reprinted as 'Can We Know the Nature of Reality As It Is In Itself' in Galen Strawson, Real Materialism, 2008: Many hold that it is impossible in principle for finite creatures like ourselves to know anything of the nature of non-mental concrete reality as it is in itself, even if we can be said to know the nature of the qualitative character of our own experiences (as it is in itself) just in having them. I argue that there is no (...) insuperable obstacle to knowledge of the nature of non-mental concrete reality as it is in itself, even if we have very little as a matter of fact. (shrink)

Dispositionalism is the view that the world is, ultimately, just a world of objects and their irreducible dispositions, and that such dispositions are, ultimately, the sole explanatory ground for the occurrence of events. This view is motivated, partly, by arguing that it affords, while non‐necessitarian views of laws of nature do not afford, an adequate account of our intuitions about which regularities are non‐accidental. I, however, argue that dispositionalism cannot adequately account for our intuitions about which regularities are non‐accidental. Further, (...) I argue that, intuitions aside, if we suppose that our world contains objects along with their irreducible dispositions, we must suppose, on pain of logical incoherence, that it contains laws of nature that are incompatible with a dispositionalist ontology. Indeed, if we suppose a world of objects and irreducible dispositions, we will have to suppose that the most prominent views of laws of nature currently on offer are all inadequate. (shrink)

Defending or attacking either functionalism or computationalism requires clarity on what they amount to and what evidence counts for or against them. My goal here is not to evaluate their plausibility. My goal is to formulate them and their relationship clearly enough that we can determine which type of evidence is relevant to them. I aim to dispel some sources of confusion that surround functionalism and computationalism, recruit recent philosophical work on mechanisms and computation to shed light on them, and (...) clarify how functionalism and computationalism may or may not legitimately come together. (shrink)

: ‘Sortalism about demonstrative reference’ is the view that the capacity to refer to things demonstratively rests on the capacity to classify them according to their kinds. This paper argues for one form of sortalism. Section 1 distinguishes two sortalist views. Section 2 argues that one of them is false. Section 3 argues that the other is true. Section 4 uses the argument from Section 3 to develop a new response to the objection to sortalism from examples where we seem (...) to succeed in referring even though we get sortal classification wrong, or do not attempt to classify at all. (shrink)

Our topic is the ontology and persistence conditions of material objects. One widely held doctrine is that identity-over-time has causal commitments. Another is that identity-over-time is just identity as it relates one object that exists at two times. We believe that a tension exists between these two apparently sensible positions: very roughly, if identity is the primary conceptual component of identity-over-time and—as is plausible—identity is noncausal, then the conceptual origins of the causal commitments of identity-over-time become a mystery. We will (...) begin by formulating the two widely held doctrines and our puzzle more fully and more carefully. Then, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to analyzing views one might adopt that could minimize the tension. (shrink)

It has been argued that most truths about macroscopic states of affairs are entailed by a (hypothetical) complete descriptionPof the world in microscopic terms. In principle, micro-reductive explanations of non-microphysical truths could be constructeda priori.Against this claim, I show that reductive explanation requires knowledge about the phenomena to be reduced which cannot bea prioriextracted from microphysical information alone. Such reductions proceed in two steps: a “reductionR0” (“role-occupant”) establishes that a macroproperty M plays a certain causal role (specified in macro-terms), while (...) a “reductionMM” (“micro-macro”) establishes that some microproperty gives rise toM. (shrink)

Since the late 1980’s Kim has presented some major reasons to abandon SC. In MIAPW at least four of these reasons are offered: under SC we lose mental causation, mental realism and psychological explanations. Moreover, supervenience cannot do the job as the cementing relation in SC.

[1] To know who one is, and also know whether one's experiences really belong to oneself, do not normally present any problem. It nevertheless happens that people do not recognise themselves as they walk by a mirror or do not understand that they fit some particular description. But there are situations in which it really seems impossible to be wrong about oneself. Of that, Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote: " It is possible that, say in an accident, I should feel pain (...) in my arm, see a broken arm at my side, and think it is mine, when really it is my neighbour's. And I could, looking into a mirror, mistake a bump on his forehead for one on mine. On the other hand there is no question of recognising a person when I say I have toothache.... it is as impossible that in making the statement "I have toothache" I should have mistaken another person for myself, as it is to moan with pain by mistake, having mistaken someone else for me. " In the passage in which this remark is found, Wittgenstein distinguishes between two kinds of use of "I". The first use, as object, as in "I have broken my arm" or "The wind is blowing in my hair", he holds, involves the recognition of a particular person, and there is the possibility of error as concerns the identity of the person. In the other use, as subject, as in "I think it will rain" or "I am trying to lift my arm", no person is recognised. No mistake can be made about who the subject is. (shrink)

Does memory only preserve epistemic justification over time, or can memory also generate it? I argue that memory can generate justification based on a certain conception of mnemonic content. According to it, our memories represent themselves as originating on past perceptions of objective facts. If this conception of mnemonic content is correct, what we may believe on the basis of memory always includes something that we were not in a position to believe before we utilised that capacity. For that reason, (...) memory can produce justification for belief through the process of remembering. This is why a subject may be justified in believing a proposition on the basis of memory even if, in the past, she was not justified in believing it through any other source. The resulting picture of memory is a picture wherein the epistemically generative role of memory turns out to be grounded on its intentionally generative role. (shrink)

David Brink has recently argued for the “parity” of ethics and the sciences. While the parity claim alone might be metaphysically neutral, Brink favours a form of ethical naturalism on which moral properties “are” natural properties, just as non-moral macrophysical properties “are” the microphysical states that compose them. Brink supports this claim by showing that both types of properties share certain important features: specifically, that both may be constituted, supervening and synthetically necessitated. I shall argue that notwithstanding these common features, (...) there remain significant modal differences in the way the two types of properties are assigned to the world. These differences represent an important respect in which moral properties are not on par with their scientific counterparts. (shrink)

To prove the equivalence one must start with one side, and the earlier-later side seems, for starting with, logically the clearer. The equivalence is provable on reasonable definitions of ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ in terms of the earlier-later structure of time. McTaggart's attempted distinction between the past-present-future A series and the earlier-later B series, as though they were rivals for the structure of time, is based on an unexamined, and false, assumption. The equivalence shows they are not rivals; they are (...) quite consistent with each other. A very serious consequence is that all subsequent argument, from the A side or the B, however sophisticated, is flawed to the extent that it accepts McTaggart's false distinction. (shrink)

This paper proposes a critical examination of the wholism that Cartwright contemplates. The first part spells out the consequences of this position – notably our principled ignorance of nature as a whole. The second part considers that physical theory which is widely claimed to exhibit some sort of wholism, namely quantum physics. I sketch a wholistic model of quantum physics and compare this model to the wholism that Cartwright considers. The result is that – contrary to what Cartwright suggests – (...) we do not have to see ourselves as being ignorant of nature as such and our scientific view of nature can be quite systematic instead of being a patchwork. Finally, Cartwright’s wholism is confronted with confirmation wholism and semantic wholism. The result is again that these sorts of wholism speak against a patchwork view of our knowledge. (shrink)