Jessica Wilson

No Work for a Theory of Grounding

Abstract It has recently been suggested that a distinctive metaphysical relation— ‘Grounding’—is ultimately at issue in contexts in which some goings-on are said to hold ‘in virtue of’’, be (constitutively) ‘metaphysically dependent on’, or be ‘nothing over and above’ some others. Grounding is supposed to do good work (better than merely modal notions, in particular) in illuminating metaphysical dependence. I argue that Grounding is also unsuited to do this work. To start, Grounding alone cannot do this work, for bare claims of Grounding leave open such basic questions as whether Grounded goings-on exist, whether they are reducible to or rather distinct from Grounding goings-on, whether they are efficacious, and so on; but in the absence of answers to such basic questions, we are not in position to assess the associated claim or theses concerning metaphysical dependence. There is no avoiding appeal to the specific metaphysical relations typically at issue in investigations into dependence—for example, type or token identity, functional realization, classical mereological parthood, the set membership relation, the proper subset relation, the determinable/determinate relation, and so on—which are capable of answering these questions. But, I argue, once the specific relations are on the scene, there is no need for Grounding.

How Superduper Does a Physicalist Supervenience Need to Be

The standard formulations of the supervenience relation present the supervenience of one set of properties on another in terms of property correlations, without placing any constraints on the dependency relation concerned. This does not ensure that properties supervening upon phys-icalistically acceptable base properties are not themselves emergent in a way at odds with materialism. So physicalism needs ‘superdupervenience’. I argue that, where supervenient and base properties are instantiated in the same individuals, Horgan’s requirement of robust explanation is neither sufficient nor necessary for superdupervenience. His paradigm case is compatible with the supervenient property‘s being emergent. This and other unacceptable possibilities may be ruled out by means of a metaphysical constraint on the supervenience relation, which must be internal. Each individual causal power in the set associated with a given supervenient property must be numerically identical with a causal power in the set associated with its base property. Satisfying this condition is all that is needed to render supervenience superduper. In fact a wide variety of non-reductive physicalist accounts are implicitly or explicitly designed to meet this condition, and so are more similar than they seem.

Non-reductive Physicalism and Degrees of Freedom

Some claim that Non-reductive Physicalism (NRP) is an unstable position, on grounds that NRP either collapses into reductive physicalism (contra Non-reduction), or expands into emergentism of a robust or ‘strong’ variety (contra Physicalism). I argue that this claim is unfounded, by attention to the notion of a degree of freedom—roughly, an independent parameter needed to characterize an entity as being in a state functionally relevant to its law-governed properties and behavior. I start by distinguishing three relations that may hold between the degrees of freedom needed to characterize certain special science entities, and those needed to characterize (systems consisting of) their composing physical (or physically acceptable) entities; these correspond to what I call ‘reductions’, ‘restrictions’, and ‘eliminations’ in degrees of freedom. I then argue that eliminations in degrees of freedom, in particular—when strictly fewer degrees of freedom are required to characterize certain special science entities than are required to characterize (systems consisting of) their composing physical (or physically acceptable) entities—provide a basis for making sense of how certain special science entities can be both physically acceptable and ontologically irreducible to physical entities. 1. Introduction2. Degrees of Freedom and Special Science Entities 2.1. Degrees of freedom (DOF)2.2. Reductions, restrictions, and eliminations in DOF 2.2.1. Rigid bodies and molecules2.2.2. Statistical-mechanical aggregates2.2.3. Quantum DOF in the classical limit2.3. ei-level constraints and ei-level determination3. DOF and Weak Emergence4. The Physical Acceptability of Weakly Emergent Entities 4.1. Eliminations in DOF and ‘theory extraction’4.2. An argument by induction for physical acceptability5. The Ontological Irreducibility of Weakly Emergent Entities 5.1. The objection from theoretical deducibility 5.1.1. The response from different DOF5.2. The objection from causal overdetermination 5.2.1. The response from the proper subset strategy5.3. The objection from Ockham’s razor 5.3.1. The response from ontological relevance5.3.2. The response from explanatory relevance6. The Limits of Ontological Irreducibility7. Concluding Remarks Introduction Degrees of Freedom and Special Science Entities 2.1. Degrees of freedom (DOF)2.2. Reductions, restrictions, and eliminations in DOF 2.2.1. Rigid bodies and molecules2.2.2. Statistical-mechanical aggregates2.2.3. Quantum DOF in the classical limit2.3. ei-level constraints and ei-level determination Degrees of freedom (DOF) Reductions, restrictions, and eliminations in DOF 2.2.1. Rigid bodies and molecules2.2.2. Statistical-mechanical aggregates2.2.3. Quantum DOF in the classical limit Rigid bodies and molecules Statistical-mechanical aggregates Quantum DOF in the classical limit ei-level constraints and ei-level determination DOF and Weak Emergence The Physical Acceptability of Weakly Emergent Entities 4.1. Eliminations in DOF and ‘theory extraction’4.2. An argument by induction for physical acceptability Eliminations in DOF and ‘theory extraction’ An argument by induction for physical acceptability The Ontological Irreducibility of Weakly Emergent Entities 5.1. The objection from theoretical deducibility 5.1.1. The response from different DOF5.2. The objection from causal overdetermination 5.2.1. The response from the proper subset strategy5.3. The objection from Ockham’s razor 5.3.1. The response from ontological relevance5.3.2. The response from explanatory relevance The objection from theoretical deducibility 5.1.1. The response from different DOF The response from different DOF The objection from causal overdetermination 5.2.1. The response from the proper subset strategy The response from the proper subset strategy The objection from Ockham’s razor 5.3.1. The response from ontological relevance5.3.2. The response from explanatory relevance The response from ontological relevance The response from explanatory relevance The Limits of Ontological Irreducibility Concluding Remarks

CAUSAL POWERS, FORCES, AND SUPERDUPERVENIENCE

Horgan (1993) proposed that “superdupervenience” – supervenience preserving physicalistic acceptability – is a matter of robust explanation. I argued against him (1999) that (as nearly all physicalist and emergentist accounts reflect) superdupervenience is a matter of Condition on Causal Powers (CCP): every causal power bestowed by the supervenient property is identical with a causal power bestowed by its base property. Here I show that CCP is, as it stands, unsatisfactory, for on the usual understandings of causal power bestowal, it is trivially satisfied or falsified. I offer a revision of CCP which incorporates the evident fact that causal powers are grounded in fundamental forces.

Metaphysical Emergence: Weak and Strong

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 composed 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 suggested 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 distinct 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 special 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

A Determinable-Based Account of Metaphysical Indeterminacy

ABSTRACT Many phenomena appear to be indeterminate, including material macro-object boundaries and certain open future claims. Here I provide an account of indeterminacy in metaphysical, rather than semantic or epistemic, terms. Previous accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy (MI) have typically taken this to involve its being indeterminate which of various determinate (precise) states of affairs obtain. On my alternative account, MI involves its being determinate (or just plain true) that an indeterminate (imprecise) state of affairs obtains. I more specifically suggest that MI involves an objects (i) having a determinable property, but (ii) not having any unique determinate of that determinable. I motivate the needed extension of the traditional understanding of determinables, then argue that a determinable-based account of MI accommodates, in illuminating fashion, both ‘glutty’ and ‘gappy’ cases of MI, while satisfactorily treating concerns about MI stemming from Evans’ argument and the problem of the many.

The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding

Grounding, understood as a primitive posit operative in contexts where metaphysical dependence is at issue, is not able on its own to do any substantive work in characterizing or illuminating metaphysical dependence—or so I argue in “No Work for a Theory of Grounding” (Inquiry 2014). Such illumination rather requires appeal to specific metaphysical relations—type or token identity, functional realization, the determinable–determinate relation, the mereological part–whole relation, and so on—of the sort typically at issue in these contexts. In that case, why posit “big-G” Grounding in addition to the “small-g” grounding relations already in the metaphysician’s toolkit? The best reasons for doing so stem from the Unity argument, according to which the further posit of Grounding is motivated as an apt unifier of the specific relations, and the Priority argument, according to which Grounding is needed in order to fix the direction of priority of the specific relations. I previously considered versions of these arguments, and argued that they did not succeed; in two forthcoming papers, however, Jonathan Schaffer aims to develop a better version of the Unity argument, and offers certain objections to my reasons for rejecting the Priority argument. Here I present and respond to these new arguments for Grounding.

Abductive two-dimensionalism: a new route to the a priori identification of necessary truths

Epistemic two-dimensional semantics (E2D), advocated by Chalmers ( 2006a ) and Jackson ( 1998 ), among others, aims to restore the link between necessity and a priority seemingly broken by Kripke ( 1972 /1980), by showing how armchair access to semantic intensions provides a basis for knowledge of necessary a posteriori truths (among other modal claims). The most compelling objections to E2D are that, for one or other reason, the requisite intensions are not accessible from the armchair (see, e.g., Wilson 1982 ; Melnyk 2008 ). As we substantiate here, existing versions of E2D are indeed subject to such access-based objections. But, we moreover argue, the difficulty lies not with E2D but with the typically presupposed conceiving-based epistemology of intensions. Freed from that epistemology, and given the right alternative—one where inference to the best explanation (i.e., abduction) provides the operative guide to intensions—E2D can meet access-based objections, and fulfill its promise of restoring the desirable link between necessity and a priority. This result serves as a central application of Biggs and Wilson ( 2016 ), according to which abduction is an a priori mode of inference.