DOCSLIB.ORG

Extended Identities the Reducibility of Non-Categorical Properties and Their Bearers

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Extended Identities the Reducibility of Non-Categorical Properties and Their Bearers http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/ Research Commons at the University of Waikato Copyright Statement: The digital copy of this thesis is protected by the Copyright Act 1994 (New Zealand). The thesis may be consulted by you, provided you comply with the provisions of the Act and the following conditions of use: Any use you make of these documents or images must be for research or private study purposes only, and you may not make them available to any other person. Authors control the copyright of their thesis. You will recognise the author’s right to be identified as the author of the thesis, and due acknowledgement will be made to the author where appropriate. You will obtain the author’s permission before publishing any material from the thesis. Extended Identities The Reducibility of Non-categorical Properties and their Bearers A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy at The University of Waikato by Paul Donald Charles Hubble 2020 Abstract When we take apart big or complicated things—whether events, processes, systems, objects or states—we find smaller or simpler things. Still, some who purport that everything is physical also want to deny that complicated things are sets of simpler things, their relations, and interactions. But that view leads to some confounding puzzles. By contrast, I defend the view that complicated things are nothing over and above simpler things, their relations, and interactions. The latter are all physical and located in space and time, and so are complicated things, like minds and people, and other things defined by what they could or would do. That includes corkscrews and water soluble things. However, the complicated properties of these complicated things show that, very often, these things are either not quite what we think they are, or they are not wholly where we think they are. Sometimes things aren’t what we thought. There is no lumniferous aether or phlogiston. But often, complicated things elude identification with their sets of simpler things, relations and interactions, not because they don’t belong in predictively successful models of our world, but because they aren’t wholly where we tend to look. Their boundaries are wider and untidy. As it happens, our minds are like that, and so are we. Finally, the fact that the extended identity of things like us comes as a surprise means our self-engineering could be more self-aware, and should be more self-reflective. Acknowledgements For their curiosity, insight and encouragement, I thank all my teachers. At Ryerson University, I especially thank Don Snyder, Elizabeth Trott, Glenn Parsons, and John Caruana. At the Institute for Christian Studies, I especially thank Ron Kuipers and Lambert Zuidervaart. For their tremendous and instrumental work throughout, I thank my su- pervisors, Justine Kingsbury, Dan Weijers, and Nick Munn. It has been a pleasure to work with such a team. I owe a special thanks to Justine, whose guiding wisdom and generosity with time and encouragement I cannot begin to measure. For their effort and input, I thank Joe Ulatowski, and my examiners, Douglas Campbell and Rob Wilson. For financial support, I thank the University of Waikato. For their love and patient support, I thank my friends and family, but especially my wife, Fiona. Scholarship is a truly communal effort. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 We Are What We Make? . .1 1.2 Thesis Outline . .3 2 The Difficulties with Extended Minds 11 2.1 The First Battle Line . 13 2.2 The Varieties of Externalism . 23 2.3 The Second Battle Line . 27 3 Concepts of Dependence 39 3.1 Synchronic Dependence Relations Sketched . 40 3.2 Bennett’s Resemblance Class of Building Relations . 45 3.3 Rebuilding . 48 4 Puzzles of Synchronic Dependence 63 4.1 Molecules and Minds . 65 4.2 Antireductionism and its Discontents . 66 4.3 A Recipe for Problems . 70 4.4 Prospects for Grounding and Just Enough Determination . 74 5 Antireductionism and Multiple Realizability 83 5.1 The Argument for Antireductionism from Multiple Realizability 85 5.2 A Dilemma for Multiple Realizability, and its First Horn . 88 5.3 The Second Horn and Similarity . 102 6 Similarity and Reduction 112 6.1 Accounting for Similarity . 113 6.2 Variation and Reduction . 122 6.3 Variation and Kind Identity . 126 7 Sloppy Sufficiency and Restricted Constitutionalism 138 7.1 Avoiding Overdetermination . 140 7.2 The Sufficiency Error . 148 iv 7.3 The Ubiquity of the Sufficiency Error . 155 8 Causal and Synchronic Dependence 162 8.1 Causal Taint . 164 8.2 A Plurality of Building Relations . 172 8.3 Parsimony Versus Pluralism . 179 9 The Identity of Synchronic Dependence Relations 184 9.1 Characterizing Dependence Relation Monism . 186 9.2 An Objection from Failed Asymmetry . 188 9.3 An Objection from Failed Extensionality . 196 9.4 An Objection from Differing Relata . 200 10 The Metaphysics of Extended Minds 211 10.1 Revisiting the Unrestricted Constitutionalism Premise . 213 10.2 Brains in Vats . 226 10.3 The Boundaries of the Paradigmatically Mental . 234 10.4 Biting a Little Bloat . 242 11 Core Selves, Dynamic Selves 246 11.1 Dynamic Selves . 248 11.2 Dynamic Bodies . 259 11.3 Shared Tissues and Humane Futures . 269 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 We Are What We Make? We call ourselves Homo sapiens sapiens. According to us, thinking, and the mind we credit with thinking, is our distinguishing feature. Art, technology and modern civilization are products of our special minds. These products are modifications of environments we usually consider external to our essential selves. We see ourselves moving freely through these environments as discrete individuals that take our minds with us wherever our brains go. In my view, however, that’s an incomplete concept of our minds and selves. As far as minds are like software, they do not run on brains alone, but on a broader suite of biological, technical, and social constituents. Our particular minds and selves are products of technology as much as they are producers of it. In fact, technologies are much more like tissues than they are like parts of the environment. I have explored this comparison elsewhere (Hubble, 2009), and will not elaborate much further on it here. But briefly, it should first be understood that technology includes not only those novelties the word popularly brings to mind, but also those ubiquitous, ancient and now-mundane materials of human life stretching back beyond memory from more recent mind-altering creations like steam engines, to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, to stone tools for making, controlling and feeding fires; from Calvin Klein to furs; from concrete to adobe; from Gutenberg to papyrus and clay; from the daguerreotype to the paintings at Chauvet. Considered broadly, technologies are like tissues in 2 that they are living investments. They are adaptive assets, metabolic capital, structures whose function is to contribute to human organisms’ homeostasis and reproduction. Life without technology is not an option for our species. As Barry Allen (2004) puts it, Strip [modern sapiens] of tools, artifacts, material culture, and the result is not a naked ape thrown back upon its animal nature. It is an ecologically nonviable entity rapidly heading for extinction. A sheltering fabric of artifacts is an existential presupposition of H. sapiens, as much as fresh water. (p. 207) Our extensive use of technologies is not just a side effect of an otherwise technology-free process of getting smarter. As Clark and Chalmers (1998) put it, It may be that the biological brain has in fact evolved and matured in ways which factor in the reliable presence of a manipulable external environment. It certainly seems that evolution has favoured onboard capacities which are especially geared to parasitizing the local environment so as to reduce memory load, and even to transform the nature of the computational problems themselves. (p. 11) Our present reliance on technology is but the deepest point we have yet reached in a channel that stretches back definitively through our ancestry. Predating our species, stone tools began a techno-biological arms race in which our species ultimately prevailed. In the course of hominin evolution, the brains that survived were ones well suited to such dynamic technological coupling. Our relatively static genome, rather than coding adaptations to the myriad vicissitudes of social and ecological environments, sows the seeds of a rich and flexible neural architecture that can plug into the whole memetically inherited cultural package, social and technical. In short, our brains have evolved in a technological body. That suggests our minds are technological, and that we ourselves are technological. We are partly what we make. We are Homo technologicus sapiens. As I see it, two concerns motivate this comparison of technology with tissue and ultimately understanding technologies as constitutive of human minds and selves. One is the age-old question of how apparently law-abiding material stuff 3 can be so arranged as to have a rich mental life that feels like it intervenes in otherwise deterministic causal chains. I will not be providing a complete answer to that question, but I do think that answering the question of what material stuff is arranged into rich mental lives will make the remaining problem less confusing than it has seemed. Technology, considered as tissue, helps begin to explain the features of our minds and our selves better than do brain-centric conceptions of minds. However, the ultimate motivation for the internalization of technology into our concepts of self is a larger ethical concern, to which I shall return in the final chapter. The concern arises from the observation that Western culture attempts to live out a confusing and damaging paradox.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Michael Jraven
    MICHAEL J RAVEN Department of Philosophy | University of Victoria P.O. BOX 1700 STN CSC | Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2 | CANADA [email protected] • raven.site RESEARCH INTERESTS metaphysics • ground; fundamentality; essence; social items; time; change language/mind • de re thought; mental states; aesthetic judgment epistemology • explanation; epistemic relativism ACADEMIC POSITIONS Professor, Philosophy, University of Victoria 2021— Affiliate Professor, Philosophy, University of Washington 2018— Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of Victoria 2013—2021 Visiting Scholar, Philosophy, University of Washington 2016-2017, 2012-2013 Assistant Professor, Philosophy, University of Victoria 2009-2013 Instructor, Philosophy, New York University 2008-2009 EDUCATION PHD, Philosophy, New York University 2009 [Kit Fine (chair), Ted Sider, Crispin Wright] MA, Philosophy, New York University 2007 [Ned Block (adviser) BA, Philosophy, Reed College 2002 [Mark Hinchliff (adviser)] GRANTS & FELLOWSHIPS Connection Grant ($15,640), Social Science & Humanities Research Council 2020 Humanities Faculty Fellowship (course release), University of Victoria 2020 Insight Grant ($152,589), Social Science & Humanities Research Council 2018-2022 [principal investigator: 2021-2022, collaborator: 2018-2020; co-applicant with Kathrin Koslicki] Connection Grant ($15,965), Social Science & Humanities Research Council 2018 Internal Research Grants ($29,428 total), University of Victoria 2010-2014,2016,2020 Conference Grant ($2000 - declined), Canadian Journal of Philosophy
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphysical Emergence: Weak and Strong∗
    Metaphysical Emergence: Weak and Strong∗ Jessica Wilsony Draft: September 1, 2014 Introduction Why care about what emergence is, and whether there is any? To start, many complex entities of our acquaintance|tornados, plants, people and the like|appear to be com- posed of less complex entities, and to have features which depend, one way or another, on features of their composing entities. Yet such complex entities also appear to be to some extent autonomous, both ontologically and causally, from the entities upon which they depend. Moreover, and more specifically, many `higher-level' entities (particulars, systems, processes) treated by the special sciences appear to be broadly synchronically dependent on `lower-level' (and ultimately fundamental physical) entities.1 Yet, as is sug- gested by the associated special science laws, many higher-level entities appear also to be ontologically and causally autonomous, in having features in virtue of which they are dis- tinct from and distinctively efficacious relative to the lower-level entities upon which they depend, even taking into account that the latter stand in configurational or aggregative relations. An account of emergence making sense of these appearances would vindicate and illuminate both our experience and the existence and tree-like structure of the spe- cial sciences, as treating distinctively real and efficacious higher-level entities and their features. Reflecting these motivations, nearly all accounts of emergence take this to involve both ∗Thanks to Benj Hellie, an anonymous referee for this collection, students in my seminars on emergence at the University of Toronto, and members of audiences at the many talks on different aspects of emergence that I have given over the past decade, for helping to shape and improve my views on this topic.
    [Show full text]
  • Fundamental Determinables, As Directions for Future Research
    Philosophers’ volume 12, no. 4 Introduction Imprint february 2012 Contemporary philosophers commonly suppose that any fundamental entities there may be are maximally determinate. More generally, they commonly suppose that, whether or not there are fundamental entities, any determinable entities there may be are grounded in, hence less fundamental than, more determinate entities. So, for example, Armstrong takes the physical objects Fundamental constituting the presumed fundamental base to be “determinate in all respects” (1961, 59), and Lewis takes the properties characterizing things “completely and without redundancy” to be “highly specific” (1986, 60). Here I’ll look at the usually cited reasons for these Determinables suppositions as directed against the case of determinable properties, in particular, and argue that none is compelling (Sections 1 to 3). The discussion in Section 3 will moreover identify positive reason for taking some determinable properties to be part of a fundamental (or relatively fundamental) base. I’ll close (Section 4) by noting certain questions arising from the possibility of fundamental determinables, as directions for future research. 1. Preliminaries 1.1 Fundamentality vs. relative fundamentality Let a fundamental base at a world w be a minimal collection of entities that, either individually or in combination, provide a complete Jessica Wilson metaphysical ground for the entire inventory of w. Then an entity e at University of Toronto a world w is fundamental iff: (i) at w, there is a fundamental base; and (ii) e is in this fundamental base.1 Here and elsewhere ‘entity’ is used ontologically generally, as accom- modating, e. g., particulars, properties, tropes, events, states of affairs, © 2012 Jessica Wilson 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Grounding Is Not Causation (Forthcoming, Philosophical Perspectives; Please Cite Published Version)
    Grounding is not Causation (forthcoming, Philosophical Perspectives; please cite published version) Sara Bernstein Grounding is not causation, and is not even substantively like causation, contra its contemporary characterizers. Apparent similarities between causation and grounding are mostly superficial, and utilizing causation as a way to illuminate ground glosses over their important dissimilarities while failing to untangle distinct, subtle problems that both grounding and causation face. Or so I will argue. By way of background: recent years in metaphysics have seen a surge in literature on grounding, roughly, the relation that connects more and less fundamental entities.1 Proponents of grounding (hereafter: groundhogs2) mean to explain a plentitude of interlevel relationships, including the various relationships between makers and makees, including “littler” things at the bottom levels of reality and the “bigger” things they make up, as well as the relationship between the physical and the mental, nonmoral facts and moral facts, generalizations and their instances, aesthetic properties and natural properties, and knowledge and true belief, to name a few. The ascent of the notion of grounding has given rise to several forms of pushback. One form (which Schaffer calls grounding nihilism) denies that grounding is a distinctive notion apart from other making-up relations like composition, constitution, supervenience, and the determinate/ determinable relation.3 Other challengers hold that grounding, taken as a metaphysical primitive, is too opaque to do the explanatory work on which its hopefuls bank: it is supposed to be the glue that holds reality together, but is irredeemably mysterious. One popular response to this latter form of grounding skepticism is to illuminate the notion of ground by appeal to the more familiar notion of causation.
    [Show full text]
  • Narrative As Philosophy: Methodological Issues in Abstracting from Hebrew Scripture
    Narrative as Philosophy: Methodological Issues in Abstracting from Hebrew Scripture Jessica Wilson Trinity Evangelical Divinity School In the second half or so of the twentieth century, the dominance of modes of communication characterized primarily by “abstract propositions arrived at through rational argument”1 in what were considered to be paradigmatic works of Christian systematic theology came under fire on several fronts. Attempts to assert (or reassert) the value of narrative for Christian theology gained support across a broad swath of theological orientations, and in some cases – like that of the Narrative Theology movement associated in various forms with Niebuhr, Frei, Lindbeck, and Crites2 - proponents of the rediscovery of narrative for theological methodology went so far as to argue that its employment is strictly indispensable for theology. Nevertheless, clearly, theology conducted primarily in terms of “propositional discourse” remains the norm. In contemporary analytic philosophy, too, the idea of philosophy’s incorporating (let alone consisting of) narrative at a deeper or more fundamental level than that of illustration or example – say, the occasional adventure story about a runaway trolley or sci-fi thriller about brains-in-vats and philosophical zombies – remains relatively exotic. But here, as in theology, the possibilities for a more substantial relationship between philosophy and narrative have not gone entirely unexplored. Among very recent works, for instance, Eleonore Stump’s Wandering in Darkness3 - along with earlier publications in which she explored related ideas4 - makes a particularly exemplary foray into this territory in connection with narrative in Hebrew Scripture, with implications for both philosophy and theology. And, now, Yoram Hazony’s Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture adds a new and important layer to the literature on the subject.
    [Show full text]
  • Grounding and Philosophy of Mind
    Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense Alyssa Ney Forthcoming in Scientific Compositon and Metaphysical Ground. K. Aizawa and C. Gillett, eds. Palgrave-Macmillan 1. Introduction One of the major trends in metaphysics in recent years has been in the development and application of novel conceptual frameworks for representing facts about realism, fundamentality, and metaphysical priority. Of particular interest have been the concepts of grounding (proposed by Paul Audi (2012), Kit Fine (2001), Gideon Rosen (2010), and Jonathan Schaffer (2009) among others)1, the concept of the real (proposed by Fine (2001)), and that of metaphysical structure (proposed by Ted Sider (2011)). All of these have been proposed as new primitive concepts, and often their introduction is motivated by the argument that other notions metaphysicians use in order to frame their positions are inadequate for the task of characterizing the important metaphysical issues. Formulations of metaphysical problems and views in terms of existence, quantification, and modal notions should be replaced (Fine, Schaffer) or supplemented (Audi, Rosen, Sider) with formulations in terms of these new distinctively metaphysical notions. Schaffer is especially direct. He complains that “contemporary metaphysics, insofar as it has been inspired by the Quinean task [of determining what exists], has confused itself with trivialities” (2009, p. 361). This confusion about what the important issues are is tied to not having the conceptual tools to represent the issues that matter. The deep questions are “not whether there are such things, but how.” We want to know not what exists, but what is grounded in what. Sider, in his Writing the Book of the World, 1 Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005) defend a related “in virtue of” notion.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphysics Competences: Epistemology, Language, Mind, Science
    Rutgers Dept. of Philosophy Prof. Jonathan Schaffer 106 Somerset Street, 5th floor Web: www.jonathanschaffer.org New Brunswick, NJ 08901-4800 Mail: [email protected] JONATHAN SCHAFFER Curriculum Vitae of July 12th, 2018 RESEARCH AREAS Specialization: Metaphysics Competences: Epistemology, Language, Mind, Science EMPLOYMENT Rutgers University: Distinguished Professor, ongoing from 2015; Professor (I), 2011-15 Australian National University: Professor (E2), 2007-11 University of Massachusetts-Amherst: Assistant Professor, 2000-04; Associate Professor, 2004-07 University of Houston: Assistant Professor, 1999-2000 EDUCATION Ph.D. in Philosophy, Rutgers University, 1999: “Causation and the Probabilities of Processes,” with Brian McLaughlin (chair), Barry Loewer, Tim Maudlin, and David Lewis (outside examiner) B.A. in Philosophy (with Honors and Distinction), Kenyon College, 1993 VISITING POSITIONS International Scientific Visitor, Institut Jean Nicod, France, summer 2019 Visiting Professor, University of Cologne, Germany, summer 2011 Professorial Fellow, Arché Research Center, St. Andrews, 2007-11 Visiting Professor, Sun Yat-Sen University, China, winter 2006 Program Visitor, Australian National University, Australia, summer 2006 Visiting Professor, University of Aarhus, Denmark, summer 2005 RESEARCH AWARDS Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Humboldt Research Award, ongoing from 2016 American Philosophical Association Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution, 2014 (with Jessica Wilson, for a debate on “Grounding in
    [Show full text]
  • Sara J. Bernstein Curriculum Vitae
    Sara J. Bernstein Curriculum Vitae University of Notre Dame email: [email protected] Department of Philosophy 100 Malloy Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 http://duke.edu/~sb192/ AREA OF SPECIALIZATION Metaphysics AREAS OF COMPETENCE Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Law, Nineteenth Century Philosophy, Philosophy of Computing, Feminist Philosophy EMPLOYMENT Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Fall 2016- Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, 2010-2016 Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, 2013-2014 EDUCATION Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Arizona, 2010 Dissertation: Essays on Overdetermination Directors: L.A. Paul, Terence Horgan M.A., Philosophy, University of Arizona, 2008 A.B., (Honors), Philosophy, University of Chicago, 2004 PUBLICATIONS (forthcoming) “Causal and Moral Indeterminacy”, Ratio (forthcoming) “Omission Impossible”, Philosophical Studies (forthcoming) “Free Will and Mental Quausation” (with Jessica Wilson), Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (Publications, continued) (forthcoming) “Causal Idealism”, Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics, eds. Tyron Goldschmidt and Kenny Pearce, Oxford University Press (2016) “Overdetermination Underdetermined”, Erkenntnis 81:1 17-40 (2015) “Nowhere Man: Time Travel and Spatial Location”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 39:1 158-168 (2015) “Time Travel and the Movable Present”, Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from van Inwagen (ed. John Keller, Oxford University Press) (2015) “The Metaphysics of Omissions”, Philosophy Compass 10:3 208-218 (2015) “A Closer Look at Trumping”, Acta Analytica 30:1 41-57 (2014) “What Causally Insensitive Events Tell Us About Overdetermination”, Philosophia 42:4 935-948 (2014) “Two Problems for Proportionality about Omissions”, Dialectica 68:3 429-441 (2014) “Omissions as Possibilities”, Philosophical Studies 167:1 1-23 Book Reviews Review of S.
    [Show full text]
  • There Are Not Only Metaphysical Foundations of Physics, but Also Physical Foundations of Metaphysics
    Jessica Wilson, "Naturalist Metaphysics" (2003) There are not only metaphysical foundations of physics, but also physical foundations of metaphysics. For science and philosophy are, at least genetically, interrelated and they exert mutual influence upon each other. (Max Jammer, Concepts of Force, p. 149) Two conceptions of metaphysics Metaphysics is commonly characterized as the study of the most general features of reality: existence, identity, dependence, causation, change, modality, and so on. But since such features have specific manifestations-there are specific existences, dependencies, causes, changes, possibilities-it would be more accurate to say that metaphysics i the study of these features at a certain general level of investigation. Metaphysicians seek to understand, in general terms, what exists (properties and substantial particulars?), what dependency relations there are (composition? logical entailment?), what causation is (a relation whereby one event raises the probability of another?), and so on. Hence it is that metaphysics is defined not only by its subject matter, but also by its aspirations to provide general accounts of this subject matter. And indeed, to the extent that one can give metaphysical accounts of less general features of reality-say, of garbage, fictional characters, or political institutions-by identifying the general characteristics of these features, there is a case to be made for metaphysics being defined primarily by the distinctively general approach it takes, to understanding pretty much any subject matter you like. So far, most metaphysicians would probably agree. It seems to me, however, that there is room for disagreement about how one should go about arriving at an appropriately general metaphysical account of some feature of reality.
    [Show full text]
  • Must Strong Emergence Collapse?
    Philosophica 91 (2017) pp.49-104 MUST STRONG EMERGENCE COLLAPSE? Umut Baysan and Jessica Wilson ABSTRACT There have recently been complaints from various quarters that strong emergence doesn’t make sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly emergent features or associated powers can be seen to ‘collapse’, one way or another, into the lower-level base features upon which they depend. On one version of this collapse objection, certain ways of individuating lower-level physical features entail that such features will have dispositions to produce any purportedly strongly emergent features, undermining the supposed metaphysical novelty of the emergent features and the physical acceptability of the base features (see Howell 2009 and Taylor 2015). On another, certain ways of assigning powers to features entail that lower-level physical features will inherit any powers had by purportedly strongly emergent features (see Kim, 1998 and 2006, and others). Here we present and defend four different responses that might be given to the collapse objection as directed against a ‘novel power’ approach to strong emergence: first, distinguishing between direct and indirect having of powers; second, distinguishing between lightweight and heavyweight dispositions; third, taking strong emergence to be relative to sets of fundamental interactions; fourth, taking strongly emergent features to be ‘new object entailing’, in ways that block lower-level inheritance of powers. 50 U. BAYSAN & J. WILSON 1. Introduction The notion of metaphysical emergence is inspired
    [Show full text]
  • Shepherd's Metaphysics of Emergence
    1 Ariel Melamedoff NYU September 1, 2021 Shepherd’s Metaphysics of Emergence [DRAFT – DO NOT CITE] 1. Introduction In her 1824 Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (ERCE), Mary Shepherd sets out to refute Humean theories of causation.1 In doing so, she does not only criticize Hume’s theory and arguments. She also presents an alternative conception of the causal relation, under which Hume’s problems regarding necessary connections do not arise. She begins her positive project by arguing for the Causal Maxim - that every beginning of existence requires a cause.2 She then goes on to draw other conclusions from this principle which seem unwarranted by its apparently narrow scope.3 First she argues that there could never be a difference in effects without a difference in causes, on pain of violating the Causal Maxim. She then moves on to a “really philosophical” way of looking at the causal relation (ERCE 46). This sophisticated analysis of causation reveals that causes and effects are synchronic, rather than diachronic as the Humeans believe; that every instance of causation 1 Citations of Shepherd’s works are drawn from Jennifer McRobert, ed., Philosophical Writings of Mary Shepherd, vol. 1 and 2 (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000). 2 See Martha Brandt Bolton, "Causality and Causal Induction: The Necessitarian Theory of Lady Mary Shepherd," in Causation and Modern Philosophy, ed. Keith Allen and Tom Stoneham (Routledge, 2010); Cristina Paoletti, "Restoring necessary connections: Lady Mary Shepherd on Hume and the early nineteenth-century debate on causality," I Castelli di Yale XI, no. 11 (2011); Jennifer McRobert, Mary Shepherd and the causal relation, 2014; Jeremy Fantl, "Mary Shepherd on causal necessity," Metaphysica 17, no.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae
    Curriculum Vitae Adam Russell Murray Updated August 22, 2017 Department of Philosophy mobile: 647–740–0602 University of Toronto fax: 416–978–8703 170 St. George Street, room 503 [email protected] Toronto, ON, M5R 2M8 Canada www.adamrmurray.com Employment Faculty lecturer, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto (July 2016–present) Education PhD, Philosophy, University of Toronto (Dissertation: Perspectives on Modal Metaphysics; Supervisors: Benj Hellie and Jessica Wilson; Readers: Nate Charlow and Nick Stang; External Examiner: Louis deRos- set; defended August 21, 2017) MA, Philosophy, University of Manitoba (Thesis: Actualist Modal Realism; Supervisor: Chris Tillman; 2009) BA, University of Winnipeg (Political Science; 2003) Area of specialization Metaphysics and philosophy of language (modality; essence; singular reference; context; individuation; and their philosophical logic) Areas of competence History of early modern philosophy (rationalism and empiricism); history of analytic philosophy; logic (through completeness); epistemology 1 Manuscripts under review Paper on context-dependence and modal ontology (9500 words). Paper on the modal logic and semantics of flexible essentialism (10,000 words). Invited contributions in progress ‘Possible-worlds conceptions of propositions’, under contract for Chris Tillman, ed., The Routledge Hand- book of Propositions. New York: Routledge. (6000 words). Forthcoming 2018. Articles 2017 Entry on Relativized Metaphysical Modality (with Benj Hellie and Jessica Wilson), to appear in Otávio Bueno and Scott Shalkowsi, editors, The Routledge Handbook of Modality. New York: Routledge. 2014 Not the optimistic type (with Ben Caplan, Brian McLean, and Chris Tillman), Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43: 575–589. (6600 words) 2013 Spinoza on essence and ideal individuation, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43: 78–96.
    [Show full text]