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Resolving arguments by different conceptual traditions of realization

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Abstract

There is currently a significant amount of interest in understanding and developing theories of realization. Naturally arguments have arisen about the adequacy of some theories over others. Many of these arguments have a point. But some can be resolved by seeing that the theories of realization in question fall under different conceptual traditions with different but compatible goals. The arguments I will discuss fit a general pattern. A philosopher argues that one theory of realization is better than another because it provides a better explanation for a particular range of phenomena, say, accounting for common sense cases, or cases within the sciences, when in fact the theories in question are not genuine competitors. I will first describe three different conceptual traditions that are implicated by the arguments under discussion. I will then examine the arguments, from an older complaint by Norman Malcolm against a familiar functional theory to a recent argument by Thomas Polger against an assortment of theories that traffic in inherited causal powers, showing how they can be resolved by situating the theories under their respective conceptual traditions.

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Notes

  1. A reviewer asked whether the folk notion is intentional as I claim rather than a metaphysical notion whereby a person (such as an artist) makes some object real by using other objects. My view, more cautiously stated, is that the common folk notion is at least in part an intentional notion. This can be shown by certain kinds of cases, e.g., when an artist unintentionally produces an object that does not correspond to his or her idea (the artist accidentally knocks over some paint which makes a mess). Since the result is neither intended by the artist nor represented by the artist’s idea, it is not a ‘realization’ of the artist’s idea in the common sense of that term. Nevertheless, the common notion might involve an additional element of metaphysical production, which is illustrated by a remark from Leibniz that I quote three paragraphs hence about realized things that correspond to ideas in the imagination and are made by God. Leibniz’s remark is also relevant to another question the reviewer asks about whether mixed concepts of realization are more basic when compared to the unmixed versions that I describe under the semantic, mathematical, and metaphysical traditions. While mixed versions might be historically more basic—witness Leibniz’s early usage—the unmixed views are conceptually more basic by standing as simpler parts to more complex concepts.

  2. Leibniz adds that the usage is “barbaric but graphic” (loc. cit.). Why “barbaric”? Translators Daniel Garber and Roger Ariew state in a footnote that ‘realiso’ is corrupt Latin. I asked Doug Jesseph several years ago about the text, and he explained that the classical Latin ‘res’ had no verbal form, and that even the adjectival form was medieval in origin. Hence ‘realiso’ was a contrived verb that was convenient to express a thing’s being or becoming real.

  3. A reviewer asked why I omit arguments by Kim, Shoemaker, or Gillett. But, as far as I know, they do not provide clear and explicit arguments that can be resolved by appealing to different but compatible theoretical traditions. Consider Gillett’s (2002) worry over flat versus dimensioned theories of realization. Both types of theory fall under the metaphysical tradition, since they are both theories of determination meant to address the same philosophical problems, such as the mind–body problem. The theories differ primarily on the details about the determiner—is it a coincident object with a more basic property (a flat view) or the parts of an object with their more basic properties (a dimensioned view)? The choice is not between a theory of intentionality versus a theory of determination by more basic engineering, like the cases examined in the present paper. Parenthetically, I believe that flat and dimensioned functional theories are compatible, but not for the reasons given here. See Endicott (forthcoming).

  4. One might wonder why first-order functionalists get a pass, since their use of ‘realized’ also departs dramatically from the common language usage—one does not identify a man’s desire to see the Taj Mahal with his seeing the Taj Mahal!

  5. Here and elsewhere I define realization in terms of properties. Others define realization in terms of property instances. Some think this leads to conceptual tangles. See Polger and Shapiro (2008). But I think definitions can be formulated either way, with the proper auxiliary assumption that allows the concept of realization to range over multiple categories. See Endicott (2010).

  6. Polger makes it clear that his argument concerns the relationship with machine abstracta: “There is a well-known ambiguity in familiar explications of Turing machines, between abstract and physical machines… Here I am focusing on abstract computational functions, as will be clear from my examples” (ibid., p. 240, fn. 12).

  7. This is only a basic idea of part-whole realization because, pace Gillett, it contains no reference to a complex aggregate of the parts that is coincident with x and no reference to complex structural property or organizational feature that could be identified as a role-player G for F. Gillett defines dimensioned realization in terms of property instances: “Property/relation instance(s) P 1 − P n realize an instance of a property F, in an individual s, if and only if s has powers that are individuative of an instance of F in virtue of the powers contributed by P 1 − P n to s or s’s constituent(s), but not vice versa” (2002, p. 322, with a change in the variables).

  8. So Burks and Wright used the term ‘represents’ as the converse of ‘realizes,’ saying that a logical net N “represents” a circuit C can be expressed alternatively as “C physically realizes N” (1953, p. 194). I add that, although machine functionalists used the idiom of realization in the stated intentional way, it does not follow that they were unconcerned with metaphysical goals and theories. Rather, they expressed them in a different way. In Fodor’s case, for example, his theory of functional decomposition was a dimensioned theory in the metaphysical tradition, as I explain toward the end of Sect. 4.

  9. I do not believe this is an adequate account of the satisfaction conditions for a machine-table description, only that it approximates the once traditional view. For some added conditions, see Lycan (1987) and Chalmers (1994).

  10. The point remains the same if one replaces the mereological dimensions of part-whole determination with the kind of facts described by a flat causal theory wherein the same object s has a realizing property G that contributes all the causal powers possessed by its realized property F (that is, if one replaces “s’s parts have basic properties P 1 − P n ” with “s has G” in Fig. 3).

  11. Polger credits the objection to Chase Wrenn, Jose Luis Bermudez, and several anonymous referees. For the distinction between abstract and concrete programs, or external versus encoded programs, see Newell and Simon (1972, p. 33) and Weizenbaum (1976, p. 111). Polger adds that even if the computational case fails to establish the conclusion about noncausal realization, there are other examples that do not trade on any ambiguity between abstract versus physical machines. I will return to that issue in the final section when I address the scope of my proposal.

  12. Interpreting Polger’s argument in this way requires that the original premise (ii) be modified to read: “(ii*) But the symbolic properties of a physical machine are not individuated by causal powers inherited from the physical properties of its physical components,” with the remaining premises and conclusion revised accordingly. To anticipate, defenders of causal theories should reject (ii*), as long as the symbolic properties are construed in terms of the syntax of a physical machine. The semantics is once again a matter for a theory of intentionality in the representational tradition.

  13. Polger quotes the more detailed passage below, but the moral is the same:

    We may think of the button-pressing sequences as arguments to a function g that gives display states as values. An adding machine satisfies g; that is, the arguments and values of g are literally states of the physical system. Addition, as was remarked above, relates numbers, not physical states of some machine, so a physical system cannot literally satisfy the plus function. What an adding machine does is instantiate the plus function. It instantiates addition by satisfying the function g whose arguments and values represent arguments and values of the addition function, or in other words, have those arguments and values as interpretations (Cummins, loc. cit.).

    Call this “instantiation by interpretation”: addition is instantiated in this intentional sense when the physical machine satisfies the function g in the Fregean sense that its physical symbols are arguments and values of g and when those arguments and values are interpreted as numbers. Note that this does not make the computed function g an abstract object, like the numbers and the plus function. Physical things can be treated as functions too. E.g., the biological process of generation can be treated as a function that takes parents as arguments and yields offspring as values.

  14. Anthony and Levine report: “Now back in the 1960s, we thought we had all this straightened out. The trick was going to be to treat psychological properties as ‘higher-order’ properties ‘realized’ by physical properties. A higher-order property is a property you have to have in virtue of having some other property that meets certain specifications” (1997, p. 85).

  15. To substantiate this claim, consider: (DR) a property F is realized by a property G if and only if there is an object x that instantiates F and G, F is a determinable, and G is one of its determinates. Yablo explains the kind of determination in question: “G determines F iff: for a thing to be G is for it to be F, not simpliciter, but in a specific way” (ibid., p. 252, with a slight change in the variables). He thus offers the following principle as a partial analysis: “G determines F only if: (i) necessarily, for all x, if x has G then x has F; and (ii) possibly, for some x, x has F but lacks G” (loc. cit.). Clause (i) is a straightforward one-way conditional law of the kind found in the metaphysical literature on realization. Now compare subset realization, which can be defined as follows: (SR) a property F is realized by a property G if and only if there is an object x that instantiates F and G, and the causal powers of F are a proper subset of the causal powers of G. This also implies the same kind of property determination, at least with the appropriate background assumptions about the connection between causal powers and laws. Specifically, if properties are necessarily connected to their associated powers, the powers of G contain the powers of F across all metaphysically possible worlds and the one-way conditional law expressed by Yablo’s clause (i) is true with metaphysical necessity. If properties are contingently connected to their powers, the powers of G contain the powers F across the pertinent nomologically possible worlds and the same one-way conditional law expressed by Yablo’s clause (i) is true with nomological necessity.

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Acknowledgments

I have benefited from several discussions, some that trace back several years. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Carl Gillett, Jaegwon Kim, William Lycan, Brian McLaughlin, Thomas Polger, John Post, and an anonymous reviewer.

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Endicott, R. Resolving arguments by different conceptual traditions of realization. Philos Stud 159, 41–59 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9686-x

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