<body class="blog" onload="">

Ratiocination

Global Supervenience: A Fly in the Ointment?


I've been working on supervenience issues in philosophy of mind, and a family of arguments to the conclusion that, given classical theism, the physical supervenes on the mental.

Specifically, the supervenience I'm after is of the strong global variety: for any worlds w1 and w2, every mental-preserving isomorphism between w1 and w2 is a physical-preserving isomorphism between w1 and w2. (Think of an isomorphism as a function or mapping of properties from individuals at a world to their images in some other world).

Here's an objection I'm up against (the case was suggested in class by Graham Leach-Krouse):

Suppose that in w, God creates a blue monster (and nothing more), and in w*, God creates a red monster (and nothing more). In w, God infuses the blue monster with the mental properties that God has in w* and in w*, infuses the red monster with the mental properties he has in w. With this exception: for every new mental property (a belief, say) the blue monster has about ’blue monster,’ God replaces with a mental property about ’red monster.’ God does the same for the red monster, replacing each of her mental properties about ’red monster’ with a belief about ’blue monster.’ On first glance, it appears that w and w* are mentally indiscernible. That is, there is a mental-preserving isomorphismbetween w and w* (that is, from the blue monster onto God in w* and from the red monster onto God in w). But this is not a physical preserving isomorphism; God has no physical properties in w or w*, and the monster in w is blue (a physical property), while the monster in w* is red (a physical property). So it is not the case that every mental-preserving isomorphism between w and w* is a physical-preserving isomorphism.

I'm tempted to respond to the case in the following way: on classical theism, it’s plausible to think that many of God’s mental properties are such that only he has them. Here are some candidates: God’s considering all the real numbers at once, God’s maximal love for his creation, the qualitative state of necessary existence (that is, what it is like to necessarily exist), and, for that matter, the qualitative state of divinity (that is, what it is like to be God). Thus, w and w* as we have tried to describe them, are metaphysically impossible on classical theism. The case is no threat to my argument.

Physical Properties and Closure


I've been thinking about physical and mental properties lately. It's hard to be sure about many things when it comes to them. There are puzzling cases that aren't obviously physical properties, mental properties, neither, or both. But here's one result I'm reasonably sure of: the set of physical properties is not closed under negation. It this were not so, physicalism comes out as true far too easily.

Here's why. Suppose that something is physical iff it exhibits a physical property. If the set of physical properties is closed under negation and'being a rock' is a physical property, so is 'not being a rock.' But everything except the rocks (lamps, Cartesian egos, plants, abstract objects, humans, angels, God, etc) has the property of 'not being a rock.' So everything that isn't a rock has a physical property. But this result quite straightforwardly entails physicalism--everything is physical.

Something went wrong in the above reasoning, and I think it is the closure assumption. There are at least two ways to reject this assumption. First, there might be no negative properties at all. Second, complements of physical properties might be properties, but not physical properties. Either of these fixes suffices to solve the puzzle.

I note that taking this route does not entail that the set of physical properties is not closed under other Boolean operations. We might still think that conjunction, for example, preserve physical-property-hood without ceding that the same holds for negation.

The Supervenience of the Physical on the Mental


In this short paper, I inquire whether the physicalist or the classical theist is committed to the supervenience of the physical on the mental. My conclusions are mildly interesting: physicalism (with some extra assumptions) entails the strong individual supervenience of the physical on the mental, while classical theism entails the global, but not individual, supervenience of the physical on the mental.

These thoughts largely follow those offered in class by Al Plantinga. He also suggested another (more interesting) set of arguments toward the supervenience of the physical on the mental, which I will be working on in coming weeks. But in the meantime, I've now got a LaTeX template (used to make the paper) that I'm happy with and am becoming more proficient in doing symbols in LaTeX and using the markup language.

Good Point


Even assuming that there are negative properties, the fact is that we do not standardly count cats as having geological properties because they are neither ignaceous, sedimentary, nor metamorphic.

McLaughlin, Brian, Bennett, Karen, "Supervenience", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

A Causal Argument for Physicalism


David Papineau defends a causal argument for physicalism (see Papineau, David (2001). "The Rise of Physicalism." in Physicalism and its Discontents (Carl Gillett and Barry Loewer, eds.): 3-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.):

COMPLETENESS. All physical effects are fully determined by law by prior physical occurrences.
CAUSAL INFLUENCE. All mental occurrences have physical effects.
NO UNIVERSAL OVERDETERMINATION. The physical effects of mental causes are not all overdetermined.
CONCLUSION. Mental occurrences must be identical with physical occurrences

I suggest that CAUSAL INFLUENCE is false. And rephrasing the premise to accommodate my objection will not do, for the causal argument will no longer entail physicalism.

There's something surely correct about the spirit of CAUSAL INFLUENCE. Mental causation happens; there are mental occurrences that cause physical occurrences. My suggestion that CAUSAL INFLUENCE is false preys on the universality of the claim, however; I think we have good reason to think that there are mental occurrences without physical effects.

Consider a purely qualitative mental occurrence like having an itch. S has an itch, and does nothing about it; S does not even form the belief that S has an itch, S does not think about the itch, and so forth. It is plausible to think that the itch is intimately related to some physical occurrence; but we would be presupposing physicalism to assume that the itch consists in or is identical to a physical occurrence. Add now to our story that S's itch in fact has no effects at all, and hence no physical effects. The itch stands at the end of a causal chain.

Is this story really so odd? It doesn't seem so to me. And if something like this story is actual, then the universal claim expressed in CAUSAL INFLUENCE is false. Note that epiphenomenalism need not be true for my story to be actual (contra Papineau). I need only the plausible idea that there are some mental occurrences without physical effects.

Revising CAUSAL INFLUENCE and the conclusion of the causal argument to accommodate the case, we are left with something like this:

COMPLETENESS. All physical effects are fully determined by law by prior physical occurrences.
(REVISED) CAUSAL INFLUENCE. Some (nearly all) mental occurrences have physical effects.
NO UNIVERSAL OVERDETERMINATION. The physical effects of mental causes are not all overdetermined.
(REVISED) CONCLUSION. Mental occurrences with physical effects are identical with physical occurrences

Papineau notes that the modest formulation of physicalism he favors claims only that everything that interacts causally with the physical world is physical. If causal interaction with the physical world means `being a relatum in a causal relation along with some physical occurrence' then REVISED CONCLUSION does not entail Papineau's modest formulation of physicalism, for there might still be mental occurrences that are the effects of physical occurrences but not causes of physical occurrences. More importantly, notice that REVISED CONCLUSION does not preclude the existence of epiphenomenal ghosts (those ghosts that do not causally interact with the physical world in the above sense).

Jaegwon Kim's latest work commits him to the possibility of dangling epiphenomena, qualitative states outside the physical domain without any physical effects. This is odd enough for a physicalist. But taking the causal argument as sound and its REVISED CONCLUSION as a statement of physicalism, we face a stranger problem still: that physicalism might be true at a world in which there are epiphenomenal ghosts.

One might be a physicalist and adopt any from a range of views about the strength of the modal connection between the physical and mental. Physicalism might even allow the truth of panpsychism. But I take it that no physicalism worthy of the name allows for ghosts. I thus suggest that REVISED CONCLUSION is not physicalism; it is not even something near enough.

Logic Homework


I just spent several hours writing up a proof that every member of specified set of formulas contains an even number of Bs. This was an improvement on proving that for any well-formed-formula of SL+, there are an equal number of left-hand and right-hand parentheses.

But not by much.

There is a pleasure in this sort of rote work. It is satisfying to sense that I'm finally learning logic in a real and systematic way. These bits of knowledge and skill will prove useful as I continue to study philosophy. I remind myself of this with each homework problem in logic.

It helps.

Heartwarming


It warmed my heart to see that an article on Hilary Putnam was featured today on the front page of Wikipedia. Screen snapshot.

Graduate School


One of the most pleasant things I've found in my (albeit brief) grad school experience is the sense of freedom I have to pursue my philosophical interests. I enjoy sitting down with a paper or a book and knowing, I'm getting paid to do this. "Philosophy" no longer gets in the way of "work" or "work" in the way of "philosophy." The two are now identical. Put more concretely: I've had a "To Read" folder stuffed with papers for years now. It's always been full, and always getting fuller. But as of late the turnover rate for papers in that folder has increased dramatically, and all this without any guilt (as opposed to those times when I've procrastinated by reading philosophy).

This is perhaps the best reason I can think of to be an academic. Learning, understanding, knowing, I take these to be ends in themselves. And there are few other walks of life that let one chase these ends with so little interruption.

Persistence Through Time, and Across Possible Worlds


I want this book. It's a shame that it can't be had for less than a hundred bucks. Luckily, the library should be able to take care of this situation soon.

Theological Determinism (Part II)


Part I of this post can be found here.

Suppose FA is sound and theological determinism is true at W. W might still be a world at which there are only a few causal relations or causal relations that do not necessitate their effects (probability raisers, say), or even no causal relations at all.

Now consider the standard toolbox of incompatibilist arguments. W is a world at which one could run the Consequence Argument (the sort of determinism at W is vulnerable to this strategem). And the moral responsibility versions of the Consequence Argument will succeed at W too; that is, they'll be no more or less sound than they are at worlds where less exotic varieties of causal determinism obtain.

But W is not a world at which one could run any of the standard arguments for source incompatibilism with respect to moral responsibility and determinism. I'm thinking of those arguments that make use of a First Cause Principle (FCP) like 'S is morally responsible for e only if S is the first cause of e.' Notice that at W, a completely deterministic world, some subject might still be the first cause p in all the relevant senses. Pace the source incompatibilists, at least some forms of determinism are perfectly compossible even a robust formulation of FCP.

This is a discovery worth noting, I think, if only because of the direction many incompatibilists are moving in. Here's my quick story about the relevant literature: a traditional two-step argument for the incompatibilism of moral responsibility and determinism ('the Standard Argument') made use of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP). But PAP became suspect on the basis of Frankfurt-Style Cases cases, and the Direct Argument took center stage since it did not employ PAP or anything like PAP. But the Direct Argument, too, came under fire due to Frankfurt-Style Cases.

Now, it's not uncommon for philosophers to deny both PAP and the soundness of the Direct Argument while still insisting on incompatibilism with respect to moral responsibility and determinism. There are powerful intuitions supporting incompatibilism, we are told, and resting these intuitions in PAP was a mistake. But there is an alternative, for FCP better encodes these intuitions than PAP. And FCP can drive an argument for incompatibilism with respect to garden-variety causal determinism and moral responsibility.

It further seems to me that some of these source incompatibilists (eg, David Hunt, Kevin Timpe, Eleanore Stump, etc.) are also uniquely worried about the possibility of theological determinism. This is the sort of determinism they think might obtain, for all they know.

That's a mouthfull. The idea I'm trying to get across is that there's a growing crowd of folk who, so far as I can tell, espouse incompatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism largely on the basis of arguments employing FCP; but such arguments are not sound when the determinism in question is of the theological variety I've discussed. So the determinism that might obtain, for all they know, is not all that scary after all.

Jackson on Possible Worlds


"To refuse to use the possible-worlds way of looking at the issues we will be concerned with because of the ontological mysteries raised by possible worlds would, it seems to me, be not that different from refusing to count one's change at the supermarket because of the ontological mysteries raised by numbers."

-Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis, Oxford/Clarendon: 1998, p.13