objections that attempt to show a conflict between metaphysical demands on a theory of realization versus facts about good scientific explanation. (shrink)