Sophie R. Allen

In his conceivability argument, Chalmers assumes that all properties have their causal powers contingently and causal laws are also contingent. We argue that this claim conflicts with how conceivability itself must work for the conceivability argument to be successful. If conceivability is to be an effective mechanism to determine possibility, it must work as a matter of necessity, since contingent conceivability renders conceivability fallible for an ideal reasoner and the fallible conceivability of zombies would not entail their possibility. But necessary conceivability must either be governed by necessitating causal processes or by a necessitating non-causal mechanism. We argue that the latter option is untenable or mysterious; whereas, if Chalmers chooses the former and applies it only to conceivability, his solution is ad hoc, but if he accepts necessary causal powers or processes generally, the conceivability argument fails. We conclude that, as it stands, the Conceivability Argument does not establish that physicalism is false.

Do conceivability arguments work against physicalism if properties are causal powers? By considering three different ways of understanding causal powers and the modality associated with them, I will argue that most, if not all, physicalist powers theorists should not be concerned about the conceivability argument because its conclusion that physicalism is false does not hold in their favoured ontology. I also defend specific powers theories against some recent objections to this strategy, arguing that the conception of properties as powerful blocks conceivability arguments unless a rather implausible form of emergence is true.

This paper investigates the plausibility of Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon’s proposal to distinguish intrinsic properties from extrinsic ones in terms of independence from accompaniment and grounding. I argue that the proposed criterion is not adequate to determine intrinsicality, since according to it some intuitively extrinsic properties turn out to be intrinsic. I suggest and evaluate two responses: first, one could characterize a conception of independence which is specific to the individual instantiating the property; and second, one could justify two assumptions about properties which entail that counterexample properties of the kinds I present do not exist, most importantly that there are no fundamental properties which are instantiated in an intrinsic fashion by some individuals and an extrinsic fashion by others. Although the latter seems prima facie plausible, I present some potential counterexamples to it from current physical theory. I conclude that the grounding- and independence-based criterion of intrinsicality can be defended from my objections, although the cost of doing so might make it more attractive to characterize intrinsicality in terms of independence, or in terms of grounding, alone.

ABSTRACTMetaphysics has a problem with plurality: in many areas of discourse, there are too many good theories, rather than just one. This embarrassment of riches is a particular problem for metaphysical realists who want metaphysics to tell us the way the world is and for whom one theory is the correct one. A recent suggestion is that we can treat the different theories as being functionally or explanatorily equivalent to each other, even though they differ in content. The aim of this paper is to explore whether the notion of functionally equivalent theories can be extended and utilized in the defence of metaphysical realism, drawing upon themes from structuralism in the philosophies of mathematics and science in which the specifics of theories do not matter as long as the relations in which they stand to other theories are maintained. I argue that despite its initial attractiveness, there are significant difficulties with this proposal. Discovering these obstacles thwarts the realist structuralist project, but reveals interesting features of metaphysical systems.

In her recent paper ‘The Epistemology of Propaganda’ Rachel McKinnon discusses what she refers to as ‘TERF propaganda’. We take issue with three points in her paper. The first is her rejection of the claim that ‘TERF’ is a misogynistic slur. The second is the examples she presents as commitments of so-called ‘TERFs’, in order to establish that radical (and gender critical) feminists rely on a flawed ideology. The third is her claim that standpoint epistemology can be used to establish that such feminists are wrong to worry about a threat of male violence in relation to trans women. In Section 1 we argue that ‘TERF’ is not a merely descriptive term; that to the extent that McKinnon offers considerations in support of the claim that ‘TERF’ is not a slur, these considerations fail; and that ‘TERF’ is a slur according to several prominent accounts in the contemporary literature. In Section 2, we argue that McKinnon misrepresents the position of gender critical feminists, and in doing so fails to establish the claim that the ideology behind these positions is flawed. In Section 3 we argue that McKinnon’s criticism of Stanley fails, and one implication of this is that those she characterizes as ‘positively privileged’ cannot rely on the standpoint-relative knowledge of those she characterizes as ‘negatively privileged’. We also emphasize in this section McKinnon’s failure to understand and account for multiple axes of oppression, of which the cis/trans axis is only one.

This paper investigates interactive kinds, a class of kinds suggested by Ian Hacking for which classification generates a feedback loop between the classifiers and what is classified, and argues that human interactive kinds should be distinguished from non-human ones. First, I challenge the claim that there is nothing ontologically special about interactive kinds in virtue of their members being classified as such. To do so, I reject Cooper’s counterexample to Hacking’s thesis that kind descriptions are necessary for intentional action, arguing that classification is required for intentional action. Having considered ways to characterise the metaphysics of interactive kinds and the semantics of kind terms, I argue that the fact that classification facilitates intentional action makes human interactive kinds ontologically distinctive because of the anomalous nature of the change which the kind-classification brings about. I then briefly examine further distinguishing features of human interactive kinds.

What determines qualitative sameness and difference? This book explores four principal accounts of the ontological basis of properties, including universals, trope theory, resemblance nominalism, and class nominalism, considering the assumptions and ontolological commitments which are required to make each into a plausible account of properties. The latter half of the book investigates the applications of property theory and the different conceptions of properties which might be adopted with these in mind: first, the possibility and desirability of individuating properties, and the distinction between sparse and abundant conceptions of properties; second, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties; third, the relationship between properties and their causal powers, and whether this is necessary or contingent; fourth, the relationship between properties and causation, modality, and laws of nature; finally, whether properties exist objectively, and if they do, what our epistemic position is with respect to such entities.

This paper concerns the conjunction of naturalism---the thesis that the methods of science, and those alone, provide the basic sources of evidence of what there is in the world-with various types of realism. First, I distinguish different forms of naturalist realism on the basis of their ontological commitments in terms of five existential presuppositions about the entities and processes which exist independently of the mind. I then argue that some of these presuppositions are in prima facie conflict with the naturalists’ endorsement of the methods of science, since certain current empirical theories could not be true if these metaphysical presuppositions are correct. Given that these ontological presuppositions have already been criticized by antirealists and supernaturalists on philosophical grounds, I suggest that realism may be more defensible from a naturalist perspective if the realist abandons, or remains agnostic about the truth of the problematic presuppositions and thereby minimizes commitment to mind-independent entities.

Wisely, the authors begin this book by describing it as a polemic. They argue that most contemporary analytic metaphysics is a waste of time and resources since contemporary ‘neo-scholastic’ metaphysical theorizing cannot hope to attain objective truth given its penchant for making a priori claims about the nature of the world which are backed up by appeal to intuition. In engaging in this activity, metaphysicians have, the authors claim, abandoned hope of locating any interesting connection between their metaphysical pronouncements and how our best empirical theories describe the world. Moreover, the success attained by empirical science just cannot be matched by metaphysical theorizing and so, faced with this asymmetry, empirical science wins: a priori metaphysical theorizing must give way to a naturalistic form of metaphysics, a positive account of which the authors attempt to elucidate in the second and third, rather lengthy chapters of the book.The first chapter consists of a statement of the authors’ negative view, a vigorous, sustained and sometimes withering attack upon contemporary a priori metaphysics. Most ire is reserved for those who indulge in what the authors call ‘pseudo-scientific metaphysics’; that is, those who pay lip service to keeping their metaphysical speculation in tune with physics, only to constrain their ontology in such a way that the entities and processes within it do not even play a role in current physical theory, or are in straightforward contradiction with it. Much philosophy of science and scientific metaphysics is too superficial and simplistic to deserve the name and bears more relation to ‘the philosophy of “A” Level chemistry’. The guilty in this respect include David Lewis, Jaegwon Kim, Jonathan Lowe, Donald Davidson, Jerry Fodor, Crawford Elder, Trenton Merricks among …

The aim of this paper will be to show that certain strongly realist forms of scientific realism are either misguided or misnamed. I will argue that, in the case of a range of robustly realist formulations of scientific realism, the ‘scientific’ and the ‘realism’ are in significant philosophical and methodological conflict with each other; in particular, that there is a tension between the actual subject matter and methods of science on the one hand, and the realists' metaphysical claims about which categories of entities the world contains on the other.

A significant ontological commitment is required to sustain metaphysical realism—the view that there is a single, objective way the world is—in order to defend it from common sense objections. This involves presupposing the existence of properties (or tropes, or universals) and relations between them which define the objective structure of the world. This paper explores the grounds for accepting this ontological assumption and examines a sceptical argument which questions whether, having assumed the world is objectively divided into fundamental properties, we could ever know which properties these are. It then assesses the responses available to the metaphysical realist, arguing that the sceptical difficulty cannot merely be dismissed by means of another assumption in the manner of radical scepticism, as David Lewis suggests, but that the sceptic's argument might be defused by the non-question-begging success of some form of strong scientific realism which links the predicates of our scientific theories directly to the fundamental properties the world contains. It remains unclear however whether this widely accepted metaphysical theory can find principled philosophical support.

This paper contrasts two metaphysical accounts of modality and properties: Modal Realism which treats possible entities as primitive; and Strong Dispositionalism in which metaphysical possibility and necessity are determined by actually existing dispositions or powers. I argue that Strong Dispositionalism loses its initial advantages of simplicity and parsimony over Modal Realism as it is extended and amended to account for metaphysical rather than just causal necessity. Furthermore, to avoid objections to its material and formal adequacy, Strong Dispositionalism requires a richer fundamental ontology which it cannot explicate without appealing either to possible worlds or to an account of counterfactual truth conditions, both of which Strong Dispositionalism was intended to replace.

It is commonly believed that Quine's principal argument for the Indeterminacy of Translation requires an untenably strong account of the underdetermination of theories by evidence, namely that that two theories may be compatible with all possible evidence for them and yet incompatible with each other. In this article, I argue that Quine's conclusion that translation is indeterminate can be based upon the weaker, uncontroversial conception of theoretical underdetermination, in conjunction with a weak reading of the ‘Gavagai’ argument which establishes the underdetermination of the sense and reference of subsentential terms. If underdetermination is considered to be a widespread phenomenon in science, or in inductive reasoning more generally, then the Indeterminacy of Translation will be widespread too. Finally, I briefly consider two issues concerning the scope of this conclusion about the Indeterminacy of Translation: first, whether the argument presupposes behaviourism; and second, whether indeterminacy is restricted to the case of radical translation. I argue that the answer to both these questions is negative, and thus that the thesis of semantic indeterminacy remains relevant to those who disagree with Quine about some issues concerning the nature of mind and language.

Can metaphysics ever really be compatible with science? In this paper, I investigate the implications of the methodological approach to metaphysical theorizing known as naturalized metaphysics. In the past, metaphysics has been rejected entirely by empirically-minded philosophers as being too open to speculation and for relying on methods which are not conducive to truth. But naturalized metaphysics aims to be a less radical solution to these difficulties, treating metaphysical theorizing as being continuous with science and restricting metaphysical methods to empirically respectable ones. I investigate a significant difficulty for naturalized metaphysics: that it lacks the methodological resources to comparatively evaluate competing ontological theories, or even to distinguish adequately between them. This objection is more acute when applied to robust realist versions of naturalized metaphysics, since the realist should be able to say which theory is true of the objective world. If this objection holds, then it seems that the commitment to naturalized metaphysics, or to robust realism about the categories and processes in metaphysics, will have to be relaxed.