Physicalism and Its Discontents Edited by CARL GILLETT Illinois Wesleyan University BARRY LOEWER Rutgers University PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 2001 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2001 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Times Roman 10/12 pt. System QuarkXPress [BTS] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Physicalism and its discontents / edited by Carl Gillett, Barry Loewer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: The rise of physicalism / David Papineau – From physics to physicalism / Barry Loewer – Sufficiency claims and physicalism, a formulation / D. Gene Witmer – Realization and mental causation / Sydney Shoemaker – Physicalism and psychology, a plea for a substantive philosophy of mind / Georges Rey – Davidson and non-reductive materialism, a tale of two cultures / Howard Robinson – Substance physicalism / Noa Latham – Possibility, physical and metaphysical / Stephen Leeds – The roots of reductionism / Scott Sturgeon – The significance of emergence / Tim Crane – The methodological role of physicalism, a minimal skepticism / Carl Gillett – Physicalism, empiricism, and positivism / Gary Gates – Mental causation and consciousness, the two mind-body problems for the physicalist / Jaegwon Kim – How not to solve the mind- body problem / Colin McGinn – Deconstructing New Wave materialism / Terence Horgan and John Tienson – In defence of New Wave materialism, a response to Horgan and Tienson / Brian McLaughlin – Physicalism unfalsified, Chalmer’s inconclusive conceivability argument / Andrew Melnyk. 1. Materialism. 2. Philosophy of mind. I. Gillett, Carl, 1967– II. Loewer, Barry. B825 .P49 2001 146¢.3–dc21 00-065155 ISBN 0 521 80175 3 hardback Contents Contributors page vii Preface ix Part I Physicalism 1 The Rise of Physicalism 3 david papineau 2 From Physics to Physicalism 37 barry loewer 3 Sufficiency Claims and Physicalism: A Formulation 57 d. gene witmer 4 Realization and Mental Causation 74 sydney shoemaker 5 Physicalism and Psychology: A Plea for a Substantive Philosophy of Mind 99 georges rey 6 Davidson and Nonreductive Materialism: A Tale of Two Cultures 129 howard robinson 7 Substance Physicalism 152 noa latham 8 Possibility: Physical and Metaphysical 172 stephen leeds Part II Physicalist Discontents 9 The Roots of Reductionism 197 scott sturgeon 10 The Significance of Emergence 207 tim crane 11 The Methodological Role of Physicalism: A Minimal Skepticism 225 carl gillett 12 Physicalism, Empiricism, and Positivism 251 gary gates vi Contents Part III Physicalism and Consciousness: A Continuing Dialectic Arguments for Pessimism 13 Mental Causation and Consciousness: The Two Mind- Body Problems for the Physicalist 271 jaegwon kim 14 How Not to Solve the Mind-Body Problem 284 colin mcginn 15 Deconstructing New Wave Materialism 307 terence horgan and john tienson Optimistic Rejoinders 16 In Defense of New Wave Materialism: A Response to Horgan and Tienson 319 brian p. mclaughlin 17 Physicalism Unfalsified: Chalmers’s Inconclusive Conceivability Argument 331 andrew melnyk References 350 Index 367 1 The Rise of Physicalism DAVID PAPINEAU No one could seriously, rationally suppose that the existence of antibiotics or electric lights or rockets to the moon disproves... mind-body dualism. Stephen R.L. Clark (1996) Introduction In this chapter I want to discuss the way in which physical science has come to claim a particular kind of hegemony over other subjects in the second half of this century. This claim to hegemony is generally known by the name of physicalism. In this chapter I shall try to understand why this doctrine has come to prominence in recent decades. By placing this doctrine in a historical context, we will be better able to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses. As a preliminary, note that contemporary physicalism is an ontologi- cal rather than a methodological doctrine. It claims that everything1 is physically constituted, not that everything should be studied by the methods used in physical science. This emphasis on ontology rather than methodology marks a striking contrast with the ‘unity of science’ doc- trines prevalent among logical positivists in the first half of the century. The logical positivists were much exercised by the question of whether the different branches of science, from physics to psychology, should all use the same method of controlled observation and systematic gen- eralization. They paid little or no attention to the question of whether everything is made of the same physical stuff. By contrast, physicalism, as it is understood today, has no direct methodological implications. Some physicalists uphold the view that all sciences should use the “positivist” methods of observation and gener- alization. But as many would deny this. You can be a physicalist about biology, say, and yet deny that biology is concerned with laws, or a physicalist about sociology, and yet insist that sociology should use the method of empathetic verstehen rather than third-person observation. 4 david papineau This methodological liberalism goes with the fact that the ontological claims of fin-de-siècle physicalism are often carefully nuanced. If physi- calism simply meant type-type physical reduction, of the kind classically characterized in Ernst Nagel’s The Structure of Science (1961), then methodological unity of science would arguably follow, in principle at least, from physicalism. But physicalism today clothes itself in various subtler shades. We have physical supervenience, physical realization, token-token physical identity, and so on. These more sophisticated doctrines leave plenty of room for different sciences to be studied in different ways. But I am already drifting away from the main subject of this chapter. My concern here is not to distinguish the different species of physical- ism, though I shall touch on this in passing later, but to try to understand the reasons for physicalism of any kind. Why have so many analytic philosophers in the second half of the twentieth century suddenly become persuaded that everything is physical? Fashions and Arguments It certainly wasn’t always so. Perhaps the easiest way to highlight the recent shift in thinking about physicalism is to recall a once-heated mid-century debate about the status of psychological explanation. In contemporary terms, this debate was about the scientificity of ‘folk psychology.’ On the one side were those, like Carl Hempel and A.J.Ayer, who argued that ‘reasons are causes.’ By this they meant that psycho- logical explanations are underpinned by empirical generalizations, implicit in everyday thought, which link psychological states such as belief and desire to subsequent behavior. Opposed to Hempel and Ayer were thinkers such as William Dray, and Peter Winch, who argued that the links between reason and action are “logical” or “meaningful,” not empirical (Hempel [1942]; Ayer [1969]; Dray [1957]; Winch [1958]). In one respect this old debate is still up to date. It concerned the question of whether everyday psychological thinking is suitable for incorporation in a scientific psychology – whether folk psychology is a ‘proto-science,’ as it is sometimes put – and this question is still very much a live issue. But at another level the old debate is now quite outmoded. This is because the participants in the old debate showed little or no interest in the question of how the mind relates to the brain. They wanted to know whether there are testable, empirical laws linking mental states to behavior. But they seemed to see no connection between this issue and the question of the relation of mental states to brain states. The Rise of Physicalism 5 Nowadays, by contrast, everybody has a view on this latter question. Indeed nearly all analytic philosophers in this area, including those who side with Dray and Winch against the scientificity of commonsense psy- chology,now accept that the mind is in some way constitutively connected with the brain. (Thus consider Donald Davidson. He is the modern cham- pion of the Dray-Winch view that the explanatory links between reason and action are a sui generis matter of rational understanding, not scien- tific law. Yet he made his name by arguing that, even so, ‘reasons are causes.’ In effect, his contribution was to show how the Dray-Winch methodological denial of psychological laws could be combined with a physicalist commitment to mind-brain constitution (Davidson [1963]).) This transformation of the old ‘reasons and causes’ debate happened very quickly. Until the 1950s the issue was purely about lawlike patterns. The issue of mind-brain identity was not on the agenda. Then suddenly, in the 1950s and 1960s, a whole stream of philosophers came out in favor of physicalism. First there were Herbert Feigl and the Australian central state materialists,