On the Explanatory Power of Dispositional Realism

Mind

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2009

pointing out the superior importance of those other features? If Baker insists on avoiding a mereological clause, she could at least require that x and y must be made of the very same portion of stuff, and hold (à la Ned Markosian) that facts about portions of stuff are irreducible to facts about things, and vice versa. This avoids Sider's counterexample , and seems to fit well into Baker's general non-reductionist and ontologically generous worldview. A common complaint is that Baker's view needlessly multiplies entities, since it implies that if x constitutes y, then x and y are two things. Indeed, since, e.g., my body is a person, on her view, it seems to follow that there are two people in my chair now. Baker, however, declares these inferences invalid: 'If x and y are constitutionally related, then I would deny that where x and y are, there are two things. x and y are numerically the same' (p. ). As this idea-numerical sameness without numerical identity-is part of her view, she says, the 'two things' charge is questionbegging. This defence is weak, however. A Cartesian dualist, impressed by the objection that his theory is ontologically unparsimonious, might add to it the idea 'x and y are numerically the same iff either (i) x = y, or (ii) x is a body and y is x's soul, or (iii) y is a body and x is y's soul'. This would not render question-begging the objection from parsimony levelled against the other part of his view. Baker needs to explain how her manoeuvre differs from this dualist's. (She repeatedly states that Aristotle held a view relevantly similar to hers. But this shows that she is right only if he was right to deny the inferences. Whether the inferences hold is what is at issue.) Baker also responds to an epistemic version of the above objection (mainly due to Eric Olson). Whenever I think 'I am not the body', my body thinks 'I am not the body'. But the body is mistaken. How do I know that I am not the one making this mistake? Baker replies (p. ) that whenever my body says and thinks 'I', it does not refer to itself, but to me. So it is not mistaken after all. This strategy, the distinction between 'I'-user and 'I'-referent, was originally proposed by Harold Noonan (though Baker does not mention this). However, it is less promising in Baker's case, since unlike Noonan, she takes the body to be a person. How can something be a person if it cannot perform the fairly elementary task of thinking and speaking about itself in the first person? Baker often quickly dismisses objections such as those just discussed as being based on simple misunderstandings. This regrettable tendency contrasts with the carefulness and thoroughness with which, in this book no less than in her earlier works, she usually develops and formulates her own views. Oxford University J J A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing the Unobservable. B A C. (Cambridge UP, . Pp. xvii + . Price £..) In this exceptionally clearly written book, Chakravartty argues that the debate between scientific realists and scientific anti-realists calls for attention to the metaphysics of science. This is argued for in two ways. Chakravartty first points out that scientific realists make metaphysical assumptions about causation, laws and

In this essay, I will briefly present the difference between the regularity and necessity views of laws of nature after which I will argue that laws of nature are metaphysically necessary which I will try to defend by advocating new essentialism. First, I will explain what it means to be metaphysically necessary and whether there exist other kinds of necessities. After introducing different notions of necessity which are used in the present time (metaphysical, logical and nomological) I will explain the difference between them and emphasize that we will concentrate on metaphysical necessity. Also I will explain the notion of laws of nature and emphasize that they are real and objective phenomena in the world and not mere sentences about regularities that obtain in it. When the language frame is set, I will present some historical background which is needed to understand the topic; I will explain the Humean notion of causality which is the basis for the regularity views of laws that were considered dominant for quite some period of time. Hume shook some of the dogmatic beliefs of his time about causation, induction and necessity and managed to influence a great deal of upcoming philosophers to think of causality as something that is not necessary. Necessitarian views on the other hand have strengthened since Kripke in the early 1970s revealed his revolutionary idea that there are a posteriori necessities. In the main part of this essay I will present the view of dispositional essentialism which claims that laws of nature are metaphysically necessary because there are causal powers in the world i.e. dispositions, which constitute the essences of the natural kinds. I will explain what dispositions are and try to prove that they are not only predicates we use to describe objects of our concern and interactions between them but that they really exist in the world. Besides adopting dispositional realism and claiming that dispositions are essential properties of natural kinds I will argue that there is enough scientific evidence to support that claim. I will also argue that this implies the metaphysical necessity of laws of nature.

Synthese, 2004

This paper addresses two related questions. First, what is involved in giving a distinctively realist and naturalist construal of an area of discourse, that is, in so much as stating a distinctively realist and naturalist position about, for example, content or value? I defend a condition that guarantees the realism and naturalism of any position satisfying it, at least in the case of positions on content, but perhaps in other cases as well. Second, what sorts of considerations render a distinctively realist and naturalist position more plausible than its irrealist and non-naturalist rivals? The answer here focuses again on theories of content and is wholly negative. I argue that the standard array of arguments offered in support of realist and naturalist theories in fact provide equal support for a host of irrealist and non-naturalist ones. Taken together, these considerations reveal an important gap in the recent philosophical literature on content. The challenge to proponents of putatively realist and naturalist theories is to insure that those theories so much as state distinctively realist and naturalist positions and then to identify arguments that support what is distinctively realist and naturalist about them. ".. . the deepest motivation for intentional irrealism derives. .. from a certain ontological intuition: that there is no place for intentional categories in a physicalistic view of the world; that the intentional can't be naturalized." 1 "Realists about representational states. .. must. .. have some view about what it is for a state to be representational. .. . Well, what would it be like to have a serious theory of representation? Here. .. there is some consensus to work from. The worry about representation is above all that the semantic (and/or intentional) will prove permanently recalcitrant to integration in the natural order. .. " 2 Over the last century, philosophers have puzzled over how best to interpret areas of discourse whose subject matter is in some way normative. Ethicists, for example, have wondered about how best to understand judgments about a thing's goodness, whether to say of something that it is good is, for example, to attribute a property, goodness, to it or simply to recommend it. One apparent difficulty for settling this issue is that goodness, if it exists, would be the kind of thing that ought to motivate us. Realists about goodness are, roughly, those who hold that there is a real property of goodness referred to by our uses of "x is good". The challenge for realists

PROBLEMS FROM ARMSTRONG, Acta Philosophica Fennica 84, Helsinki 2008. Eds. Tim De Mey and Markku Keinänen.

2007

Scientific realism is the view that our best scientific theories give approximately true descriptions of both observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent world. Debates between realists and their critics are at the very heart of the philosophy of science. Anjan Chakravartty traces the contemporary evolution of realism by examining the most promising strategies adopted by its proponents in response to the forceful challenges of antirealist sceptics, resulting in a positive proposal for scientific realism today. He examines the core principles of the realist position, and sheds light on topics including the varieties of metaphysical commitment required, and the nature of the conflict between realism and its empiricist rivals. By illuminating the connections between realist interpretations of scientific knowledge and the metaphysical foundations supporting them, his book offers a compelling vision of how realism can provide an internally consistent and coherent account of...

In this paper, I look at the argument for Dispositional Essentialism (DE) that has been put forward by A. Bird in his recent book "Nature's Metaphysics". Bird's overall argument comes in two parts, one negative and one positive, which together are to establish DE as the best contender for a theory of properties and laws. I argue that, even if all their particular steps go through, both parts of the argument have significant gaps. The negative argument, if successful, shows that at least one property has an essence, but not that any property has a dispositional essence. The positive argument, which aims to demonstrate the explanatory power of DE, fails to take account of the quantitative nature of the fundamental natural properties and laws. I finish by suggesting a revision of DE's doctrine that might solve the latter problem, but yet remains to be spelled out.

Metascience, 2010

In: Kenneth R. Westphal (ed.), Realism, Science, and Pragmatism, Routledge, 2014., 2014