The transitivity of material constitution

Nous

Volumn 43, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 363-377

  Wilson, Robert A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67649209169     PISSN: 00294624     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2009.00710.x     Document Type: Review

References (38)

1. See Lynne Rudder Baker, "Why Constitution is Not Identity", Journal of Philosophy 94 (1997): 599-21
2. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000)
3. and recently "When Does a Person Begin?", Social Philosophy and Policy 22 (2005): 25-48
4. Baker's views have been the subject of much recent discussion; for a sustained, critical exploration of her views, see Dean Zimmerman, "The Constitution of Persons by Bodies: A Critique of Lynne Rudder Baker's Theory of Material Constitution", Philosophical Topics 21 (2002): 295-338
5. Well-known earlier appeals to constitution include those by David Wiggins, "On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time", Philosophical Review 77 (1968): 90-95
6. and Sameness and Substance (New York: Blackwell, 1980)
7. Mark Johnston, "Constitution is Not Identity", Mind 101 (1992): 89-105
8. and Sydney Shoemaker, "Self, Body, and Coincidence", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society supp. 73 (1999): 287-306
9. For example, see Jaegwon Kim, Supervenience and Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
10. Lawrence Shapiro, "Multiple Realizations", Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 635-654
11. and The Mind Incarnate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004)
12. and Robert A. Wilson and Carl F. Craver, "Realization: Metaphysical and Scientific Perspectives", in Paul Thagard (editor), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Volume 12, Psychology and Cognitive Science (Dordrecht: Elsevier, 2007)
13. For expressions of this view, see Fred Doepke, The Kinds of Things: A Theory of Personal Identity Based on Transcendental Argument (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), p. 198 (discussing the view of David Wiggins) and pp. 201-203 (more generally)
14. Lynne Rudder Baker, "Replies", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2002): 623-635, at pp. 623-624
15. E.J. Lowe, Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 119-120
16. Dean Zimmerman, "Persons and Bodies: Constitution Without Mereology?", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (2002): 599-606, at pages 601-603
17. and Ryan Wasserman, "The Constitution Question", Noûs 38 (2004): 693-710, at p. 694
18. In both Persons and Bodies (pp. 45-46)
19. Baker claimed that constitution was nontransitive, changing her mind in her "Replies" in light of Zimmerman, "Persons and Bodies: Constitution Without Mereology?"
20. To take the standard example, the core realization of pain in human beings is the stimulation of C-fibers. Those C-fibers (so stimulated), together with the activity of the rest of the central nervous system that allow C-fibers to play the causal role definitive of pain, form the total realization of pain. For the original discussion, see Sydney Shoemaker, "Some Varieties of Functionalism", Philosophical Topics 12 (1981): 83-118
21. and Ned Block and Jerry Fodor, "What Psychological States Are Not", Philosophical Review 81 (1972): 159-181
22. See also his "Functionalism and Qualia", Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 291-315
23. and the exchange in Ned Block, "Are Absent Qualia Impossible?", Philosophical Review 89 (1980): 257-274
24. and Sydney Shoemaker, "Absent Qualia are Impossible - A Reply to Block", Philosophical Review 90 (1981): 581-599
25. All three Shoemaker papers are reprinted in his Identity, Cause, and Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984)
26. Robert A. Wilson, "Two Views of Realization", Philosophical Studies 104 (2001): 1-30
27. and Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Cognition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), especially chapters 5-6
28. The cartoon version, as well as the more serious, functionalist account, can be found in representational accounts of folk psychological states that draw on the language of thought hypothesis, such as Stephen Schiffer, Meaning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
29. Gilbert Harman, Thought (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975)
30. and Jerry Fodor, RePresentations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981)
31. For two different ways to articulate this point, see Andy Clark and David Chalmers, "The Extended Mind", Analysis 58 (1998): 10-23
32. and Robert A. Wilson, "Individualism", in Stephen P. Stich and Ted A. Warfield (editors), The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)
33. See, for example, Carl Gillett, "The Dimensions of Realization: A Critique of the Standard View", Analysis 62 (2002): 316-323
34. 'This ring is gold', 'A human body is a collection of cells' (E.J. Lowe, Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms, p. 3)
35. "Pieces of paper constitute dollar bills; pieces of cloth constitute flags; pieces of bronze constitute statues . . . strands of DNA constitute genes" (Baker, Persons and Bodies, p. 21)
36. "Suppose a wall is composed of stones. Then they also constitute it . . ." (Peter Simons, Parts: A Study in Ontology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 239)
37. "The cells which constitute an organism at one time can be an entirely different batch from those which constitute it at a different time." (Fred Doepke, The Kinds of Things: A Theory of Personal Identity Based on Transcendental Argument, p. 199.)
38. Robert A. Wilson, "A Puzzle About Material Constitution and How to Solve It: Enriching Constitution Views in Metaphysics", Philosophers' Imprint Vol.7, No. 5 (July 2007), pp.1-20