Causal essentialism and the identity of indiscernibles

Causal essentialists hold that a property essentially bears its causal and nomic relations. Further, as many causal essentialists have noted, the main motivations for causal essentialism also motivate holding that properties are individuated in terms of their causal and nomic relations. This amounts to a kind of identity of indiscernibles thesis; properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations are identical. This can be compared with the more well-known identity of indiscernibles thesis, according to which particulars that are qualitatively indiscernible are identical. Robert Adams has developed a well-known objection to this thesis by considering a series of possibilities involving nearly qualitatively indiscernible particulars that naturally leads to a possibility involving qualitatively indiscernible particulars. I argue that we can construct parallel cases involving a series of possibilities involving properties that are nearly indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations that naturally lead to possibilities involving properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations. The same features that make Adams’ argument forceful also carry over to my cases, giving us a powerful objection to the causal essentialist identity of indiscernibles thesis.     

The disappearing agent objection to event-causal libertarianism

The question I raise is whether Mark Balaguer’s event-causal libertarianism can withstand the disappearing agent objection. The concern is that with the causal role of the events antecedent to a decision already given, nothing settles whether the decision occurs, and so the agent does not settle whether the decision occurs. Thus it would seem that in this view the agent will not have the control in making decisions required for moral responsibility. I examine whether Balaguer’s position has the resources to answer this objection.     

Causal Exclusion and Causal Bayes Nets

In this paper I reconstruct and evaluate the validity of two versions of causal exclusion arguments within the theory of causal Bayes nets. I argue that supervenience relations formally behave like causal relations. If this is correct, then it turns out that both versions of the exclusion argument are valid when assuming the causal Markov condition and the causal minimality condition. I also investigate some consequences for the recent discussion of causal exclusion arguments in the light of an interventionist theory of causation such as Woodward's ( 2003 ) and discuss a possible objection to my causal Bayes net reconstruction.     

Mind,Mortality and Material Being

Many religiously minded materialist philosophers have attempted to understand the doctrine of the survival of death from within a physicalist approach. Their goal is not to show the doctrine false, but to explain how it can be true. One such approach has been developed by Peter van Inwagen. After explaining what I call the duplication objection, I present van Inwagen’s proposal and show how a proponent might attempt to solve the problem of duplication. I argue that the very features of the view that aid the proponent in responding to the duplication objection entails the possibility of an impossible state of affairs—that two distinct persons can at the same time be identical with the same bundle of material simples. The religiously minded materialist is caught between the horns of a dilemma. One’s view regarding human persons must be robust enough to account for personal identity over time, and so not fall to the duplication objection. At the same time, the view must not entail the possibility of two persons temporarily having complete coincident existence.     

THE VISUAL EXPERIENCE OF CAUSATION

The thesis that we can visually perceive causal relations is distinct from the thesis that visual experiences can represent causal relations. I defend the latter thesis about visual experience, and argue that although they are suggestive, the data provided by Albert Michotte's experiments on perceptual causality do not establish this thesis. Turning to the perception of causality, I defend the claim that we can perceive causation against the objection that its arcane features are unlikely to be represented in experience.     

Intentions and instability: a defence of causal decision theory

Andy Egan has recently presented a prominent objection to causal decision theory (CDT). However, in this paper, I argue that this objection fails if CDT’s proponent accepts the plausible view that decision-theoretic options are intentions. This result both provides a defence of CDT against a prominent objection and highlights the importance of resolving the nature of decision-theoretic options.

     

Reply to Nagasawa on the Inconsistency Objection to the Knowledge Argument

Yujin Nagasawa has recently defended Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument from the “inconsistency objection.” The objection claims that the premises of the knowledge argument are inconsistent with qualia epiphenomenalism. Nagasawa defends Jackson by showing that the objection mistakenly assumes a causal theory of phenomenal knowledge. I argue that although this defense might succeed against two versions of the inconsistency objection, mine is unaffected by Nagasawa’s argument, in which case the inconsistency in the knowledge argument remains.     

Bad Luck Once Again

In a recent article in this journal, Storrs McCall and E.J. Lowe sketch an account of indeterminist free will designed to avoid the luck objection that has been wielded to such effect against event‐causal libertarianism. They argue that if decision‐making is an indeterministic process and not an event or series of events, the luck objection will fail. I argue that they are wrong: the luck objection is equally successful against their account as against existing event‐causal libertarianisms. Like the event‐causal libertarianism their account is meant to supplant, the process view cannot offer a reasons explanation of the agent’s choice itself; that choice is explained by nothing except chance. The agent therefore fails to exercise freedom‐level control over it.     

Kim Against Dualism

This paper presents and evaluates Jaegwon Kim’s recent argument against substance dualism. The argument runs as follows. Causal interaction between two entities requires pairing relations. Pairing relations are spatial relations, such as distance and orientation. Souls are supposedly nonspatial, immaterial substances. So it is hard to see how souls could enter into paired causal relations with material substances. I show that Kim’s argument against dualism fails. I conclude by sketching a way the substance dualist could meet Kim’s central challenge of explaining how souls and bodies are uniquely paired, allowing for them to enter into specific causal relationships, forming a singular soul–body unit. “Thanks to Neal Judisch, Dean Zimmerman, Max Goss, Robert O’Connor, John Heil, Sloan Lee, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Carl Ginet, and Deborah Smith for helpful comments. Thanks also to the audience at the Ohio Philosophical Association Annual Meeting 2004 for helpful comments and suggestions.”     

A powers theory of modality: or,how I learned to stop worrying and reject possible worlds

Possible worlds, concrete or abstract as you like, are irrelevant to the truthmakers for modality—or so I shall argue in this paper. First, I present the neo-Humean picture of modality, and explain why those who accept it deny a common sense view of modality. Second, I present what I take to be the most pressing objection to the neo-Humean account, one that, I argue, applies equally well to any theory that grounds modality in possible worlds. Third, I present an alternative, properties-based theory of modality and explore several specific ways to flesh the general proposal out, including my favored version, the powers theory. And, fourth, I offer a powers semantics for counterfactuals that each version of the properties-based theory of modality can accept, mutatis mutandis. Together with a definition of possibility and necessity in terms of counterfactuals, the powers semantics of counterfactuals generates a semantics for modality that appeals to causal powers and not possible worlds.     

Closed Causal Loops and the Bilking Argument

The most potentially powerful objection to the possibility oftime travel stems from the fact that it can, under the right conditions, give rise to closedcausal loops, and closed causal loops can be turned into self-defeating causal chains;folks killing their infant selves, setting out to destroy the world before they were born,and the like. It used to be thought that such chains present paradoxes; the receivedwisdom nowadays is that they give rise to physical anomalies in the form of inexplicably correlated events. I argue against the received wisdom. I can find nothing in them that argues against the possibility (even, the probability) of time travel.     

‘Knowledge’ as a natural kind term

Naturalists who conceive of knowledge as a natural kind are led to treat ‘knowledge’ as a natural kind term. ‘Knowledge,’ then, must behave semantically in the ways that seem to support a direct reference theory for other natural kind terms. A direct reference theory for ‘knowledge,’ however, appears to leave open too many possibilities about the identity of knowledge. Intuitively, states of belief count as knowledge only if they meet epistemic criteria, not merely if they bear a causal/historical relation to the term. I will develop this objection and show that it is grounded in modal considerations central to Kripke’s work on reference. I will also argue that a more plausible externalist semantics for natural kind terms disarms the objection.     

A limited defense of moral perception

One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that X is F by perception is the ability to have a perceptual experience that represents something as being F. Call this the ‘Representation Objection’ to moral perception. In this paper I argue that the Representation Objection to moral perception fails. Thus I offer a limited defense of moral perception.     

Actualism without Presentism? Not by way of the Relativity Objection

Actualism is the view that only actually existing things exist. Presentism is the view that only presently existing things exist. In this paper, I argue that being an actualist without also being a presentist is not as easy as many philosophers seem to think. A common objection to presentism is that there is an unavoidable conflict between presentism and relativity theory. But actualists who do not wish to be presentists cannot point to this relativity objection alone to support their position. Unless they have some antecedent reason for thinking that actualism is more plausible than presentism, anyone who is moved by the relativity objection to give up presentism should be moved by a related objection to give up actualism as well. If there is a reason to be an actualist without also being a presentist, it must go beyond the relativity objection to presentism.     

Misrepresenting consciousness

An important objection to the “higher-order” theory of consciousness turns on the possibility of higher-order misrepresentation. I argue that the objection fails because it illicitly assumes a characterization of consciousness explicitly rejected by HO theory. This in turn raises the question of what justifies an initial characterization of the data a theory of consciousness must explain. I distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic characterizations of consciousness, and I propose several desiderata a successful characterization of consciousness must meet. I then defend the particular extrinsic characterization of the HO theory, the “transitivity principle,” against its intrinsic rivals, thereby showing that the misrepresentation objection conclusively falls short.     

Causal priority and causal conditionship

Temporal analyses of causal directionality fail if causes needn't precede their effects. Certain well-known difficulties with alternative (non-temporal) analyses have, in recent accounts, been avoided by attending more carefully to the formal features of relations typically figuring in philosophical discussions of causation. I discuss here a representative of such accounts, offered by David Sanford, according to which a correct analysis of causal priority must issue from viewing the condition relation as nonsymmetrical. The theory is shown first to be an implicitly counterfactual treatment at its base: this provides for an explicit reformulation of several key notions in the theory. An argument is then presented, independent of these modal considerations, for the conclusion that causal priority is possible only given certain implausible assumptions about the asymmetric character of causal laws which, I claim, are not met. The best objection to this argument is shown to fail on several counts, partly in light of the counterfactual results offered earlier. It is concluded that, if laws are symmetric, analyses of the sort discussed must look elsewhere for the source of causal priority; but if laws are not symmetric, resting causal priority so heavily on nomological asymmetry is no analysis at all.     

MEMORY FOUNDATIONALISM AND THE PROBLEM OF UNFORGOTTEN CARELESSNESS

Abstract: According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P carelessly (i.e. without justification) and later seem to remember that P, then (according to memory foundationalism) I have somehow acquired justification for a previously unjustified belief. In this paper, I explore this objection. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of it: One where I seem to remember that P while also seeming to remember being careless in my original believing that P and the other where I seem to remember that P while not seeming to remember my past carelessness. I argue that the former case is the real challenge for memory foundationalism. After establishing the case of unforgotten carelessness as objection to memory foundationalism, I recast memory foundationalism in way that allows it to escape this objection.     

The Principal Paradox of Time Travel

Most arguments against the possibility of time travel use the same old, familiar objection: If I could travel back in time, then I could kill my earlier (i.e. younger) self. Since I do exist such an action would result in a contradiction. Therefore time travel is impossible. This is a statement of the Principal Paradox of Time Travel. Some philosophers have argued that such actions as attempting to kill one's earlier self would always fail and that there is nothing especially strange about such failures. Despite these arguments, the problem generally is not viewed as being solved in favour of time travel. The above objection to time travel is also used to dismiss a particular class of cosmological models as being unphysical. This paper provides a solution to the Principal Paradox by exploring both the logical and causal implications of time travel.