Papers by Matthew J Rellihan
Philosophy in review, Apr 30, 2013
Philosophy in review, 2011
Acta Analytica, 2015
Representationalism is widely thought to grease the skids of ontological reduction. If phenomenal... more Representationalism is widely thought to grease the skids of ontological reduction. If phenomenal character is just a certain sort of intentional content, representationalists argue, the hard problem of accommodating consciousness within a broadly naturalistic view of the world reduces to the much easier problem of accommodating intentionality. I argue, however, that there's a fatal flaw in this reasoning, for if phenomenal character really is just a certain sort of intentional content, it's not anything like the sort of intentional content described by our best naturalistic theories. These theories make intentional content a mere Cambridge property of intentional states, a property that can be gained or lost through changes to distinct and causally disconnected objects. But consciousness is manifestly not like this; consciousness cannot suffer a mere Cambridge change. Thus, whatever ground is gained by explaining the phenomenal in terms of the intentional is lost again by undermining our best attempts to explain the intentional in terms of the natural. A Pyrrhic victory at best.
Analytic Philosophy, Mar 8, 2023
Frankfurt‐style cases suggest that an agent's moral responsibility for an action supervenes o... more Frankfurt‐style cases suggest that an agent's moral responsibility for an action supervenes on the causal history of that action—at least when epistemic considerations are held constant. However, PAP‐style cases suggest that moral responsibility does not supervene on causal history, for judgments concerning an agent's responsibility for an action are also sensitive to the presence of alternative—and causally idle—possibilities. I appeal to the causal modeling tradition and the definitions of actual causation that derive therefrom in an attempt to resolve this contradiction. I show that even the weakest definitions of actual causation proposed in the literature establish that some PAP‐style cases constitute genuine counterexamples to the supervenience thesis. I consider several responses to these counterexamples on behalf of the defenders of supervenience and show that they fail. Our best current thinking on causation thus appears to be inconsistent with an intuitive and widely held claim concerning the nature of moral responsibility.
Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 2021
I argue that Kroedel's 'Simple Argument' for downward causation fails and that this f... more I argue that Kroedel's 'Simple Argument' for downward causation fails and that this failure has consequences for any attempt to establish the reality of downward causation by appealing to counterfactual theories thereof. A central premise in Kroedel's argument equivocates. On one reading, it is true but renders the argument invalid; on another, it renders the argument valid but is likely false. I dedicate most of my efforts to establishing the second of these two claims. I show that the purported physical effects of mental properties do not counterfactually depend upon the total realizers of these properties. If counterfactual dependence is necessary for causation, it follows that mental properties are not causes. If counterfactual dependence is merely sufficient for causation, it follows that no appeal to counterfactuals will by itself succeed in showing that mental properties are causes.
Philosophia, 2020
I argue for the epiphenomenality of functional properties by means of thought experiments and gen... more I argue for the epiphenomenality of functional properties by means of thought experiments and general principles. General principles suggest that an object's causal powers nomologically supervene on its intrinsic properties and that its functional role does not. This implies that it is possible for an object to lose its functional role without undergoing any change to its intrinsic properties or causal powers. Nor is it difficult to conceive of such scenarios. Various thought experiments are introduced for just this purpose. But properties that can vary independently of an object's causal powers in this way are epiphenomenal, for their instantiation by an object at a time makes no difference to the causal processes the object is involved in at that time. The same processes would have occurred even if such properties hadn't been instantiated. The intrinsicness thesis is controversial, but it is not controversial that it is true of productive causation, and many believe that productive causation is the only form of mental causation worth having. Nevertheless, in the paper's final section I consider dependence-based accounts of causation, which do not presuppose the intrinsicness of causal powers, and show that they too have difficulties accounting for the efficacy of functional properties.
Synthese, 2019
As conceived by Kim, the causal exclusion argument targets all forms of nonreductive physicalism ... more As conceived by Kim, the causal exclusion argument targets all forms of nonreductive physicalism equally, but by restricting its focus to functionalist varieties of nonreductivism, I am able to develop a version of the argument that has a number of virtues lacking in the original. First, the revised argument has no need for Kim's causal exclusion principle, which many find dubious if not simply false. Second, the revised argument can be adapted to either a production-based conception of causation, as Kim himself favors, or to any of a number of dependence-based conceptions, like the ones favored by many of Kim's critics. And, finally, the revised argument does not have the objectionable consequence that all so-called higher-level properties are epiphenomenal, for it does not generalize in the way that Kim's original version of the argument arguably does. Nor does it concede much to narrow the scope of the argument in the way proposed. Those who adopt nonreductive theories of mind do so, by and large, on the strength of functionalist arguments for the multiple realizability of mental states. If functionalism entails that mental properties are epiphenomenal, this thus deals a critical, if not quite fatal, blow to nonreductivism.
Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2017
created when we take responsibility for what is disclosed in everyday social encounters: “It is i... more created when we take responsibility for what is disclosed in everyday social encounters: “It is in authenticity that this omnipresent, underlying claim to respect the other is exhibited as such” (PMN 163). In this way, we complement our terminology of persecution and vulnerability with that of attunement and authenticity, but it remains to be seen how this resolves our initial problem vis-à-vis the legitimacy of our ethical claims. Smith writes that authenticity exposes us to what is always already there (PMN 163), but if the legitimacy of what we experience has already been questioned, it is not clear how being exposed to it helps us to clarify its ambiguous meaning. By asserting its universal presence within all human encounters, it begins to look as though we are assuming precisely that which we said requires further substantiation. Yet Smith believes that “[t]here is no further argument to be made for this claim because its grounding is phenomenological” (PMN 163). Even if we put this consideration aside and agree that the experience of the face, as it overflows every concept we try to impose upon it, is itself an immediate kind of testimony to metaphysical ethics, another problem arises for us. In the second development of resoluteness, whereby the subject adjudicates among competing moral demands, we begin to weigh the various injunctions against one another in hopes of making appropriate compromises in a just society. As Smith puts it, our moral obligations are responsive to everyone, not only the singular other (PMN 168). Authentic self-responsibility requires that “I justify myself to the other and all the others at every moment” (PMN 169). The success of this argument directs our attention to the practical nature of social life, and how we are obligated to others only insofar as we are capable of putting into effect the moral principles which best negotiate the myriad demands placed upon us. As an abstract ideal, perhaps we will continue to speak of our infinite responsibility toward others. But if we take seriously the need to negotiate among the conditional, historically oriented values of our respective communities, then it becomes increasingly difficult to agree that the face has its own ethical valence or content apart from these values. It might be argued instead that the infinite is devoid of all content, and that our commitments to others are best adjudicated in the context of historical norms limited by the pragmatic realities of our attachments and conflicts.
Philosophy in Review, Feb 12, 2010
Philosophy in Review, Feb 19, 2010
Philosophical Psychology, 2012
Acta Analytica, 2013
One of the most important objections to information-based semantic theories is that they are inca... more One of the most important objections to information-based semantic theories is that they are incapable of explaining Frege cases. The worry is that if a concept’s intentional content is a function of its informational content, as such theories propose, then it would appear that coreferring expressions have to be synonymous, and if this is true, it’s difficult to see how an agent could believe that a is F without believing that b is F whenever a and b are identical. I argue that this appearance is deceptive. If we heed the distinction between the analog and digital contents of a signal, it is actually possible to reconstruct something akin to Frege’s sense/reference distinction in purely information-theoretic terms. This allows informational semanticists to treat coreferring expressions as semantically distinct and to solve Frege cases in the same way that Frege did—namely, by appealing to the different contents of coreferring expressions.
Analytic Philosophy, 2021
Philosophy in Review, Feb 11, 2010
Evolutionary psychologists attempt to infer our evolved psychology from the selection pressures p... more Evolutionary psychologists attempt to infer our evolved psychology from the selection pressures present in our ancestral environments. Their use of this inference strategyoften called ''adaptive thinking''-is thought to be justified by way of appeal to a rather modest form of adaptationism, according to which the mind's adaptive complexity reveals it to be a product of selection. I argue, on the contrary, that the mind's being an adaptation is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the validity of adaptive thinking, and that evolutionary psychology's predictive project is in fact committed to an extremely strong and highly implausible form of adaptationism. According to this ''strong adaptationism,'' the macroevolutionary trajectory of a population is determined by, and therefore predictable on the basis of, the selection pressures acting upon it. Not only is this form of adaptationism prima facie highly implausible, it requires making a number of naïve and likely false assumptions concerning the nature of heritable phenotypic variation in natural populations. In particular, it assumes that phenotypic variation is inevitably small in its extent, unbiased in its direction, and copious in its quantity. Because it is unlikely that these conditions obtain as a general rule, and even more unlikely that they obtained in early human populations, I conclude that there is little reason to believe that adaptive thinking can be used to infer the current structure of our minds from evidence of past selection pressures.
Philosophical Studies, 2009
How can abductive reasoning be physical, feasible, and reliable? This is Fodor’s riddle of abduct... more How can abductive reasoning be physical, feasible, and reliable? This is Fodor’s riddle of abduction, and its apparent intractability is the cause of Fodor’s recent pessimism regarding the prospects for cognitive science. I argue that this riddle can be solved if we augment the computational theory of mind to allow for non-computational mental processes, such as those posited by classical associationists and contemporary connectionists. The resulting hybrid theory appeals to computational mechanisms to explain the semantic coherence of inference and associative mechanisms to explain the efficient retrieval of relevant information from memory. The interaction of these mechanisms explains how abduction can be physical, feasible, and reliable.
Ratio, 2008
Some opponents of the incommensurability thesis, such as Davidson and Rorty, have argued that the... more Some opponents of the incommensurability thesis, such as Davidson and Rorty, have argued that the very idea of incommensurability is incoherent and that the existence of alternative and incommensurable conceptual schemes is a conceptual impossibility. If true, this refutes Kuhnian relativism and Kantian scepticism in one fell swoop. For Kuhnian relativism depends on the possibility of alternative, humanly accessible conceptual schemes that are incommensurable with one another, and the Kantian notion of a realm of unknowable things-in-themselves gives rise to the possibility of humanly inaccessible schemes that are incommensurable with even our best current or future science. In what follows we argue that the possibility of incommensurability of either the Kuhnian or the Kantian variety is inescapable and that this conclusion is forced upon us by a simple consideration of what is involved in acquiring a concept. It turns out that the threats from relativism and scepticism are real, and that anyone, including Davidson himself, who has ever defended an account of concept acquisition is committed to one or the other of these two possibilities.1
Philosophical Studies, 2005
Fodor argues that our minds must have epistemic limitations because there must be endogenous cons... more Fodor argues that our minds must have epistemic limitations because there must be endogenous constraints on the class of concepts we can acquire. However, his argument for the existence of these endogenous constraints is falsified by the phenomenon of the deferential acquisition of concepts. If we allow for the acquisition of concepts through deferring to experts and scientific instruments, then our conceptual capacity will be without endogenous constraints, and there will be no reason to think that our minds are epistemically bounded.
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Papers by Matthew J Rellihan