Intrinsic Causation in Humean Supervenience

The paper investigates whether causation is extrinsic in Humean Supervenience (HS) in the sense that being caused by is an intrinsic relation between token causes and effects. The underlying goal is to test whether causality is extrinsic for Humeans and intrinsic for anti‐Humeans in this sense. I argue that causation is typically extrinsic in HS, but it is intrinsic to event pairs that collectively exhaust almost the whole of history. 1     

PROCESS ECOLOGY: STEPPING STONES TO BIOSEMIOSIS

Many in science are disposed not to take biosemiotics seriously, dismissing it as too anthropomorphic. Furthermore, biosemiotic apologetics are cast in top‐down fashion, thereby adding to widespread skepticism. An effective response might be to approach biosemiotics from the bottom up, but the foundational assumptions that support Enlightenment science make that avenue impossible. Considerations from ecosystem studies reveal, however, that those conventional assumptions, although once possessing great utilitarian value, have come to impede deeper understanding of living systems because they implicitly depict the evolution of the universe backward. Ecological dynamics suggests instead a smaller set of countervailing postulates that allows evolution to play forward and sets the stage for tripartite causalities, signs, and interpreters—the key elements of biosemiosis—to emerge naturally out of the interaction of chance with configurations of autocatalytic processes. Biosemiosis thereby appears as a fully legitimate outgrowth of the new metaphysic and shows promise for becoming the supervenient focus of a deeper perspective on the phenomenon of life.     

Authority as a contingency plan

Humean constructivists object to Kantian constructivism that by endorsing the constitutivist strategy, which grounds moral obligations in rational agency, this position discounts the impact of contingency in moral life. In response to these charges, I argue that Humeans misrepresent the challenge of contingency and fail to provide adequate resources to cope with it. In its formalist variety, Humean constructivism fails to make sense of an important category of ethical judgments, which claim universal authority. The substantive varieties of Humean constructivism recognize that some ethical judgments aspire to universality, but fail to fully justify such an aspiration. These versions of constructivism represent a setback in regard to the achievements of Kantian constructivism. In conclusion, I briefly resume the advantages of advocating a Kantian conception of rational authority as a response to contingency.