In this article I argue that textual evidence from David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature does not support J. Baird Callicott's professedly Humean yet holistic environmental ethic, which understands the community (e.g., the biotic community) as a ‘metaorganismic’ entity ‘over and above’ its individual members. Based on Hume's reductionist account of the mind and his assimilation of the metaphysical nature of the mind to that of the community, I also argue that a Humean account of the community (...) should be likewise reductionist. My conclusion is that Callicott's anti-reductionist holism is at least foreign to, and at worst incompatible with, Hume's philosophy. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature is the view that the laws reduce to the total distribution of non-modal or categorical properties in spacetime. A worry about Humean reductionism is that it cannot motivate the characteristic modal resilience of laws under counterfactual suppositions and that it thus generates wrong verdicts about certain nested counterfactuals. In this paper, we defend Humean reductionism by motivating an account of the modal resilience of Humean laws that gets (...) nested counterfactuals right. (shrink)

In this entry, the central issues are these: 1. Is the concept of causation basic and unanalyzable, or, on the contrary, does it stand in need of analysis? 2. If it does need to be analyzed, how can this be done? Many different answers have been offered to these questions. But the various approaches can be divided up into four general types, which I shall refer to as direct realism, Humean reductionism, non-Humean reductionism, and indirect, or (...) theoretical-term, realism. This fourfold division, in turn, rests upon the following three distinctions: first, that between reductionism and realism; second, that between Humean and non-Humean states of affairs; and, third, that between states that are immediately observable and those that are not. Given those distinctions, I shall discuss what can be said for and against the four general approaches to causation mentioned above. (shrink)

It is shown that Lewis’ ontological doctrine of Humean supervenience incorporates at its foundation the so-called separability principle of classical physics. In view of the systematic violation of the latter within quantum mechanics, the claim that contemporary physical science may posit non-supervenient relations beyond the spatiotemporal ones is reinforced on a foundational basis concerning constraints on the state representation of physical systems. Depending on the mode of assignment of states to quantum systems — unit state vectors versus statistical density (...) operators — we distinguish between strongly and weakly non-Humean, non-supervenient relations. It is demonstrated that in either case, the relations of quantum entanglement constitute prototypical examples of irreducible physical relations that do not supervene upon a spatiotemporal arrangement of Humean qualities, weakening, thereby, the thesis of Humean supervenience. In this respect, the status of Lewis’ recombination principle is examined, whereas his conception of lawhood is critically investigated. It is concluded that the assumption of ontological reductionism, as expressed in Lewis’ Humean doctrine, cannot be regarded as a reliable code of the nature of the physical world and its contents. It is proposed instead that due to the undeniable existence of non-supervenient relations, a metaphysic of relations of a moderate kind ought to be acknowledged as an indispensable part of our understanding of the natural world at a fundamental level. (shrink)

A novel motivation for a Humean projectivist construal of our concept of scientific law is provided. The analysis is partially developed and used to explain intuitions that are problematic for a Humean reductionist construal of lawhood. A possible non-Humean rejoinder is discussed and rejected. In an appendix, further intuitions that are problematic for Humean reductionists are explained projectively.

David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent with the reductive conviction that the complete physical state of the (...) world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of and spatio-temporal relations between its point-sized constituents. Here I defend Lewis's metaphysical doctrine, and traditional reductionism more generally, against this alleged threat from quantum holism. After presenting the non-separability argument from entanglement, I show that Bohmian mechanics, an interpretation of quantum mechanics explicitly recognized as a realist one by proponents of the non-separability argument, plausibly rejects a key premise of that argument. Another holistic worry for Humeanism persists, however, the trouble being the apparently holistic character of the Bohmian pilot wave. I present a Humean strategy for addressing the holistic threat from the pilot wave by drawing on resources from the Humean best system account of laws. (shrink)

There is an inconsistency between the access we have to our conscious lives and the Humean thesis of causal generalism. This was first drawn attention to by John Hawthorne, whose argument withstands a number of objections. Nevertheless, it has weaknessess. The first premise must be weakened if Humeans are to be compelled to accept it, and consequently, the second premise will have to be stronger to retain validity. I shore up the case against Humeanism by providing revised premises along (...) with new defences of them. I show why this also provides a lesson for non-Humeans about the epistemology of causal relations. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws (...) need to organize information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the prospects for an important position that falls under the "mere patterns" approach: what, for reasons that will emerge, the author calls"Humean reductionism" about laws of nature, a view championed perhaps most prominently by David Lewis. He reviews some of the most interesting arguments against this position from the literature, and adds some of his own that, he thinks, are more effective. The chapter considers how the best system account (BSA) would apply to the Newtonian (...) particle world. The BSA has been challenged in a wide variety of ways: it violates certain intuitions; It makes a hash out of the connection between laws on the one hand, and counterfactuals, explanation, and induction on the other. The author thinks that the problem he has raised‐challenging though he hopes it is, is really an occasion for the Humean reductionist to sharpen his position still further. (shrink)

Laws of nature have various roles in scientific practice. It is widely agreed that an adequate theory of lawhood ought to align with the roles that scientists assign to the laws. But philosophers disagree over whether Humean laws or non-Humean laws are better at filling these roles. In this paper, I provide an argument for settling this dispute. I consider possible situations in which scientists receive conclusive evidence that—according to the non-Humean—falsifies their beliefs about the laws, but (...) which—according to the Humean—does not falsify their beliefs about the laws. I argue that, in these possible scenarios, all law-related aspects of scientific practice would remain unchanged. In other words, scientists would treat the regularities “preferred” by the Humean as the laws of nature. On this basis, I conclude that non-Humean laws fail to align with scientific practice. (shrink)

Non‐Humean theories of natural necessity invoke modally‐laden primitives to explain why nature exhibits lawlike regularities. However, they vary in the primitives they posit and in their subsequent accounts of laws of nature and related phenomena (including natural properties, natural kinds, causation, counterfactuals, and the like). This article provides a taxonomy of non‐Humean theories, discusses influential arguments for and against them, and describes some ways in which differences in goals and methods can motivate different versions of non‐Humeanism (and, for (...) that matter, Humeanism). In short, this article provides an introduction to non‐Humeanism concerning the metaphysics of laws of nature and natural necessity. (shrink)

Non-naturalists claim that the nature of normativity precludes the possibility of normative naturalism. In particular, they think that normative reduction amounts to normative elimination. This is because it always leaves out the normative. In this paper, I examine the force that the normativity objection has against Humean reductionism. I argue that the normativity objection has no argumentative force against reductionism. When it is presented as a bare intuition, it begs the question against reduction. A more interesting reading (...) of the argument claims that the normative cannot be explained in terms of the natural because the natural is arbitrary. Yet, this version of the argument fails as well because the natural is not arbitrary in the relevant sense. The natural is contingent, so what has value is contingent. That is not an elimination of the normative though, because contingent reasons are still reasons. (shrink)

In the metaphysics of laws of nature, one fundamental philosophical question is whether we should give a metaphysical or rather an epistemic account of what they are; that is the core issue that divides ‘Humeans’ from ‘anti-Humeans’. In much the same way, a key question we face with essences is whether to give a metaphysical or rather an epistemic account of what they are. (So note well: in choosing to deploy the term ‘essence’ this chapter is not taking sides on (...) the ‘Go metaphysical, or go epistemic?’ question. Just as we can be anti-metaphysical and still freely use the expression ‘law of nature’, so too we can be anti-metaphysical and freely use ‘essence’.) And the advantage of connecting these two topics is that we have made enough progress on the former for the lessons learned to provide valuable guidance for investigating the latter. Despite the author’s agnosticism about which approach is correct, the chapter mostly investigates the prospects for the ‘go epistemic’ option—what it calls ‘Humean reductionism about essence’. (shrink)

This chapter will argue that the criminal law is most compatible with a specific theory regarding the mind/body relationship: non-eliminative reductionism. Criminal responsibility rests upon mental causation: a defendant is found criminally responsible for an act where she possesses certain culpable mental states (mens rea under the law) that are causally related to criminal harm. If we assume the widely accepted position of ontological physicalism, which holds that only one sort of thing exists in the world – physical stuff (...) – non-eliminative reductive physicalism about the mind offers the most plausible account of the full-bodied mental causation criminal responsibility requires. Other theories of the mind/body relationship, including elminativism and non-reductive physicalism, threaten criminal responsibility because they do not offer satisfactory accounts of mental causation. Eliminativism, as the name implies, eliminates the mental or is skeptical that it can do the causal work necessary to responsibility; and non-reductive theories disconnect the mental from the physical/casual world such that the mental can no longer have reliable causal effects. (shrink)

A physicalist view of qualia labelled non-eliminative reductionism is outlined. If it is true, qualia and physicalism can co-exist without difficulty. First, qualia present no particular problem for reductionist physicalism - they are entirely physical, can be studied and explained using the standard scientific approach, and present no problem any harder than any other scientists face. Second, reductionist physicalism presents no particular problem for qualia – they can be encompassed within an entirely physicalist position without any necessity, either to (...) reduce them to non-existence, or to treat them as new fundamental properties. It is suggested that the position also has sufficient explanatory power to successfully deal with the 'why like anything – why does experience exist at all' question and to counter both Chalmers' Conceivability Argument and Jackson's Knowledge Argument. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that, for Leibniz, temporal facts globally supervene on causal facts, with the result that worlds differing with respect to their causal facts can be indiscernible with respect to their temporal facts. Such an interpretation is at variance with more traditional readings of Leibniz's causal theory of time, which hold that Leibniz reduces temporal facts to causal facts. In this article, I argue against the global supervenience construal of Leibniz's philosophy of time. On the view of (...) Leibniz defended here, he adopts a non-modal reduction of time to events, a form of reductionism that entails a strong covariation between a world's temporal facts and its causal facts. Consequently, worlds discernible with respect to their temporal facts must be discernible with respect to their causal facts, and worlds discernible with respect to their causal facts must be discernible with respect to their temporal facts. This position strongly favors the standard identificatory reduction of time to causation often imputed to Leibniz. (shrink)

Contrary to the widespread view that Reid and Hume agree that reason, alone, is inert, I argue that they disagree on this point. Both accept that reason plays a role in forming moral sentiments, and that affections are components of moral evaluations. However, I show that for Reid moral evaluations (comprised of moral judgments and moral affections) are different from moral motives (which are not comprised of affections). Moral motives for Reid are mind‐independent states of affairs that are grasped by (...) reason and do not require affections to influence human beings. Reid hence holds a non‐Humean theory in which reason, alone, is not inert. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, there has been a great deal of philosophical interest in laws of nature, perhaps because of the essential role that laws play in the formulation of, and proposed solutions to, a number of perennial philosophical problems. For example, many have thought that a satisfactory account of laws could be used to resolve thorny issues concerning explanation, causation, free-will, probability, and counterfactual truth. Moreover, interest in laws of nature is not constrained to metaphysics or philosophy of (...) science; claims about laws play essential roles in areas as diverse as the philosophy of religion (e.g., in the argument from design) and the philosophy of mind (e.g., in the formulation of Davidson’s anomalous monism). In my dissertation, I consider and reject the widely-held thesis that the facts concerning laws can be reduced to the facts concerning the particular entities that the laws “govern,” and that the laws thus have no independent existence. I instead defend a version of nomic primitivism, according to which the facts about laws cannot be reduced to facts that are themselves non-nomic – i.e., to facts that do not fundamentally involve laws, counterfactuals, causes, etc. Insofar as the truth or falsity of reductionism about laws has implications for many of the problems mentioned above, I think that this result should be of interest even to those who who do not work in metaphysics or the philosophy of science. My methodology, which I lay out and defend in Chapter One, is a version of Carnapian explication. This method emphasizes the importance of articulating and maintaining clear distinctions between (1) the vague concept (or concepts) law of nature inherent in ordinary language and scientific practice and (2) the precise analyses of “law of nature” that philosophers have proposed as potential replacements for this concept. I argue that metaphysics-as-explication has clear advantages over rival conceptions of metaphysical methodology; in particular, it allows us to formulate evaluative criteria for metaphysical claims. In Chapter Two, I offer an example of how careful attention to concepts already in use can help resolve philosophical debate. Specifically, I argue that much recent literature has mistakenly assumed that there is only one concept of “law of nature” in use, while there are in fact at least two. Strong laws are the principles pursued by fundamental physics: they are true, objective, and bear distinctive relationships to counterfactuals and explanation. Weak laws, by contrast, lack at least one of these distinctive characteristics but play central roles in both the “special sciences” and in everyday life. In Chapters Three and Four, I offer extended arguments against the two most prominent versions of reductionism about laws – Humeanism and law necessitarianism. According to philosophical Humeans, the laws of nature supervene upon the non-modal, non-nomic facts concerning the behavior of particular things at particular times and places. Law necessitarians, by contrast, argue that the laws are in fact metaphysically necessary, and that which laws there are is determined by a class of primitive, modally loaded facts concerning the essences, natures, or dispositions. I argue that both of these views are mistaken insofar as they disagree with well-entrenched scientific practices and those in favor of reductionism have failed to provided sufficient reason for thinking that these practices should be revised. Much of my argument is focused on the role played by a number of supposed methodological principles, including appeals to intuition, parsimony, and methodological naturalism. While the conclusions of this dissertation are explicitly constrained to laws, many of the arguments should be of interest to those who are concerned about philosophical methodology (especially in the role of intuition in philosophical argument) or the appropriate relation between metaphysics, science, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Hume's regularity theory of causation was partly motivated by a criticism of Descartes' causal account of collisions. According to Descartes, bodies are things with extension, and since having extension does not entail any ability to cause changes of motion in other bodies, such changes must be explained by attributing a ‘causal power’ to bodies, logically independent of their extension. Hume's point is that we can't observe any such causal power and we should not use ideas about such unobserved qualities of (...) bodies. Given his form of empiricism, the regularity theory is the only choice; causation is no more than constant correlation. However, there is a third option beside attributing a metaphysical ‘causal power’ and mere regularity; if we follow Newton and say that bodies are characterised and individuated by their mass, not their extension, we can give another analysis of causal interaction between bodies. It is by having mass a body can cause changes in the motion of other bodies. Thus, using classical mechanics we can give an alternative to Hume's regularity theory of causation in which the necessary connection between cause and effect is understood as a conceptual connection between certain descriptions of cause and effect. It does not satisfy Hume's strictures on concept formation, but no additional metaphysics is necessary. In a sense it is an intermediate position between Humean regularity and an account in terms of metaphysical necessity. (shrink)

Using meta-metaphysical instruments, the paper analyzes the dispute between ‘reductionist’ Humean categoricalism and ‘bold’ Anti-Humean dispositionalism. It is argued that both views are non-Quinean, hence, heavyweight ontological realisms: careful analysis of specific scientific theories alone is not sufficient. Further, sophisticated philosophical reasoning is needed to defend Anti-Humeanism as well as Humeanism. The paper finally suggests that most if not all ontological disputes are unavoidably “speculative” due to essentialism which cannot be read off contemporary physical theories.

According to Humean theories of objective chance, the chances reduce to patterns in the history of occurrent events, such as frequencies. According to non-Humean accounts, the chances are metaphysically fundamental, existing independently of the "Humean Mosaic" of actually-occurring events. It is therefore possible, by the lights of non-Humeanism, for the chances and the frequencies to diverge wildly. Humeans often allege that this undermines the ability of non-Humean accounts of chance to rationalize adherence to David Lewis' Principal (...) Principle (PP), which states that an agent's degrees of belief should match what they take to be the objective chances. In this paper, I propose two approaches to justifying (PP) for non-Humean chance, hence defusing the Humean objection. The first approach justifies (PP) via the role it plays in informing outright beliefs about long-run frequencies. The second approach justifies (PP) by showing that adherence to (PP), even for non-Humean chance, maximizes expected epistemic utility according to the actual objective chance function. I then address an objection to this approach, concerning the alleged circularity of the derivations. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on three aspects of Sandro Nannini’s paper Time and Consciusness in Cognitive Naturalism: the parallel between Einstein’s theory of relativity and the new science of the mind/brain; the Cartesian characterization of non-reductionist positions in the philosophy of mind; the alleged illusory status of consciousness, free will and the Self. We suggest, first, that Nannini overstates the success of cognitive neuroscience; second, that non-reductionism is not necessarily a Cartesian position; and third, that the neurocognitive science data do (...) not show or even suggest, that consciousness, free will and the Self are illusory phenomena. (shrink)

How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that (...) is consistent with (and even entails) both of these general metaphysical principles. By endorsing such a view, one can have the explanatory benefits of Non-Humeanism while at the same time avoiding two of the major metaphysical objections towards Non-Humeanism. (shrink)

A simple argument proposes a direct link between realism about quantum mechanics and one kind of metaphysical holism: if elementary quantum theory is at least approximately true, then there are entangled systems with intrinsic whole states for which the intrinsic properties and spatiotemporal arrangements of salient subsystem parts do not suffice. Initially, the proposal is compelling: we can find variations on such reasoning throughout influential discussions of entanglement. Upon further consideration, though, this simple argument proves a bit too simple. To (...) get such metaphysically robust consequences out, we need to put more than minimal realism in. This paper offers a diagnosis: our simple argument seems so compelling thanks to an equivocation. The predictions of textbook quantum theory already resonate with familiar holistic slogans; for realists, then, any underlying reality, conforming to such predictions, also counts as holistic in some sense or other, if only by association. Such associated holism, though, does not establish the sort of specific, robust supervenience failure claimed by our simple argument. While it may be natural to slide to this stronger conclusion, facilitating the slide is not minimal realism per se but an additional explanatory assumption about how and why reality behaves in accordance with our theory: roughly, quantum theory accurately captures patterns in the features and behaviors of physical reality because some underlying metaphysical structure constrains reality to exhibit these patterns. Along with the diagnosis comes a recommendation: we can and should understand one traditional disagreement about the metaphysics of entanglement as another manifestation of a familiar and more general conflict between reductive and non-reductive conceptions of metaphysical theorizing. Such reframing makes clearer what resources reductionists have for resisting the simple argument’s challenge from quantum holism. It also has an important moral for their opponents. Traditional focus on whole-part supervenience failure distracts from a root disagreement about metaphysical structure and its role in our theorizing. Non-reductionists fond of our simple argument would be better off tackling this root directly. (shrink)

McNaughton and Rawling's anti-reductionist intentions are to be welcomed, but are not well served by their continuing adherence to a neo-Humean notion of the 'descriptive'. Their too-willing acceptance of this notion is reflected in a denial of appropriate dialectical weight to considerations about the way 'pattern' disappears from the domain of value when we try to characterize the constituent features of the latter in non-evaluative terms. The need for a satisfactory account of the immanence of value in nature is (...) real enough, but such an account can be given without recourse to the problematic idea of a class of subvenient 'descriptive' properties. Likewise, McNaughton and Rawling's recognition of 'normative facts' is to be endorsed, but such facts are a more widespread and everyday phenomenon than they would have us think. (shrink)

Reductive accounts of the direction of time are often paired with Humean accounts of laws, while non-reductive accounts of time are often paired with anti-Humean accounts of laws. The traditional pairing of views has recently come under question. This paper aims to clarify what sorts of anti-Humean views motivate anti-reductionism about the direction of time. It is argued that those who think (i) that the laws are metaphysically fundamental, and (ii) that the laws contain time-asymmetric contents, (...) should treat the arrow of time as metaphysically fundamental. (shrink)

If the laws of nature are as the Humean believes, it is an unexplained cosmic coincidence that the actual Humean mosaic is as extremely regular as it is. This is a strong and well-known objection to the Humean account of laws. Yet, as reasonable as this objection may seem, it is nowadays sometimes dismissed. The reason: its unjustified implicit assignment of equiprobability to each possible Humean mosaic; that is, its assumption of the principle of indifference, which (...) has been attacked on many grounds ever since it was first proposed. In place of equiprobability, recent formal models represent the doxastic state of total ignorance as suspension of judgment. In this paper I revisit the cosmic coincidence objection to Humean laws by assessing which doxastic state we should endorse. By focusing on specific features of our scenario I conclude that suspending judgment results in an unnecessarily weak doxastic state. First, I point out that recent literature in epistemology has provided independent justifications of the principle of indifference. Second, given that the argument is framed within a Humean metaphysics, it turns out that we are warranted to appeal to these justifications and assign a uniform and additive credence distribution among Humean mosaics. This leads us to conclude that, contrary to widespread opinion, we should not dismiss the cosmic coincidence objection to the Humean account of laws. (shrink)

This paper addresses the following questions from the point of view of Nietzsche’s philosophy: What is the mind, and which kind of relationship does it hold to the body? Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to show that Nietzsche’s philosophy suggested a view of the mind that allows to outline an alternative stance to both mentalism and physicalism, as well as to both dualism and reductionism. It is argued that Nietzsche’s rehabilitation of the body as the specific seat (...) of the mind in opposition to the Cartesian supremacy of the Ego still is of a great interest for contemporary philosophy, since it is not equivalent either to a reversed form of Cartesian dualism or to a physicalist reductionism. It is argued that Nietzsche did restrict the concept of the mind but in order not to eliminate it, rather to “de-substantialise” it. As the body is described as “Leib-Organisation”, the mind becomes the course of various and manifold mental states that depend on a bodily basis. (shrink)

I argue that Quine’s rejection of Carnap’s “radical” (FLPV; TDE 39) and “phenomenalistic” (FSS 15-16) reductionism—as it is manifest in the Aufbau—may be understood in terms of a broader historical context. In particular, it may be understood as a rejection of a contemporary variant of the second horn of Meno’s Paradox. As a result, Quine’s motivation to adopt naturalism may be understood independently of his pragmatic concerns. According to Quine, it was simply unreasonable (i.e. paradoxical) to adopt a Carnapian (...) phenomenalistic/mentalistic (non-naturalistic) approach to epistemology. Armed with what could only be his invigorated faith in the naturalistic method, he was then, as I see it, equipped to break what we may characterize as the physicalistic version of the naturalistic circle. This is a repudiation that, I show, entails his rejection of “attenuated” (FLPV; TDE 41) reductionism and concomitantly, his rejection of “analyticity,” if not “certainty” altogether. As a result, Quine could simultaneously dismiss what we may characterize as the Humean version of the naturalistic circle. Meanwhile, the practicality of an admittedly fallible science could be unashamedly embraced, although not just for the sake of its practicality—as Quine himself seems to misleadingly indicate throughout his work—but instead, as just noted, to avoid the seemingly Platonic paradox of Aufbauian reductionism. (shrink)

Of the many objections moral rationalists have raised against moral sentimentalism, none has been more long-lived and central than the claim that sentimentalism cannot accommodate the non-consequentialist aspects of our moral thinking. John Balguy raised an early version of the non-consequentialist objection just two years after Francis Hutcheson published the first systematic development of moral sentimentalism. As Balguy understood it, Hutcheson's sentimentalism implied that what makes an action virtuous is its effects, such as the advantages or pleasures it produces. According (...) to Balguy, however, what we actually think makes an action virtuous is an intrinsic quality it possesses, which is independent of any .. (shrink)

It has been argued contra Humean accounts of scientific laws that on Humean accounts laws are flukes since they are merely true generalizations and it would be an accident or a fluke for a generalization to obtain unless there was a non-Humean law "backing" it. This paper argues that this kind of objection is mistaken. It goes on to describe an account of laws called "the Package Deal Account" that is a descendent of Lewis' BSA on which (...) it is not an accident that our universe has a best systematization. (shrink)

Almost everyone agrees that many testimonial beliefs constitute knowledge. According to non-reductionists, some testimonial beliefs possess positive epistemic status independent of that conferred by perception, memory, and induction. Recently, Jennifer Lackey has provided a counterexample to a popular version of this view. Here I argue that her counterexample fails.

A variety of strategies have been used to oppose the influential Humean thesis that all of an agent’s reasons for action are provided by the agent’s current wants. Among these strategies is the attempt to show that it is a conceptual truth that reasons for action are non-relative. I introduce the notion of a basic reason- giving consideration and show that the non-relativity thesis can be understood as a corollary of the more fundamental thesis that basic reason-giving considerations are (...) generalizable. I then consider the relationship between the generalizability thesis and the Humean thesis that all of an agent’s reasons for action are provided by the agent’s current wants. I argue that, contrary to a common assumption, there is a subtle and clearly motivated version of the Humean thesis that does not deny, and so is not threatened by, the generalizability thesis. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum proposes a universal list of human capabilities as the basis for fundamental political principles. She claims that the list, in an Aristotelian spirit, might be justified by an ongoing inquiry into valuable human functionings for the good life. Here I argue that the attractiveness of Nussbaum’s theory crucially depends on the philosophical possibility of a non-reductionist understanding of naturalism and on resolving the tensions between ethical and political aspects of the role of capabilities. Through a comparison of Nussbaum’s (...) approach with those of Aristotle and (less familiarly) Hume, I try to show that in these alternative versions we find valuable resources for the kind of non-reductionist model which might, in line with Nussbaum’s own objectives, provide the basis for a capabilities-based critique of dominant modes of normative theorizing and their influence in public discourse. (shrink)

The so-called 'Extreme Claim' asserts that reductionism about personal identity leaves each of us with no reason to be specially concerned about his or her own future. Both advocates and opponents of the Extreme Claim, whether of a reductionist or non-reductionist stripe, accept that similar problems do not arise for non-reductionism. In this paper I challenge this widely held assumption.

The major Western monotheisms, and Christianity in particular, are often supposed to be committed to a substance dualism of a Cartesian sort. Aquinas, however, has an account of the soul which is non-Cartesian in character. He takes the soul to be something essentially immaterial or configurational but nonetheless realized in material components. In this paper, I argue that Aquinas’s account is coherent and philosophically interesting; in my view, it suggests not only that Cartesian dualism isn’t essential to Christianity but also (...) that the battle lines between dualism and materialism are misdrawn. (shrink)

This paper investigates the seeming incompatibility of reductionism and non-reductionism in the context of complexity sciences. I review algorithmic information theory for this purpose. I offer two physical metaphors to form a better understanding of algorithmic complexity, and I briefly discuss its advantages, shortcomings and applications. Then, I revisit the non-reductionist approaches in philosophy of mind which are often arguments from ignorance to counter physicalism. A new approach called mild non-reductionism is proposed which reconciliates the necessities of (...) acknowledging irreducibility found in complex systems, and maintaining physicalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise a novel objection to David Lewis’s Humean account of laws. The objection is that non-universal laws are metaphysically possible, but Lewis’s account cannot accommodate them. I then propose and defend an extension of Lewis’s view that gives us an account of Humean non-universal laws.

The major tendency within the discipline of political science has been to try to achieve a science modeled on the natural sciences and mathematics, following the pattern of other social sciences. This tendency has led to many reductionistic efforts to explain political behavior in terms of one or more functions, such as power, linguistic, psychical, or the economic. The institutional community of government and citizens—the political community or state—is thus overlooked or reduced to one or more functions. In critique of (...) this tendency, this paper shows how the work on entities and functions by the Dutch legal philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd illumines the errors of reductionism and points the way to a multi-functional entity science of the political community. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that anti-reductionist moral realism still has trouble explaining supervenience. My main target here will be Russ Shafer-Landau's attempt to explain the supervenience of the moral on the natural in terms of the constitution of moral property instantiations by natural property instantiations. First, though, I discuss a recent challenge to the very idea of using supervenience as a dialectical weapon posed by Nicholas Sturgeon. With a suitably formulated supervenience thesis in hand, I try to show how (...) Shafer-Landau's proffered strategy to explain supervenience not only fails to explain supervenience, but that it also has a number of implausible consequences. The more general lesson is that strategies which may work well for explaining supervenience in the philosophy of mind and other areas cannot be assumed to carry over successfully to the metaethical context. We should therefore treat so-called `companions in guilt' arguments in this area of philosophy with considerable skepticism. Key Words: expressivism • moral realism • non-naturalism • reductionism • supervenience • trope. (shrink)

Peut-on et doit-on admettre des propriétés non physiques? Une ontologie minimale accepte seulement la réalité des propriétés physiques. Elle prend appui sur un critère d’existence restreint : le critère causal. A l’inverse, une ontologie d’accueil affirme la réalité d’au moins certaines propriétés non physiques, et conteste par là la validité du critère causal. Le but de cette investigation est de défendre une version modérée du réalisme par rapport aux propriétés non physiques et de proposer un nouveau critère d’existence : le (...) critère explicatif. (shrink)

Tn this paper I explore and to an extent defend HS. The main philosophical challenges to HS come from philosophical views that say that nomic concepts-laws, chance, and causation-denote features of the world that fail to supervene on non-nomic features. Lewis rejects these views and has labored mightily to construct HS accounts of nomic concepts. His account of laws is fundamental to his program, since his accounts of the other nomic notions rely on it. Recently, a number of philosophers have (...) criticized Lewis's account, and Humean accounts of laws generally, for delivering, at best, a pale imitation ofthe genuine item. These philosophers think that the notion of law needed by science requires laws-if there are any-to be fundamental features of our world that are completely distinct from and not supervenient on the particular facts that they explain. I side with Lewis against these philosophers. Here I will argue that although Lewis-laws don't fulfill all our philosophical expectations, they do play the roles that science needs laws to play. The metaphysics and epistemology of Humean laws, and more specifically, Lewis-laws, are in much better shape than the metaphysics and epistemology of the main anti-Humean alternatives. However, I do have inisgivings about Lewis's account. Both he and his critics assume that the basic properties are so individuated so that the laws are not metaphysically necessary. If this assumption is rejected, then the question of Humean supervenience lapses. I conclude with a brief discussion of this position. (shrink)

In 1982 Saul A. Kripke proposed a reconstruction of the central insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on rule-following. The reconstruction prominently featured a sceptical challenge which soon was recognised as a new and very radical form of scepticism. According to the challenge there is no fact of the matter which constitutes meaning. As there is no such fact, the first-person authority people intuitively seem to have concerning what they mean is also baseless. In response to the sceptic, many solutions have (...) been proposed. This thesis is about one family of solutions, according to which facts about meaning are sui generis and can neither be reduced to other facts about the world nor to non-semantic facts about the human mind. The non-reductionist proposals by Colin McGinn and Crispin Wright will be assessed in detail and arguments against both will be introduced. The arguments stem only partially from Kripke himself, some are based on recent literature, others are completely new. The emerging situation will be used as a basis to propose an alternative non-reductionism about meaning-facts. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that the latter group [of Non-Humeans] is correct. My argument focuses on practical deliberation and has two parts. I will discuss two different problems that arise for the Humean Theory and suggest that while taken individually each problem appears to have a solution, for each problem the solution Humeans offer precludes solving the other problem. I will suggest that to see these difficulties we must take seriously the thought that we can only understand (...) an agent’s reasons for her action by looking at her actual or possible practical deliberation. (shrink)