Papers by Joseph A Baltimore
Erkenntnis, 2020
In taking properties to have powerful or dispositional essences, disposi-tionalism is primed to p... more In taking properties to have powerful or dispositional essences, disposi-tionalism is primed to provide an account of causation. This paper lays out a challenge confronting the dispositionalist's ability to account for how powers causally interact with one another so as to bring about collective results. The challenge, here labeled the "interaction gap," is raised for two competing kinds of approaches to dispositional interaction: contribution combinationist and mutual manifestationist. After carefully highlighting and testing potential resources for closing the interaction gap, it is concluded that the mutual man-ifestationist approach holds a significant advantage. In turn, the importance of the interaction gap itself is highlighted. While powers prime an ontology to yield an account of causation, how far that account can actually go depends on the metaphysical details of one's view of powers and their causal interaction.
Synthese, 2018
Neuron diagrams are heavily employed in academic discussions of causation. Stephen Mumford and Ra... more Neuron diagrams are heavily employed in academic discussions of causation. Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum, however, offer an alternative approach employing vector diagrams, which this paper attempts to develop further. I identify three ways in which dispositionalists have taken the activities of powers to be related: stimulation, mutual manifestation, and contribution combination. While Mumford and Anjum do provide resources for representing contribution combination, which might be sufficient for their particular brand of dispositionalism, I argue that those resources are not flexible enough to further accommodate either stimulation or mutual manifestation. Representational tools are provided to address these limitations, improving the general value of the vector model for dispositionalist approaches to causation.
Erkenntnis, 2017
This paper examines the need for static dispositions within the basic ontology of the powers view... more This paper examines the need for static dispositions within the basic ontology of the powers view of properties. To lend some focus, Neil Williams's well developed case for static dispositions is considered. While his arguments are not necessarily intended to address fundamental ontology, they still provide a useful starting point, a springboard for diving into the deeper metaphysical waters of the dispositionalist approach. Within that ontological context, this paper contends that Williams's arguments fail to establish the need to posit static dispositions, or at least any sort not already well appreciated by advocates of the powers view. The paper then proceeds to suggest an alternative motivation for positing static dispositions, the success of which depends greatly on which ontological approach to objects is paired with the powers view.
Metaphysica, 2014
It is a commonsense thesis that unactualized possibilities are not parts of actuality. To keep hi... more It is a commonsense thesis that unactualized possibilities are not parts of actuality. To keep his modal realism in line with this thesis, David Lewis employed his indexical account of the term “actual.” I argue that the addition of counterpart theory to Lewis’s modal realism undermines his strategy for respecting the commonsense thesis. The case made here also reveals a problem for Lewis’s attempt to avoid haecceitism.
Erkenntnis, 2014
In his recent book, The Universe As We Find It, John Heil offers an updated account of his two-ca... more In his recent book, The Universe As We Find It, John Heil offers an updated account of his two-category (substance and property) ontology. One of his major goals is to avoid including relations in his basic ontology. While there can still be true claims positing relations, such as those of the form “x is taller than y” and “x causes y,” they will be true in virtue of substances and their monadic, non-relational properties. That is, Heil’s two-category ontology is deployed to provide non-relational truthmakers for relational truths. This paper challenges the success of Heil’s project with respect to causation. The arguments here are not entirely negative, however. An option is made available to Heil’s ontology so that it might, at least to some extent, regain non-relational causings.
Theoria, 2013
It has become evident that mind-body supervenience, as merely specifying a covariance between men... more It has become evident that mind-body supervenience, as merely specifying a covariance between mental and physical properties, is consistent with clearly non-physicalist views of the mental, such as emergentism. Consequently, there is a push in the physicalist camp for an ontologically more robust supervenience, a “superdupervenience,” that ensures that properties supervening on physical properties are physicalistically acceptable. Jessica Wilson claims that supervenience is made superduper by Condition on Causal Powers (CCP): Each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. Furthermore, according to Wilson, a wide variety of physicalist positions, both reductive and non-reductive, can be seen as relying on CCP to ensure that properties supervening on physical properties are physicalistically acceptable. I argue that imposing CCP on mind-body supervenience fails to ensure that mental properties are physicalistically acceptable. The problem, I contend, is that while CCP may guard against supervenient mental properties being insufficiently grounded in their physical bases it fails to guard against supervenient mental properties being too deeply grounded in their physical bases.
Synthese, 2010
Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience/exclusion argument attempts to show that non-reductive physicalism is... more Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience/exclusion argument attempts to show that non-reductive physicalism is incompatible with mental causation. This influential argument can be seen as relying on the following principle, which I call “the piggyback principle”: If, with respect to an effect, E, an instance of a property, A, has no causal powers over and above, or in addition to, those had by its supervenience base, B, then the instance of A does not cause E (unless A is identical with B). In their “Epiphenomenalism: The Dos and the Don’ts,” Larry Shapiro and Elliott Sober employ a novel empirical approach to challenge the piggyback principle. Their empirical approach pulls from the experiments of August Weismann regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Through an examination of Weismann’s experiments, Shapiro and Sober extract lessons in reasoning about the epiphenomenalism of a property. And according to these empirically drawn lessons, the piggyback principle is a don’t. My primary aim in this paper is to defend the piggyback principle against Shapiro and Sober’s empirical approach.
Religious Studies, 2006
Kevin Corcoran offers an account of how one can be a physicalist about human persons, deny tempor... more Kevin Corcoran offers an account of how one can be a physicalist about human persons, deny temporal gaps in the existence of persons, and hold that there is an afterlife. I argue that Corcoran’s account both violates the necessity of metaphysical identity and implausibly makes an individual’s existence depend on factors wholly extrinsic to the individual. Corcoran’s defense is considered, as well as Stephen Davis’ suggestions on how an account like Corcoran’s can defend itself against these concerns. It is shown, however, that the difficulties remain in full force and, therefore, that Corcoran’s account fails to reconcile physicalism, no gappy existence, and an afterlife.
Philosophia, 2013
In his recent book Physicalism, Daniel Stoljar argues that there is no version of physicalism tha... more In his recent book Physicalism, Daniel Stoljar argues that there is no version of physicalism that is both true and deserving of the name. His argument employs a variation of Hilary Putnam’s famous twin-earth story, which Stoljar calls “the twin-physics world.” In this paper, I challenge Stoljar’s use of the twin-physics world. The upshot of that challenge, I argue, is that Stoljar fails to show, concerning the versions of physicalism for which he grants the possibility of being true, that none of them is deserving of the name.
Metaphysica, 2011
A major criticism of David Lewis’ counterfactual theory of causation is that it allows too many t... more A major criticism of David Lewis’ counterfactual theory of causation is that it allows too many things to count as causes, especially since Lewis allows, in addition to events, absences to be causes as well. Peter Menzies has advanced this concern under the title “the problem of profligate causation.” In this paper, I argue that the problem of profligate causation provides resources for exposing a tension between Lewis’ acceptance of absence causation and his modal realism. The result is a different problem of profligate causation—one that attacks the internal consistency of Lewisian metaphysics rather than employing common sense judgments or intuitions that conflict with Lewis’ extensive list of causes.
Journal of Philosophical Research, 2013
Concerns about the physical causally excluding the mental have persistently plagued non-reductive... more Concerns about the physical causally excluding the mental have persistently plagued non-reductive physicalism. Yet it is standardly assumed that the exclusion problem does not apply to reductive type physicalism. Here, I challenge this widely accepted advantage of type physicalism over non-reductive physicalism in avoiding the causal exclusion of the mental. In particular, I focus on Jaegwon Kim’s influential version of the causal exclusion argument, i.e. his supervenience argument. I argue that the generalizability of the supervenience argument, combined with type physicalism’s incompatibility with fundamental mental properties, undermines type physicalism’s advantage.
Uploads
Papers by Joseph A Baltimore