Temporal parts and supervenient causation: The incompatibility of two humean doctrines

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 76, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 265-288

  Zimmerman, Dean W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33644970245     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048409812348401     Document Type: Review

References (90)

1. See Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part 3, Sects. 2 and 14; and Book I, Part 4, Sects.2 and 6.
2. Broad, Mind and Its Place in Nature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925), p. 34.
3. For an attempt to make this distinction a bit more precise, cf. my 'Persistence and Presentism',Philosophical Papers 25 (1996), pp. 115-126.
4. Broad, Mind and Its Place in Nature, p. 36.
5. Cf. Armstrong, 'Identity Through Time' in Peter van Inwagen (ed.), Time and Cause (Dordrecht:D. Reidel, 1980), pp. 67-78;
6. cf. esp. pp. 76-77. Kripke's lectures on 'Time and Identity' date back at least to 1978.
7. reprinted in his Identity, Cause, and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 242-247;
8. Harold Noonan, 'Substance, Identity and Time',Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. vol. 62 (1988), pp. 79-100 (cf. esp. pp. 94-98);
9. and Denis Robinson, 'Matter, Motion, and Humean Supervenience', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1989), pp. 394-409. In conversation, Armstrong has mentioned that he was unfamiliar with the passage from Broad. I suspect that this revival of Broad's argument is, in the case of Kripke as well, an independent rediscovery.
10. Armstrong, 'Identity Through Time', p. 76.
11. Shoemaker, 'Identity, Properties, and Causality', p. 243, footnote.
12. For a suggestion along these lines, cf. David M. Armstrong, A World of Slates of Affairs(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), §75.5.
13. 'The Relation of Sense-data to Physics', Mysticism and Logic (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957; first published, 1917), p. 165.
14. Russell, Philosophy (a.k.a. An Outline of Philosophy) (New York: W. W. Norton, 1927), p. 119.
15. Cf. W. E. Johnson, Logic, Part III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), Chs. VII and IX;
16. Broad, Perception, Physics, and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), pp.102-103;
17. and Hermann Lotze, Metaphysics (In Three Bonks: Ontology,Cosmology, and Psychology), ed. by Bernard Bosanquet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887), Bk. I, Ch. iv.
18. Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs, p. 73.
19. See Michael Tooley, 'Laws and Causal Relations', in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 9 (Causation and Causal Theories), ed. by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, and Howard K. Wettstein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 93-112.
20. I assume throughout that causation is a relation which holds primarily between events. However, I believe that all the principles and arguments I defend could be translated into the language of a theory according to which the fundamental causal relala are facts or objects. [For an argument that causes and effects are primarily facts (or some other proposition-like entity), see Terence Horgan, 'The Case Against Events', Philosophical Review 87 (1978), pp. 28-47.
21. For an argument that objects are the basic causal relata, see Andrew Newman, 'The Causal Relation and its Terms', Mind 97(1988), pp. 529-550.]
22. Cf. 'Immanent Causation', in Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 11: Mind, Causation and World (Noûs supplementary volume, 1997), §V.
23. Cf.Kim, 'Causation, Nomic Subsumption, and the Concept of Event',
24. reprinted in his Supervenience and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 3-21. Cf. esp. pp.15-20.
25. Sydney Shoemaker raises difficulties for the supposition that there is a principled distinction to be made between causal and noncausal properties in 'Causality and Properties' and 'Identity, Properties, and Causality', collected in his Identity, Cause, and Mind, pp. 206-233 and pp. 234-260,
26. respectively. For responses to his arguments, see Alexander Rosenberg, 'Mackie and Shoemaker on Dispositions and Properties', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 9, pp. 77-92;
27. and Armstrong, What is a Law of Nature? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 161-163.
28. For one attempt to spell out 'essential part', cf. my 'Immanent Causation', §V, definitions (D8) and (D9)
29. As an anonymous referee points out, many will disagree with my assessment. For one thing, the approach requires problematic supplementation in order to capture the direction of causation. It might be a law of nature that a very specific sort of explosion must be preceded by a certain kind of triggering event occurring to the unstable substance in question. But then, by (CS), the explosion is causally sufficient for the triggering that set it off; and the 'essential parts' of the explosion will qualify as causes of the trigger-event. One could insist that cause always precedes effect; but fans of backward or simultaneous causation will reject this move, as will advocates of causal theories of time. Or one could insist that the direction of causal conditionship is somehow built into the laws, as in Armstrong; cf. his What is a Law of Nature?, pp. 96-99. Another serious problem with this sort of theory is that it has no room for causes and effects that are subsumed by merely probabilistic laws.
30. (HS) should be compared with the second of Michael Tooley's two 'theses of Humean supervenience' [Tooley, Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 29
31. Cp. Donald Davidson, 'Mental Events'
32. reprinted in his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 208.
33. See the analysis of causal sufficiency offered by J. A. Foster in 'Psycho-physical Causal Relations', American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1968), pp. 64-70;
34. and Jaegwon Kim's criticisms and improvements in 'Causation, Nomic Subsumption, and the Concept of Event'.
35. Douglas Ehring, for example, gives a direct argument for something very like (HS) which he calls 'the Non-Primitivist Thesis', in 'Preemption, Direct Causation, and Identity', Synthese 85 (1990),pp. 55-70; see esp. pp. 62-63
36. Ernest Sosa, 'Mind-Body Interaction and Supervenient Causation', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 9, p. 273.
37. Tooley distinguishes between two views which I am lumping together under the label 'singularism': both deny that facts about causal relations are determined by the laws of nature together with the noncausal facts. But the one for which he reserves the name 'singularism' further affirms that there can be causal relations without laws anywhere in the vicinity; while his favored 'third alternative' says that causal relations imply causal laws [cf. Causation: A Realist Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 175 and pp. 187-190].
38. But C. J. Ducasse is standardly called a singularist (even by Tooley), although he is firmly committed to the thesis that causal relations do imply causal laws cf. 'Concerning the Uniformity of Causality',
39. reprinted in Ducasse, Truth Knowledge and Causation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 29-35]. So it seems best to me to keep the name 'singularism' for both views, and distinguish between stronger and weaker varieties.
40. Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd edition (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937), p.473;
41. quoted in Tooley, 'In Defense of the Existence of States of Motion', Philosophical Topics 16(1988), pp. 225-254, quotation on p. 225.
42. Tooley, 'States of Motion', p. 227.
43. C. D. Broad, Leibniz: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 64.
44. For Leibniz on active force, cf. Leroy E. Loemker, G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters,2nd ed. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969), pp. 436-38.
45. This conception of the nature of instantaneous states of motion is also advocated in John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter, Science and Necessity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.72.
46. It is not surprising, then, that Tooley advocates a tensed theory of time incompatible with standard interpretations of relativity in his Time, Tense, and Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997).
47. Wolfgang Rindler, Essential Relativity, 2nd ed. (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1977), p. 67.
48. Cf. Rindler, pp. 79-81 and 88-90.
49. The attempt to turn this rough-and-ready characterization into a more strict criterion for intrinsicness runs up against some serious obstacles; for instance, being the only thing in existence, a seemingly extrinsic property, qualifies as intrinsic on this account. Cf. David Lewis, 'Extrinsic Properties', Philosophical Studies 44 (1983), pp. 197-200;
50. and, for the definition he criticizes, Jaegwon Kim, 'Psychophysical Supervenience', Philosophical Studies 41 (1982), pp. 51-70,
51. reprinted in Kim's Supervenience and Mind, pp. 175-193 (cf. especially p. 184 in the latter volume).
52. also Robinson, 'Matter, Motion and Humean Supervenience', p. 408;
53. and Theodore Sider,'Sparseness, Immanence, and Naturalness', Noûs 29 (1995), pp. 360-377.
54. A similar test, proposed by David Lewis, is discussed by Robinson, 'Matter, Motion and Humean Supervenience', p. 408.
55. Something like this point is incorporated in an argument of F.M. Chiirtensen of his Space-Like Time (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), pp. 236-241.
56. Zimmerman, 'Immanent Causation'.
57. Robinson, 'Matter, Motion and Humean Supervenience', p. 407.
58. But not, it should be noted, the doctrine David Lewis calls 'Humean Supervenience';
59. cf. Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Vol. II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. ix-xiii (cf. esp. p. xiii, note 5).
60. For discussion of Lewis's views, cf. Sally Haslanger, 'Humean Supervenience and Enduring Things', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (1994), pp. 339-359; cf. esp. pp. 341-345.
61. Logic, Part III, p. 66.
62. Logic, Part III, p. 71.
63. ' This may be the best way to understand Robinson's proposal in 'Matter, Motion, and Humean Supervenience';
64. and it is how I read the 'doctrine of flux' proposed by Bigelow and Pargetter, Science and Necessity, pp. 62-82.
65. For argument to this effect, and a theory of ultimate stuffs, cf. my 'Theories of Masses and Problems of Coincidence', Philosophical Review 104 (1995), pp. 75-78.
66. For discussion of Boscovichianism and the nature of extended objects, cf. my 'Could Extended Objects Be Made Out of Simple Parts? An Argument for Atomless Gunk', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1996), pp. 1-29;
67. and my 'Indivisible Parts and Extended Objects:Some Philosophical Episodes from Topology's Prehistory', Monisl 79 (1996), pp. 148-180.
68. The example of quarks being made from 'darks', and so on through infinitely many levels of distinct kinds, comes from Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind (New York: Bantam Books, 1982),p. 28.
69. For other discussions of the possibility of infinite complexity in the physical world, cf. Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983),p. 26;
70. David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 131-140;
71. David Armstrong, Nominalism and Realism (A Theory of Universals Vol. I) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 67-68;
72. Armstrong, A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 66-71;
73. and Theodore Sider, 'Sparseness, Immanence, and Naturalness', pp. 364-367.
74. Cf. Armstrong, What is a Law of Nature?, pp. 93-99;
75. Armstrong, A Word of Stales of Affairs, Ch. 14;
76. Tooley, 'Laws and Causal Relations';
77. Tooley, Causation: A Realist Approach;
78. and Tooley, 'The Nature of Causation: A Singularist Account', in Canadian Philosophers: Celebrating Twenty Years of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, ed. by David Copp, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supplementary vol. 16 (1990), pp. 271-322. Armstrong has suggested to me that C. B. Martin is another temporal parts theorist with a sufficiently robust theory of causation to handle homogeneous stuff.
79. One qualification: David Armstrong maintains that intrinsically changeless things need not persist by having different temporal parts at different times. But he does hold that intrinsically changing things must have temporal parts. Cf. A World of States of Affairs, pp. 100-101.
80. Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Vol. II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. x.
81. Cf. David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 203-204;
82. and Lewis, 'Rearrangement of Particles: Reply to Lowe', Analysis 48 (1988), pp. 65-72.
83. For criticism of Lewis's argument, cf. E. J. Lowe, 'Lewis on Perdurance Versus Endurance', Analysis 47 (1987),pp. 152?200;
84. Lowe, 'The Problems of Intrinsic Change: Rejoinder to Lewis', Analysis 48 (1988), pp. 72-77;
85. Sally Haslanger, 'Endurance and Temporary Intrinsics', Analysis 49 (1989), pp. 119-125;
86. Trenton Merricks, 'Endurance and Indiscernibility', Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994), pp.165-184;
87. and my 'Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism', in Metaphysics: The Big Questions, ed. by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998).
88. On the Plurality of Worlds, p. 204. In conversation, Lewis has suggested that he could admit the possibility of homogeneous stuff that persists through changes of, say, shape without having different temporal parts by allowing that shape is, in worlds with such stuff, a relation between an object and a time. This strategy makes use of the first way of solving the problem of intrinsic change: construing temporary intrinsic properties like shape as relations between things and times. Lewis rejects it, in the general case, as eliminating intrinsics; intrinsic properties should be, he thinks, monadic. So the homogeneous stuff that changes shape without temporal parts remains intrinsically the same. I would ask: How can shape be nonintrinsic in some worlds, and intrinsic in others? And, if shape can be a relation to a time in some worlds, what reason could we have tor thinking that it is not a relation to a time here?
89. Tooley appeals, for example, to 'the idea that while later states of an object may provide the ground for an inference concerning its present velocity, they cannot be constitutive of it. Later states are epistemologically, but not ontologically relevant, with respect to an object's present velocity' ('States of Motion', p. 243).
90. For Armstrong's discussion of intrinsic states of motion, cf. A World of Stales of Affairs, Ch. 5.