This
blog's ontology is brought to you by John Heil. This is his 3AM
interview. Also, his book Philosophy of Mind is a good introduction
into philosophy of mind, framed in his ontology-first point of
view.
[Heil,
from 3AM]
.
. .
What
I object to is the unthinking move from linguistic premises to
ontological conclusions, from the assumption, for instance, that if
you have an ‘ineliminable’ predicate that features in an
explanation of some phenomenon of interest, the predicate must name a
property shared by everything to which it applies. (A predicate is
ineliminable if it cannot be analyzed, paraphrased, or translated
into less vexed predicates.)
Philosophers
speak of ‘the pain predicate’. When you look at creatures
plausibly regarded as being in pain, you do not see a single physical
property they all share (and in virtue of which it would be true to
say that they are in pain). Instead of thinking that the predicate,
‘is in pain’, designates a family of similar properties,
philosophers (including Putnam in one of his moods) conclude that the
predicate must name a ‘higher-level’ property possessed by a
creature by virtue of that creature’s ‘lower-level’ physical
properties. You have many different kinds of physical property
supporting a single nonphysical property. This is the kind of
‘non-reductive physicalism’ you have in functionalism.
Non-reductive
physicalism has become a default view, a heavyweight champ that
retains its status until decisively defeated. Non-reductive
physicalism acquired the crown, however, not by merit, but by a kind
of linguistic subterfuge. If you read early anti-reductionist tracts
– for instance, Jerry
Fodor’s ‘Special
Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’
(Synthese, 1974) – you will see that the arguments concern
predicates, categories, taxonomies. Fodor’s point, a correct one in
my judgment, is that there is no prospect of replacing taxonomies in
the special sciences with one drawn from physics. But from this no
ontological conclusions follow – unless you assume that every
‘irreducible’ predicate names a property.
This
language-driven way of thinking is not one that would have occurred
to the ancients, the medievals, or the early moderns – or to my
aforementioned philosophical models. It is an invention of the 20th
century, one that has led to the emasculation of serious ontology.
.
. .
JH:
I am not sure what ‘ontological reduction’ would
be. How could you reduce one thing to another? I understand reduction
as a relation among categories, or predicates, or taxonomies, or
theories. Can you take a true description formulated in biological
terms, and paraphrase it into a description formulated in terms of
quarks and leptons? If that seems unlikely, then the reduction of
biology to physics is not in the cards.
My
conception of ontology differs from that of Ladyman and Ross, so I am
unmoved by their rhetoric. Most philosophers nowadays accept Quine’s
observation that there is no sharp boundary between philosophy and
science. And, as Donald Davidson puts it, ‘where there are no fixed
boundaries, only the timid never risk trespass’. Measured
reflection on what we know about the universe suggests that wherever
physics leads us we will find substances and properties.
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