Abstract
Since the rise of non-reductive physicalism much talk has been made of mental phenomena being realized by physical phenomena. Can the idea that mentality is physically realized adequately explain how one can remain faithful to physicalism while denying that mental properties are physical? It is argued here that the answer is negative. The basic idea of realization is reviewed, followed by a discussion of Melnyk’s rigorous formulation of the notion. Shoemaker’s subset account of realization is also discussed, along with the type of physical realization Pereboom calls “material constitution.” It is shown that on any of these accounts of realization, the view that the mental is realized by the physical fails to capture the content of physicalism, and therefore none of these accounts of realization reveals how to capture the content of physicalism without the view that mental properties are physical.
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- 1.
- 2.
Recall Block’s (1978) classic functional description of a soda-machine.
- 3.
Applied to the mental and the physical, property dualism is the view that mental properties are not identical with physical properties, which in itself allows the truth of physicalism—assuming, that is, that non-reductive physicalism is a coherent position.
- 4.
This would be an instance of robust multiple realizability, as defined in Chap. 1 (and robustp with the absence of physically necessary and sufficient conditions, and robustm with the absence of metaphysically necessary and sufficient conditions).
- 5.
The associated “condition could be of any kind, and needn’t be the playing of a causal role” (Melnyk 2006, p. 129).
- 6.
One might think that a mental event is not identical with the constituent neural event for the same reason one might believe that a statue is not identical with the constituent lump of clay—namely, the mental episode (statue) has different persistence conditions than the neural event (lump of clay). For example, an item can continue to be the same neural event (lump of clay) while ceasing to be a mental episode (statue). We will have more to say about constitution and identity in Sect. 3.5 when discussing Pereboom’s constitution view.
- 7.
It’s worth mentioning that the non-physical realizing the physical is not found only in the case of mentality. If mental phenomena can realize the stuff of physics, then it should be no surprise that chemical and biological phenomena can do so as well. Consider, for example, a token x of the biological type, tendon, and suppose that x is instantiated in manner P at the level of physics. In this case, x is of a biological type that meets the condition, C, of being instantiated in manner P, and meeting this condition necessitates that there is a token of P. So according to RM, and also (a), biological tendon-token x realizes the stuff of physics. [And if we think of the property of being a tendon rather than a particular tendon as the realizer, and if we also focus on the second-order property of being a property instantiated in manner P, we can see that the biological can realize the physical according to (b) as well].
- 8.
Although, we might need to add to the facts about the distribution of physical tokens, facts about the physical types to which they belong. At the same time, we may wish to drop the idea that the mental facts are a logical consequence of the physical facts, and talk instead of metaphysical or even just physical necessitation. (Recall Sect. 2.3.)
- 9.
However, see how Melnyk (2003, Chap. 2) contrasts the truth-making condition expressed by (ii) with standard supervenience claims.
- 10.
Shoemaker also requires that “X is not a conjunctive property having Y as a conjunct” (2001, p. 78). Without this constraint, realization would be too easy to come by. For any property F and any other property G, the conjunction F & G would realize both F and G. However, Shoemaker later comes to realize that a total ban on conjunctive properties as realizers is too strict (2007, 26–28).
- 11.
This different-subject realization is what Gillett (2003) calls “dimensioned” realization.
- 12.
A reason for denying that they are identical is that they seem to have different modal properties (e.g., the body/lump of clay could survive the loss of personhood/statuehood). Shoemaker also mentions potential differences in historical properties, such as the lump of clay predating the statue (2007, p. 29).
- 13.
Shoemaker notes, however, that strictly speaking “the realizer in the case of property realization is the instantiation of a property” (2007, p. 3), which arguably is more in line with the idea that to realize is to “make real.” He also contends, what philosophers have in mind when they talk of property realization is “the realization of an instance of one property by an instance of another property” (2007, p. 31). So, like Melnyk, Shoemaker thinks of both the realized and the realizer as instances of properties rather than properties themselves.
- 14.
I refer the reader to Melnyk’s (2010) excellent presentation and critique of Shoemaker’s realization2.
- 15.
As mentioned in footnote 11, since realization2 is different-subject realization, it is what Gillett calls the “dimensioned” brand of realization. However, Shoemaker mentions Gillett’s notion of the dimensioned account only when he introduces realization3, in which the realizer properties are had by the microconstituents of the properties realized. With realization3, a property instantiation of some macroscopic object is realized “by a microphysical state of affairs involving the instantiation of micro-properties in micro-entities” (2007, p. 32). See 2007, Chap. 3 for details about this “microrealization.” I will not discuss Shoemaker’s microrealization here, but only mention that the objections I raise to the other two brands of realization apply to this one as well.
- 16.
And he has for some time. See, for example, Shoemaker (1980).
- 17.
As McLaughlin (2009) notes, Shoemaker recognizes this worry and tries to avoid the problem “by including in the realizer the obtaining of a set of causal laws—normally the laws that obtain in the actual world,” in which case, when “the instantiation of property P is said to realize the instantiation of property Q, the full realizer is the occurrence of P together with the obtaining of the laws that give P the causal profile it has in the world in question” (Shoemaker 2007, p. 6). However, if mental properties are not physical, then the laws of nature will include more than just purely physical laws; there will also be irreducibly psychophysical laws, and as McLaughlin indicates, the fact that P together with the psychophysical laws necessitates Q is less than what physicalism demands.
- 18.
Baker (2013, pp. 739–740) makes the point that the multiple realizability that condition (c) entails should not be required in an account of constitution, noting that if some diamond were realized by a different lattice of carbon atoms, it would arguably not be the same (numerically identical) diamond. Her conclusion regarding Pereboom’s account is a bit different from mine. She is making a claim about what constitution (not physicalism) should allow, and she is certainly not claiming that constitution should allow token-identity. Yet, what she says about the diamond does serve to illustrate the point I’m making here that Pereboom’s argument from multiple realizability to token non-identity can be resisted.
- 19.
By ‘property dualist’ I mean anyone who denies that mental properties are physical properties, which includes all non-reductionists, even those who support physicalism.
- 20.
In response to Pereboom’s (2002) claim that the physical token together with the requisite relational features are sufficient for the mental token, Melnyk points out, “for all that Pereboom says, this sufficiency might be sufficiency in accordance with a fundamental law of physical-to-mental emergence” (2008, p. 1292).
- 21.
Condition (c) is deleted since, as was mentioned, while the denial of token-identity perhaps should be allowed, it should not be required by a definition of material constitution fit for defining physicalism.
- 22.
Physicalism entails the physical necessitation of NP, or at least NP* (as described in § 2.3). Recall that NP* is the physical necessitation claim restricted to positive mental facts (to allow the possibility of mental extras).
- 23.
Another non-standard view of realization is provided by Yablo (1992), who describes the relation between mental properties and their physical realizers as a relation of determinables to determinates. In Francescotti (2010), I show that Yablo’s account also has the worrisome consequence that the mental can realize the physical.
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Francescotti, R. (2014). Realization and Constitution. In: Physicalism and the Mind. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9451-0_3
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