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A DEFENSE of NON-REDUCTIVE PHYSICALISM a Dissertation A DEFENSE OF NON-REDUCTIVE PHYSICALISM A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Matthew Christian Haug May 2007 © 2007 Matthew Christian Haug A DEFENSE OF NON-REDUCTIVE PHYSICALISM Matthew Christian Haug, Ph. D. Cornell University 2007 I develop a novel formulation of, and argument for, non-reductive physicalism – roughly, the view that mental properties are natural properties that are realized by, but not identical to, neural and other low-level physical properties. Non-reductive physicalism has long been the dominant view in the philosophy of mind but has recently been challenged from two main directions. The first type of attack, the causal exclusion problem, points out an apparent inconsistency in non-reductive physicalism. The second type of attack focuses on the multiple realizability of mental properties: questioning either its prevalence or its efficacy in blocking reduction. In response to the exclusion problem, I first argue that one of the claims used to formulate the problem, the completeness of physics, has two parts and that there is no single domain of physical entities that is the smallest domain of which both parts are true. The conflation of these two parts has made it appear that non-reductive physicalism is inconsistent. I then show how to use the two completeness claims as part of an argument for a form of physicalism that need not be reductive. In response to the second type of attack, I provide a novel basis for the irreducibility of mental properties. I argue that irreducibility is ultimately grounded in relations between mechanisms, of which multiple realizability is merely one facet. The other facet, multiple determinativity – in which a single physical property realizes several different kinds of high-level properties – is equally effective at blocking property reduction. Thus, even if the doubts about the multiple realizability of mental properties (and its efficacy in blocking reduction) were sound, this would not undermine non-reductive physicalism. Another virtue of this framework is that it provides an adequate metaphysical basis for some of non-reductive physicalism’s explanatory claims – e.g., that high-level explanations are sometimes deeper and theoretically more fecund than low-level physical explanations. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Matthew Christian Haug was born in Topeka, Kansas on March 10, 1978, to Melissa Gail Haug and John Alfred Haug, Jr. He attended public schools in the Shawnee Heights school district and graduated from the University of Kansas in May 2000 with a B.A. in philosophy and a B.S. in mathematics. While spending a year “off” taking more philosophy classes and working part-time at the KU Center for Research, he applied for several fellowships and to graduate school in philosophy. He moved to Ithaca, New York in the autumn of 2001. While not reading and writing about philosophy, he enjoyed hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing in the hills and glens of upstate New York. He earned a M.A. in philosophy in 2004 and will be Assistant Professor of philosophy at the College of William and Mary in the fall of 2007. iii For Laurelin iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to the members of the Sage School of Philosophy, past and present, for showing me how to do philosophy, both by their example and through their instruction and conversation. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the members of my special committee – Dick Boyd, Mike Fara, Sydney Shoemaker, and Nick Sturgeon – for their guidance and for their penetrating comments on drafts of these chapters. Special thanks go to Dick, the chair of my committee, for many illuminating conversations (and many cups of coffee). Thanks also to my fellow graduate students for discussions of matters philosophical and otherwise. I am especially grateful to Andrew Alwood, Emily Esch, Eric Gilbertson, Eric Hiddleston, Paul Kelleher, Anne Nester, Raul Saucedo, and Peter Sutton for helpful conversations about topics that appear in this dissertation (in one form or another). I am also grateful to Gregory Janssen, Christine Porter, and Helen Steward, for comments on earlier versions of some of this material at conferences (the 2004 meeting of the Creighton Club, the 2005 University of Washington Graduate Student Conference, and the 2005 Oxford Philosophy Graduate Conference, respectively). This material is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Thanks also to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Graduate School at Cornell University, and the Sage School of Philosophy for fellowship support. Thanks to the staff at the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, Mojave National Preserve, California, for an idyllic environment in which to write and think. Finally, thanks to Laurelin Evanhoe for the opportunity to philosophize, botanize, and do ecology in the desert, and for so much more. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch………………………………………………………………... iii Dedication………………………………………………………………………….. iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………… v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………... vi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………… vii Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………….… 1 Chapter 2: The Causal Exclusion Problem and Hempel’s Dilemma……………… 28 Chapter 3: A Causal Argument for Physicalism and the Distinction between Reductive and Non-Reductive Physicalism………………………………………... 73 Chapter 4: Varieties of Realization………………………………………………... 102 Chapter 5: Realization, the Determinate/Determinable Relation, and Mechanisms 138 Chapter 6: Multiple Realizability, Multiple Determinativity, and Irreducibility….. 165 References………………………………………………………………………….. 203 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: How Determinables Are Micro-realized by States of Affairs…………… 132 Figure 2: Multiply Determinable and Multiply Determinative Properties ………... 152 Figure 3: Schematic of Sustaining and Integrative Mechanisms…………………... 157 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Non-reductive physicalism has long been the consensus view about the metaphysics of mind and of the special sciences. As a version of physicalism, it maintains, roughly, that all empirical entities are physical and that all empirical properties supervene on or are realized by physical properties. However, what is distinctive about non-reductive physicalism is the claim that physicalism is compatible with the causal efficacy of irreducible special science properties. For example, non- reductive physicalists claim that mental properties are distinct from microphysical, neurological or biochemical properties while remaining causally efficacious. In general, non-reductive physicalists claim that some perfectly natural properties are not fundamental physical properties, i.e., not properties invoked by a theory of fundamental physical reality. In the past decade or so, the non-reductive physicalist consensus has been attacked by two related lines of argument: (1) the causal exclusion problem, according to which it is inconsistent to hold that mental properties are causally efficacious and irreducible to physical properties while at the same time maintaining that the physical domain is causally complete and that mental events do not causally overdetermine physical effects, and (2) doubts regarding realization’s and multiple realizability’s efficacy in arguments for non-reductive physicalism. This second line of argument takes a variety of forms. Some philosophers allege that an adequate account of the realization relation leads to the conclusion that the multiple realizability argument for irreducibility fails – that realization directly provides for a form of reduction (e.g. Kim (1998, 377)). Others have challenged the assumption that all disjunctive properties are unnatural and suggested that a multiple realized property can be reduced to the 1 disjunction of its possible (non-disjunctive) realizers (e.g. Clapp (2001)). Still others have reexamined what is required for substantive multiple realization and go on to raise doubts about whether mental properties meet these requirements (e.g. Shapiro (2000, 2004), Bechtel and Mundale (1999)). In this dissertation I respond to these two lines of argument and provide a novel grounding for non-reductive physicalism. In the process I clarify the nature of the debate between reductive and non-reductive physicalists and correct some mistaken assumptions made by both sides of that debate. Consequently, my reformulation of non-reductive physicalism does not fit nicely into the current typology of positions. I present an account of realization that utilizes the notion of a causal process or mechanism and argue that this mechanistic framework for realization allows us to see why, contra consensus, multiple realizability is not the sole basis for irreducibility (and explicates some puzzling passages from two of the architects of the non-reductive physicalist consensus that seem to suggest this). Multiple realizability is a special case of the true ground of irreducibility: a mismatch between mechanisms involving (families of) realizing properties and realized properties. While “trivial” multiple realizability (which does not involve different mechanisms and in which the differences in the realizers are irrelevant to the instantiation
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