David Spurrett

A note on the completeness of ‘physics’

1. One argument for physicalism states that all physical effects are due to physical causes, and hence that anything having physical effects must itself be physical. Let us call this now familiar style of argument the ‘causal argument’ for physicalism, and its crucial premiss, that all physical effects are due to physical causes, the ‘completeness of physics’ (cf. Crane 1995). But how are we to understand ‘physics’ in this context? If we tie the meaning of ‘physics’ to any specific details of present physical theory then it seems unlikely that physics is complete. A short glance at the history of science reveals that proposed lists of fundamental forces and basic entities usually turn out to be wrong. So advocates of the causal argument need to abstract away from current physical theory. But then it seems that they need to say something more about the shape of ideal or future physics, lest their thesis of the completeness of physics lose all substantial content. This note aims to show that this demand for clairvoyance is misplaced. Users of the causal argument do not need any detailed assumptions about ideal or future physics. All they need is some way of understanding ‘physics’ which makes it plausible that physics so understood is complete. We shall make the point by showing that there is more than one way of so understanding ‘physics’. In particular, we shall identify two plausible completeness theses. Each such thesis can be plugged into the causal argument, and each then generates its own version of ‘physicalism’. Which completeness thesis you ought to be interested in thus depends on the purpose to which you want to put the causal argument. You should be interested in our first completeness thesis if you want to investigate the relationship between the mental and the non-mental. The relevant completeness thesis is then the claim that the non-mental is complete. If you plug this thesis into the causal argument, it then generates the conclusion that the mental must be identical with the non-mental. Alternatively, you may be interested in the relationship between manifest qualitative phenomena, like colours and sounds and smells, and the underlying quantitative features of the material world, like size and shape and motion. If so, the relevant completeness thesis is that the quantitative is complete. With this premiss, the causal argument then generates the conclusion that the non-quantitative must be identical with the quantitative. In effect our aim here is to shift attention away from debates about the meaning of the word ‘physics’ (cf. Crane, 1991, Papineau, 1991). Tangles

What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: a defense manual for cognitive and behavioral scientists.

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism. We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics.

Putting apes (body and language) together again

Abstract It is argued that the account of Savage-Rumbaughs ape language research in Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker and Taylor (1998. Apes, Language and the Human Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford) is profitably read in the terms of the theoretical perspective developed in Clark (1997. Being There, Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). The former work details some striking results concerning chimpanzee and bonobo subjects, trained to make use of keyboards containing ‘lexigram’ symbols. The authors, though, make heavy going of a critique of what they take to be standard approaches to understanding language and cognition in animals, and fail to offer a worthwhile theoretical position from which to make sense of their own data. It is suggested that the achievements of Savage-Rumbaughs non-human subjects suggest that language ability need not be explained by reference to specialised brain capacities. The contribution made by Clarks work is to show the range of ways in which cognition exploits bodily and environmental resources. This model of ‘distributed’ cognition helps makes sense of the lexigram activity of Savage-Rumbaughs subjects, and points to a re-evaluation of the language behaviour of humans.

Gambling Participation and Problem Gambling Severity among Rural and Peri-Urban Poor South African Adults in KwaZulu-Natal

Poor South Africans are significantly poorer and have lower employment rates than the subjects of most published research on gambling prevalence and problem gambling. Some existing work suggests relationships between gambling activity (including severity of risk for problem gambling), income, employment status and casino proximity. The objective of the study reported here is to establish the prevalence of gambling, including at risk and pathological gambling, and the profile of gambling activities in two samples of poor South African adults living in a rural and a peri-urban community. A total of 300 (150 male, 150 female) adults in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in communities selected using census data, completed the Problem Gambling Severity Index and a survey of socioeconomic and household information, and of gambling knowledge and activity. It was found that gambling was common, and—except for lottery participation—mostly informal or unlicensed. Significant differences between rural and peri-urban populations were found. Peri-urban subjects were slightly less poor, and gambled more and on a different and wider range of activities. Problem and at risk gamblers were disproportionately represented among the more urbanised. Casino proximity appeared largely irrelevant to gambling activity.

Why I am not an analytic philosopher

Abstract From a certain simplistic and inaccurate, although regrettably popular, perspective philosophy, at least for the past few decades, is available only in two main flavours - analytic and continental. Some self-identified members of both camps are apt to endorse uncharitable caricatures of what the others are up to. Among the many lines of criticism that can be directed against this false dichotomy, I wish to focus on discussion of a broadly naturalistic orientation that rejects many of the commitments both of paradigmatic analytic philosophy and paradigmatic continental philosophy. For the committed naturalist, the enterprise of philosophy is continuous with that of systematic empirical enquiry into the workings of the world (science). From a naturalistic perspective many of the standard moves of analytic philosophy, such as testing a proposal against ‘intuitions’, are as preposterous as the claims of ‘continental’ and ‘analytic’ philosophers sometimes appear to one another.

Criterion-related and construct validity of the Problem Gambling Severity Index in a sample of South African gamblers

The Problem Gambling Severity Index, the scored module of the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, is a population-based survey instrument that is becoming the preferred epidemiological tool for estimating the prevalence of disordered gambling. While some validation evidence for the Problem Gambling Severity Index is available, very little is known about its psychometric characteristics in developing countries or in countries the populations of which are not highly Westernised. The aim of this study was to investigate the validity of the Problem Gambling Severity Index with a specific focus on its criterion-related and construct (concurrent) validity in a community sample of gamblers in South Africa (n = 127). To this end, the Problem Gambling Severity Index was administered alongside the Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity and measures known to associate with gambling severity (impulsivity, current debt, social problems, financial loss, race, sex). Results showed that the Problem Gambling Severity Index was predictive of Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity diagnosis from both a categorical and dimensional point of view and demonstrated high discrimination accuracy for subjects with problem gambling. Analysis of sensitivity and specificity at different cut-points suggests that a slightly lower Problem Gambling Severity Index score may be used as a screening cut-off for problem gambling among South African gamblers. The Problem Gambling Severity Index also showed significant correlations with the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, a widely known measure of impulsivity, and with some of the predicted behavioural variables of interest (gambling activities, money lost to gambling, current debt, interpersonal conflict). This article therefore demonstrates initial criterion and concurrent validity for the Problem Gambling Severity Index for use in South African samples.

Addressing problem gambling: South Africa's National Responsible Gambling Programme.

In the English-speaking world and some parts of Europe, problem and pathological gambling are treated as a significant public health problem. At the same time, these jurisdictions recognise that for most of those who engage in it, gambling is a harmless leisure activity that may yield public benefits by contributing more in taxation than other leisure industries and/or contributing to out-of-town tourism. Strategies that combine minimising the harm caused with maximising the benefits of gambling are therefore crucial for good public policy. Such lessons may also be relevant to other legal and illegal industries, such as those involving the production and sales of alcohol, where analogous harms and benefits exist.

Bhaskar on Open and Closed Systems.

Bhaskar’s articulation of his ‘transcendental realism’ includes an argument for a form of causal emergence which would mean the rejection of physicalism, by means of rejecting the causal closure of the physical. His argument is based on an analysis of the conditions for closure, where closed systems manifest regular or Humean relations between events. Bhaskar argues that the project of seeking closure entails commitment to a strong (and implausible) reductionism, which in turn entails the impossibility of science itself; and concludes that we should endorse causal emergence. I argue that Bhaskar’s case grossly overreaches itself; and that he fails to establish the emergentist conclusions which he asserts. Consequently his programme poses no significant threat to physicalism.

Fundamental laws and the completeness of physics 1

Abstract The status of fundamental laws is an important issue when deciding between the three broad ontological options of fundamentalism (of which the thesis that physics is complete is typically a subtype), emergentism, and disorder or promiscuous realism. Cartwrights assault on fundamental laws which argues that such laws do not, and cannot, typically state the facts, and hence cannot be used to support belief in a fundamental ontological order, is discussed in this context. A case is made in defence of a moderate form of fundamentalism, which leaves open the possibility of emergentism, but sets itself against the view that our best ontology is disordered. The argument, taking its cue from Bhaskar, relies on a consideration of the epistemic status of experiments, and the question of the possible generality of knowledge gained in unusual or controlled environments.

What Physical Properties Are

This paper concerns the question of how to specify what is to count as physical for the purposes of debates concerning either physicalism or the completeness of physics. I argue that what is needed from an account of the physical depends primarily on the particular issue at stake, and that the demand for a general a priori specification of the physical is misplaced. A number of attempts to say what should be counted as physical are defended from recent attacks by Chris Daly, and a specific proposal due to David Papineau developed and extended. I argue that this approach is more than suitable for the debates for which it is intended.