Nonreductive Physicalism,Causation and Explanation
详细信息 查看官网全文
- 英文论文题名：Nonreductive Physicalism,Causation and Explanation
- 论文作者：徐向东
- 英文论文作者：Xiangdong Xu
- 年：2005
- 作者机构：北京大学哲学系;
- 会议召开时间：2005-11-01
- 会议录名称：外国哲学（第18辑）
- 语种：英文
- 分类号：B84-0
- 学会代码：WJWH
- 学会名称：商印文津文化(北京)有限责任公司
- 页数：49
- 文件大小：2007k
- 原文格式：O
摘要
<正>In the recent twenty years,the role of intentional states in psychological explanation has been a strongly controversial issue.The relationships between commonsense psychology and scientific psychology(or,cognitive science)have thereby become the focus of concerns.Defenders of folk psychology urge that the theory is an appropriate one for explaining,predicting and understanding human behavior.For not only the theory is said
引文
(1)J.A.Fodor(1987),Psychosemantics(Cambridge,The MIT Press).
(1)Cf.Denial Dennett(1987),The Intentional Stance(Cambridge!The MIT Press))(1991),"Real Patterns",Journal of Philosophy 87.27-51.
(2)P.M.Churchland(1984),Matter and Consciousness(Cambridge.The MIT Press),p.43.
(1)See,for example,Ted Honderich(1982),"The Argument for Anomalous Monism",Analysis 42:59-64)(1981),"Psychophysical Lawlike Connections and Their Problem",Inquiry 24:277-304.
(2)Donald Davidson(1970),"Mental Events",reprinted in Davidson(1980),Essays on Actions and Events(Oxford:Clarendon Press),205-228.
(1)D.Davidson(1970),"Mental Events",reprinted in Davidson(1980),Essays on Actions and Events(Oxford:Clarendon Press),205-228.
(2)Cf.Philip Pettit(1986),"Broad-minded Explanation and Psychology",in P.Pettit and John McDowell(eds.),Subject,Thought and Context(Oxford:Clarendon),17-58.
(1)J.Searle(1983),Intentionality(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press).
(2)Davidson,"Actions,Reasons and Causes",in Davidson(1980),passim,pp.10 and 9.
(1)Davidson(1980),passim,p.17.
(1)Davidson(1980),passim,p.17.
(2)Davidson,"Psychology as Philosophy",Davidson(1980),passim,p.230.
(1)Davidson(1980),passim,p.231.
(2)This notion of synthetic a priori is evidently Kantian.However,I do not think that we can adopt such a notion to serve as the requirement for the principle of rationality.Some reasons for why I so think will be given in the second part of this paper.It seems to me that what Davidson calls synthetic a priori constitutivity with regard to the principle is best explained in the light of some anthropological conventionalism.
(1)See,for example,Colin McGinn(1978),"Mental States,Natural Kinds and Psycho-Physical Laws",Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.See also Steven Stich(1983),From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science(The MIT Press).
(2)Cf.H.Putnam(1975),"Explanation and Reference",in Putnam,Mind,language and Reality(Cambridge University Press).S.Kripke(1980),Naming and Necessity(Oxford:Blackwell).
(1)John McDowell(1985),"Functionalism and Anomalous Monism",in E.Lepore and B.McLaughlin(eds.).Actions and Events(Oxford:Blackwell).p.389.
(1)Davidson(1974),"Belief and the Basis of Meaning",in Davidson<1984),Inquiries into.Truth and Interpretation(Oxford:Clarendon),141-154.
(1)R.Rorty(1979),''Transcendental Arguments.Self-reference and Pragmatism",in P.Bieri.et.al..(eds.)Transcendental Arguments and Science(Reidel).
(1)D.Davidson(1986),"A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge",in E.Lepore(ed.),Truth and Interpretation(Oxford:Blackwell),p.317.
(2)Davidson,"On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme",In Davidson(1984),passim,p.197.
(1)Davidson(1984),passim,p.159.
(2)Ibid,passim,p.168.
(1)Davidson(1986),passim,p.317.
(1)See J.Fodor and E.Lepore(1992),Holism(Oxford:Blackwell),pp.155—161.
(2)Cf.J.Fodor(1990),A Theory of Content and Other Essays(Cambridge:The MIT Press),chapters 2 and 3.
(1)D.Dennett(1978),"Intentional System",in Dennett,Brainstorm(Cambridge:The MIT Press),p.17.
(2)Cf.A.Rosenberg(1985),The Structure of Biological Science(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press),chapter 6.
(1)See S.Stich(1990),A Fragmentation of Reason(Cambridge:The MIT Press).
(2)S.Stich(1990),A Fragmentation of Reason(Cambridge:The MIT Press),p.61.
(1)Cf.D.Follesdal(1982),"The Status of Rationality Assumptions in Interpretation and in the Explanations of Actions",Dialeetia 36:302-316.
(2)R.Grandy(1973),"Reference,Meaning and Belief",Journal of Philosophy70.
(1)Cf.Davidson,"Mental Events",in Davidson(1980),passim.
(2)Quoted in Davidson(1980),p.207.
(1)Cf.T.Honderich(1981),passim.
(1)Cf.Fodor(1987),passim.
(2)H.Putnam,"The Meaning of'Meaning'",in Putnam(1975),passim,215-217.T.Burge(1970),"Individualism and the Mental",in Mid-west Studies in Philosophy(Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press).
(1)Jaegwon Kim(1990),"Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem of Mental Causation",in E.Villanueva(ed.),Information,Semantics and Epistemology(Oxford:Blackwell),p.37.
(2)J.Kim(1990),ibid.,p.39.
(1)Cf.Kim(1982),"Psychophysical Supervenietice",Philosophical Studies it(1984a),"Concepts of Supervenience",Philosophy and Phenontenological Research651"'Strong'and'Global'Supervenience Revisited",Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 481(1990),"Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept",Metaphilosophy21.
(2)Davidson,"Mental Events",in Davidson(1980),passim,p.24.
(3)Cf.Kim(1978),"Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables",American Philosophical Quarterly 15(2):149-156.
(1)Kim(1984a),passim.
(2)Kim,ibid.
(1)Kim(1984b),"Epiphenomehal and Supervenient Causation"*reprinted in D.M.Rosenthal(ed.),The Nature of Mind(New York:Oxford University Press,1991),p.259.
(2)Kim(1984b),"Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation",p.259.
(1)Kim(1984b),"Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation"p.259.
(1)J.Kim(1989),"The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism",Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 63.
(1)G.Hellman and F.Thompson(1975),"Physicalism,Ontology,Determination,and Reduction",Journal of Philosophy 72,p.552.For a similar view,see R.Boyd(1980),"Materialism without Reductionism:What Physicalism Does Not Entail",in Ned Block(ed.),Readings in Philosophy of Psychology(Cambridge:Harvard University Press),67-106.
(1)2.Pylyshyn has persuasively argued that physical descriptions fail to capture the characterization of functional orgatiization of a Computer.See Pylyshyn(1984),Computation and Cognition(Cambridge:The MIT Press).
(1)Graham Macdonald(1992),"Reduction and Evolutionary Biology",in D.Charles and K.Lennon(eds.),Reduction,Explanation and Realism(Oxford:Clarendon),69-96.
(1)Cf.E.Nagel(1961),The Structure of Science(New Yorkt Harcourt).For a modification of the classical conception of reduction,see P.Churchland(1989),A Neurocomputational Perspective(Cambridge:The MIT Press).
(2)R.Cummins(1983),The Nature of Psychological Explanation(The MIT Press).
(1)See.for example,H.H.Pattee(1970),Towards a Theoretical Biology,vol.3(Edinburgh University Press).R.W.Sperry,for example',has argued that a strict microdeterminism cannot fully account for emergent properties.His arguments rest mainly on his re-characterization of the notion of reality or entity and on his justification for the'downward'causation.On his view,reality or entity is not only individual physical particulars.He instead holds that it is helpful to view any entity as a mass-energyspace-time manifold built of space-time components as well as of matter.Further,the'non-material'space-time patterns play an important role.in the formation of a certain configuration of a system,because the emergent properties of the entirety and the laws for its causal interactions are determined by the spacing and timing of the parts and their properties.However,the very nature of evolution consists precisely in the new timing and the new spacing of the parts.But the new space-time relation patterns are not statically determined only by parts.Moreover,once a new pattern is formed,Sperry argues,the movement and the fate of the parts are thereafter governed by entirely new macroproperties and laws that previously do not exist,simply because they are the properties of the new configuration.That is to say,the newly emerged properties can dynamically exert causal influences on the parts out of which a new configuration is created.As a result,after the evolutionary process is established and under way,those parts have always been endowed in most cases with multi-nested,emergent properties.See R.W.Sperry(1976),"Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function",in G.Globus,G.Maxwell and.I.Savodnik(eds.),Consciousness and the Brain(New York:Plenum Press).Sperry(1986),"Discussion:Macro-versus Micro-Determinism",Philosophy of Science 53:265-270.
(1)D.T.Campbell(1976),"'Downward Causation'in Hierarchically Organized Biological System",in F.Ayala and T.Dobzhansky(eds.),Studies in the Philosophy of Biology(Berkeley:University of California Press).In particular,Campbell writes:"Where natural selection operates through life and death of a higher level of organization,the laws of the higher-level selective system determine in part the distribution of lower-level events and substances.Description of an intermediate-level phenomenon is not completed by describing its possibility and implementation in lower-level terms.Its presence,prevalence or distribution(all needed for a complete explanation of biological phenomenon)will often require reference to laws at a higher level of organization as well.?All processes at the lower levels of hierarchy are restrained by and act in conformity with the laws of the higher levels"(Sperry,1976,p.180).
(2)Jennifer Hornsby(1985),"Physicalism,Events and Part-Whole Relations",in Actions and Events,passim,444-458.In addition,David-Hillel Rubin has strongly argued that the relation between the social entity and individuals as well as their action cannot be treated in terms of the conception of mereological supervenience in his(1985),The Metaphysics of Social World(London:Routledge).
(1)F.Jackson and P.Pettit(1988),"Functionalism and Broad Content",Mind 97(387):381-400)"(1990),"Program Explanation:A General Perspective",Analysis 50(226):107-117.In working out the idea of programming explanation,Jackson and Pettit aim to answer to Ned Block's objection,which says that functional properties are causally irrelevant because they are second-order properties,namely,properties that consist in the possessing of some properties that bear causal relations to one another and to inputs and outputs.See Block(1990),"Can the Mind Change the World?"in George Boolos(ed.),Meaning and Method(Cambridge University Press),pp.137-170.
(1)For a detailed discussion,see A.Rosenberg(1985),passim,chapter 3.
(2)Cf.J.Kim(1988),"Explanatory Realism,Causal Realism and Explanatory Exclusion",Midwest Studies in Philosophy,pp.225-240.
(1)J.Fodor(1990),"Making Mind Matter More",in Fodor(1990),passim,pp.137-159.
(1)Stephen Schiffer(1991),"Ceteris Paribus Laws",Mind 100(397):1-17.
(1)Cf.J.Kim(1990),passim.
(1)David Lewis,"Causation",in E.Sosa and M.Toolejr(eds.),Causation(New Yorki Oxford University Press),pp.193-204.
(1)M.Tooley(1987),Causation:A Realist Approach(New Yorki Oxford University Press),especially pp.190-202.
(1)Xiangdong Xu(1995),"Rationality,Evolution and the Explanation of Action",Philosophical Research 21 25-30.Some part of this paper was presented in the International Symposium on Contemporary Science and Philosophy!In Memory of Prof.Tsche Huong,Beijingi 1994.I dedicate this paper to the memory of Prof.Tsche Huong.Some key ideas in the paper were developed at Oxford University when I was a visiting scholar there,and I would like to thank Dr.Martin Davies and Prof.Christopher Peacocke for helpful discussions with me.
(1)Cf.Denial Dennett(1987),The Intentional Stance(Cambridge!The MIT Press))(1991),"Real Patterns",Journal of Philosophy 87.27-51.
(2)P.M.Churchland(1984),Matter and Consciousness(Cambridge.The MIT Press),p.43.
(1)See,for example,Ted Honderich(1982),"The Argument for Anomalous Monism",Analysis 42:59-64)(1981),"Psychophysical Lawlike Connections and Their Problem",Inquiry 24:277-304.
(2)Donald Davidson(1970),"Mental Events",reprinted in Davidson(1980),Essays on Actions and Events(Oxford:Clarendon Press),205-228.
(1)D.Davidson(1970),"Mental Events",reprinted in Davidson(1980),Essays on Actions and Events(Oxford:Clarendon Press),205-228.
(2)Cf.Philip Pettit(1986),"Broad-minded Explanation and Psychology",in P.Pettit and John McDowell(eds.),Subject,Thought and Context(Oxford:Clarendon),17-58.
(1)J.Searle(1983),Intentionality(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press).
(2)Davidson,"Actions,Reasons and Causes",in Davidson(1980),passim,pp.10 and 9.
(1)Davidson(1980),passim,p.17.
(1)Davidson(1980),passim,p.17.
(2)Davidson,"Psychology as Philosophy",Davidson(1980),passim,p.230.
(1)Davidson(1980),passim,p.231.
(2)This notion of synthetic a priori is evidently Kantian.However,I do not think that we can adopt such a notion to serve as the requirement for the principle of rationality.Some reasons for why I so think will be given in the second part of this paper.It seems to me that what Davidson calls synthetic a priori constitutivity with regard to the principle is best explained in the light of some anthropological conventionalism.
(1)See,for example,Colin McGinn(1978),"Mental States,Natural Kinds and Psycho-Physical Laws",Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.See also Steven Stich(1983),From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science(The MIT Press).
(2)Cf.H.Putnam(1975),"Explanation and Reference",in Putnam,Mind,language and Reality(Cambridge University Press).S.Kripke(1980),Naming and Necessity(Oxford:Blackwell).
(1)John McDowell(1985),"Functionalism and Anomalous Monism",in E.Lepore and B.McLaughlin(eds.).Actions and Events(Oxford:Blackwell).p.389.
(1)Davidson(1974),"Belief and the Basis of Meaning",in Davidson<1984),Inquiries into.Truth and Interpretation(Oxford:Clarendon),141-154.
(1)R.Rorty(1979),''Transcendental Arguments.Self-reference and Pragmatism",in P.Bieri.et.al..(eds.)Transcendental Arguments and Science(Reidel).
(1)D.Davidson(1986),"A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge",in E.Lepore(ed.),Truth and Interpretation(Oxford:Blackwell),p.317.
(2)Davidson,"On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme",In Davidson(1984),passim,p.197.
(1)Davidson(1984),passim,p.159.
(2)Ibid,passim,p.168.
(1)Davidson(1986),passim,p.317.
(1)See J.Fodor and E.Lepore(1992),Holism(Oxford:Blackwell),pp.155—161.
(2)Cf.J.Fodor(1990),A Theory of Content and Other Essays(Cambridge:The MIT Press),chapters 2 and 3.
(1)D.Dennett(1978),"Intentional System",in Dennett,Brainstorm(Cambridge:The MIT Press),p.17.
(2)Cf.A.Rosenberg(1985),The Structure of Biological Science(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press),chapter 6.
(1)See S.Stich(1990),A Fragmentation of Reason(Cambridge:The MIT Press).
(2)S.Stich(1990),A Fragmentation of Reason(Cambridge:The MIT Press),p.61.
(1)Cf.D.Follesdal(1982),"The Status of Rationality Assumptions in Interpretation and in the Explanations of Actions",Dialeetia 36:302-316.
(2)R.Grandy(1973),"Reference,Meaning and Belief",Journal of Philosophy70.
(1)Cf.Davidson,"Mental Events",in Davidson(1980),passim.
(2)Quoted in Davidson(1980),p.207.
(1)Cf.T.Honderich(1981),passim.
(1)Cf.Fodor(1987),passim.
(2)H.Putnam,"The Meaning of'Meaning'",in Putnam(1975),passim,215-217.T.Burge(1970),"Individualism and the Mental",in Mid-west Studies in Philosophy(Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press).
(1)Jaegwon Kim(1990),"Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem of Mental Causation",in E.Villanueva(ed.),Information,Semantics and Epistemology(Oxford:Blackwell),p.37.
(2)J.Kim(1990),ibid.,p.39.
(1)Cf.Kim(1982),"Psychophysical Supervenietice",Philosophical Studies it(1984a),"Concepts of Supervenience",Philosophy and Phenontenological Research651"'Strong'and'Global'Supervenience Revisited",Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 481(1990),"Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept",Metaphilosophy21.
(2)Davidson,"Mental Events",in Davidson(1980),passim,p.24.
(3)Cf.Kim(1978),"Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables",American Philosophical Quarterly 15(2):149-156.
(1)Kim(1984a),passim.
(2)Kim,ibid.
(1)Kim(1984b),"Epiphenomehal and Supervenient Causation"*reprinted in D.M.Rosenthal(ed.),The Nature of Mind(New York:Oxford University Press,1991),p.259.
(2)Kim(1984b),"Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation",p.259.
(1)Kim(1984b),"Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation"p.259.
(1)J.Kim(1989),"The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism",Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 63.
(1)G.Hellman and F.Thompson(1975),"Physicalism,Ontology,Determination,and Reduction",Journal of Philosophy 72,p.552.For a similar view,see R.Boyd(1980),"Materialism without Reductionism:What Physicalism Does Not Entail",in Ned Block(ed.),Readings in Philosophy of Psychology(Cambridge:Harvard University Press),67-106.
(1)2.Pylyshyn has persuasively argued that physical descriptions fail to capture the characterization of functional orgatiization of a Computer.See Pylyshyn(1984),Computation and Cognition(Cambridge:The MIT Press).
(1)Graham Macdonald(1992),"Reduction and Evolutionary Biology",in D.Charles and K.Lennon(eds.),Reduction,Explanation and Realism(Oxford:Clarendon),69-96.
(1)Cf.E.Nagel(1961),The Structure of Science(New Yorkt Harcourt).For a modification of the classical conception of reduction,see P.Churchland(1989),A Neurocomputational Perspective(Cambridge:The MIT Press).
(2)R.Cummins(1983),The Nature of Psychological Explanation(The MIT Press).
(1)See.for example,H.H.Pattee(1970),Towards a Theoretical Biology,vol.3(Edinburgh University Press).R.W.Sperry,for example',has argued that a strict microdeterminism cannot fully account for emergent properties.His arguments rest mainly on his re-characterization of the notion of reality or entity and on his justification for the'downward'causation.On his view,reality or entity is not only individual physical particulars.He instead holds that it is helpful to view any entity as a mass-energyspace-time manifold built of space-time components as well as of matter.Further,the'non-material'space-time patterns play an important role.in the formation of a certain configuration of a system,because the emergent properties of the entirety and the laws for its causal interactions are determined by the spacing and timing of the parts and their properties.However,the very nature of evolution consists precisely in the new timing and the new spacing of the parts.But the new space-time relation patterns are not statically determined only by parts.Moreover,once a new pattern is formed,Sperry argues,the movement and the fate of the parts are thereafter governed by entirely new macroproperties and laws that previously do not exist,simply because they are the properties of the new configuration.That is to say,the newly emerged properties can dynamically exert causal influences on the parts out of which a new configuration is created.As a result,after the evolutionary process is established and under way,those parts have always been endowed in most cases with multi-nested,emergent properties.See R.W.Sperry(1976),"Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function",in G.Globus,G.Maxwell and.I.Savodnik(eds.),Consciousness and the Brain(New York:Plenum Press).Sperry(1986),"Discussion:Macro-versus Micro-Determinism",Philosophy of Science 53:265-270.
(1)D.T.Campbell(1976),"'Downward Causation'in Hierarchically Organized Biological System",in F.Ayala and T.Dobzhansky(eds.),Studies in the Philosophy of Biology(Berkeley:University of California Press).In particular,Campbell writes:"Where natural selection operates through life and death of a higher level of organization,the laws of the higher-level selective system determine in part the distribution of lower-level events and substances.Description of an intermediate-level phenomenon is not completed by describing its possibility and implementation in lower-level terms.Its presence,prevalence or distribution(all needed for a complete explanation of biological phenomenon)will often require reference to laws at a higher level of organization as well.?All processes at the lower levels of hierarchy are restrained by and act in conformity with the laws of the higher levels"(Sperry,1976,p.180).
(2)Jennifer Hornsby(1985),"Physicalism,Events and Part-Whole Relations",in Actions and Events,passim,444-458.In addition,David-Hillel Rubin has strongly argued that the relation between the social entity and individuals as well as their action cannot be treated in terms of the conception of mereological supervenience in his(1985),The Metaphysics of Social World(London:Routledge).
(1)F.Jackson and P.Pettit(1988),"Functionalism and Broad Content",Mind 97(387):381-400)"(1990),"Program Explanation:A General Perspective",Analysis 50(226):107-117.In working out the idea of programming explanation,Jackson and Pettit aim to answer to Ned Block's objection,which says that functional properties are causally irrelevant because they are second-order properties,namely,properties that consist in the possessing of some properties that bear causal relations to one another and to inputs and outputs.See Block(1990),"Can the Mind Change the World?"in George Boolos(ed.),Meaning and Method(Cambridge University Press),pp.137-170.
(1)For a detailed discussion,see A.Rosenberg(1985),passim,chapter 3.
(2)Cf.J.Kim(1988),"Explanatory Realism,Causal Realism and Explanatory Exclusion",Midwest Studies in Philosophy,pp.225-240.
(1)J.Fodor(1990),"Making Mind Matter More",in Fodor(1990),passim,pp.137-159.
(1)Stephen Schiffer(1991),"Ceteris Paribus Laws",Mind 100(397):1-17.
(1)Cf.J.Kim(1990),passim.
(1)David Lewis,"Causation",in E.Sosa and M.Toolejr(eds.),Causation(New Yorki Oxford University Press),pp.193-204.
(1)M.Tooley(1987),Causation:A Realist Approach(New Yorki Oxford University Press),especially pp.190-202.
(1)Xiangdong Xu(1995),"Rationality,Evolution and the Explanation of Action",Philosophical Research 21 25-30.Some part of this paper was presented in the International Symposium on Contemporary Science and Philosophy!In Memory of Prof.Tsche Huong,Beijingi 1994.I dedicate this paper to the memory of Prof.Tsche Huong.Some key ideas in the paper were developed at Oxford University when I was a visiting scholar there,and I would like to thank Dr.Martin Davies and Prof.Christopher Peacocke for helpful discussions with me.