Blocking definitions of materialism

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 110, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 103-113

  Hawthorne, J P ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 51749093500     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1020200213934     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. I have opted for a very informal presentation of the main ideas in the text. A more rigorous development might begin with a very abstract characterization of weak necessity, viz: we can say that a proposition P weakly necessitates Q just in case there is some proposition S such that (i) necessarily ((P and -S) ⊃ Q) and (ii) ∼ necessarily (P ⊃ Q). (We can then, if we like, consider the special case where P is a physical fact, S a non-physical fact; and we can, if we like, generalize the definition to cover families of propositions.) As it stands, the relation of weak necessity so defined is not interesting. P weakly necessitates a conjunction containing it, so long as P doesn't entail the other conjunct (for 'S' substitute the negation of the proposition with which P is conjoined). As section five makes clear, the interesting cases of putative weak necessity are ones where P, S and Q are all, intuitively, "positive facts".
2. Some Blockers may also be Possessors, some may not. It is natural to fill out the story by thinking of the Blocker as some God-like entity that has a will, forms desires and so on, and who is capable of miraculous intervention in the natural order. But this is only one, albeit tempting, way of putting flesh on the abstract description.
3. Yet another sort of prima facie conceivable troublemaker - one whose ramifications I shall not explore in this paper - is an Adder. An Adder is an immaterial entity that has the power to confer extra properties of the relevant class - say, mental properties - onto physical things. So while perhaps not feeling pain itself, one sort of Adder might conceivably have the power to confer pain onto physical things that do not enjoy pain simply by virtue of their physical constitution. (Note that if some property F is, under analysis, the composite of being G and not H, then a Blocker with respect to H will be an adder with respect to F.)
4. Admittedly, Jackson goes on later in the paper to express some mild reservations and caveats about this way of formulating materialism. However, he does not notice the problem posed by Blockers that follows.
5. I shall not in this paper discuss the cogency of the notions of a physical fact, of a physical property and of the physical nature of the world, nor the extent to which invocation of such notions trivializes the definitions of materialism that are couched using those notions.
6. 'Armchair Metaphysics', in O'Leary-Hawthorne and Michael (eds.), Philosophy in Mind (Kluwer, 1994), p. 28.
7. 'New Work for A Theory of Universals', in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 37.
8. Their accounts come apart in other ways. Suppose that there is a pair of worlds other than this one which are alike physically, do not instantiate alien properties and which are not duplicates, but also suppose that any world that is a minimal physical duplicate of the actual one is a duplicate simpliciter. Then Jackson's version of materialism would hold but Lewis' not. Which definition scores a victory here depends on whether you think such a scenario would defeat the thesis of materialism. Of course, there may be some issues concerning which our intuitive conception of materialism is too imprecise to deliver a verdict.
9. David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 39.
10. The Conscious Mind p. 40. 'Positive property' is defined as follows: '. . . a positive property is one that if instantiated in a world W, is also instantiated by the corresponding individual in all worlds that contain W as a proper part.' This is not the place to explore the pros and cons of this particular style of definition of 'positive property'.
11. The Conscious Mind, p. 41. I assume Chalmers means an 'iff' since it is clear that he thinks that materialism would be false if the supervenience thesis were false.
12. Lewis' thesis instructs us to check whether in worlds containing non-alien properties, physical duplication makes for duplication simpliciter. The Blocker story permits physical duplication to make for duplication simpliciter in the domain of worlds that Lewis has in mind.
13. I am grateful to Ted Sider for helpful discussion here.
14. For example, there are some kinds of combinatorialisms about possibilities that exclude the kinds of scenarios I have been entertaining.