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Functional Properties are Epiphenomenal

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Abstract

I argue for the epiphenomenality of functional properties by means of thought experiments and general principles. General principles suggest that an object’s causal powers nomologically supervene on its intrinsic properties and that its functional role does not. This implies that it is possible for an object to lose its functional role without undergoing any change to its intrinsic properties or causal powers. Nor is it difficult to conceive of such scenarios. Various thought experiments are introduced for just this purpose. But properties that can vary independently of an object’s causal powers in this way are epiphenomenal, for their instantiation by an object at a time makes no difference to the causal processes the object is involved in at that time. The same processes would have occurred even if such properties hadn’t been instantiated. The intrinsicness thesis is controversial, but it is not controversial that it is true of productive causation, and many believe that productive causation is the only form of mental causation worth having. Nevertheless, in the paper’s final section I consider dependence-based accounts of causation, which do not presuppose the intrinsicness of causal powers, and show that they too have difficulties accounting for the efficacy of functional properties.

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Notes

  1. The language of Cambridge and mere Cambridge change comes, of course, from Geach (1969). According to his usage, a Cambridge change occurs whenever an object satisfies a predicate at one time and not at another. All changes are thus Cambridge changes. However, some Cambridge changes are also genuine changes in that they involve the gain or loss of an intrinsic property. A mere Cambridge change is a Cambridge change that is not genuine, which is to say a change that does not involve the gain or loss of intrinsic properties. Mere Cambridge properties are those that can undergo a mere Cambridge change and are thus at least partly extrinsic. See Shoemaker (2003) for discussion.

  2. Maudlin’s (1989) similar objection to computational theories of consciousness might also be viewed this way.

  3. To be clear, what is less controversial is that an object’s productive causal powers are determined by its intrinsic properties together with the governing laws of nature. In other words, an object’s causal powers nomologically supervene on its intrinsic properties. I will sometimes drop these qualifications in what follows.

  4. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention and for pointing out the similarities between some of the objections I consider later in the paper and some of those considered by Antony and Bartlett.

  5. Or, more precisely, some of its extrinsic properties are causally irrelevant to the production of some of the effects it has in virtue of realizing various intrinsic properties.

  6. The conclusions are similar but not the same. The exclusion argument is supposed to show that any nonphysical property is epiphenomenal, whereas my argument targets only functional properties. In a forthcoming paper (Rellihan 2019), I argue that Kim’s argument can strengthened if we restrict its focus to functional properties.

  7. For reasons of simplicity, I’ll focus on non-probabilistic causal relations in what follows, but I believe the extension to probabilistic relations is obvious.

  8. For the purposes of my argument, it doesn’t matter whether these properties are actually intrinsic, only that functional properties are not. It also doesn’t matter which of the various proposed definitions of ‘intrinsic’ we adopt, for all of these definitions will agree in excluding functional properties. Let’s therefore adopt an intuitive definition according to which an object’s intrinsic properties are those that do not depend on the existence of other objects and events.

  9. To be clear, I am not presupposing a counterfactual theory of causation—or any other theory of causation, for that matter. The claim is only that functional relations support counterfactuals. A thermostat, for example, has the function of regulating temperature in a room because, inter alia, if the temperature in the room were to drop, the thermostat would turn on. Note as well that the counterfactuals offered in the text express causal relations—e.g., if L were to be activated, this would cause the activation of x.

  10. One might object that things other than causal relations might partially constitute an object’s functional role. So be it. For the argument that follows, I only need to assume that possessing causal relations of this sort is necessary, not that it is both necessary and sufficient.

  11. Maslen, Horgan, and Daly’s principle itself derives from Chalmers’s discussion of epiphenomenalism and epiphenomenal properties. See Chalmers (1996, pp 151-168).

  12. MND gives us a sufficient condition for causal irrelevance and thus a necessary condition for causal relevance. Contraposing gives us: A property F is causally relevant to effect e only if it is false that e still would have occurred if F hadn’t. Note that it’s the nesting rather than the nested (counterfactual) conditional that is being contraposed.

  13. See Paul and Hall (2013, pp. 124-132) for a further discussion of the intrinsicness thesis. See also Hall (2004a). Lewis (1986) finds a similar version of the thesis to be quite intuitive, saying that “whether the process going on in a region is causal depends only on the intrinsic character of the process itself, and on the relevant laws” (p. 205; quoted in Paul and Hall (2013, p. 216)).

  14. Shoemaker (2003) and Fodor (1986, 1987) also adopt versions of the intrinsicness thesis that are formulated in terms of an object’s causal powers, as does Molnar (2003).

  15. As Wilson (2011, p. 125) notes, nonreductive physicalists typically respond to Kim by arguing that the realization relation between mental and physical properties renders the resulting form of overdetermination unproblematic. Examples include appeals to functional realization (Antony and Levine (1997)), mereological realization (Shoemaker (2001) and Clapp (2001), and the determinable-determinate relation (Yablo (1992)). It’s true that Yablo appeals to causal intuitions that are friendlier to dependence-based than production-based accounts, but, arguably, none of this is essential to his strategy. Shoemaker initially conceived of his mereological account along the lines of the determinable-determinate account while remaining firmly committed to a production-based account of causation.

  16. This definition is very close to ones given by Shoemaker (2003, p.211) and Fodor (1986, pp. 241-245; 1987, pp. 33-40). I’ll clarify below the specific sense in which contexts have to be the same.

  17. Compare Fodor (1986, p. 244): “our biceps have the same causal powers if the following is true: for any thing x and any context C, if you can lift x in C, so can I; and if I can lift x in C, then so can you. What is, however, not in general relevant to comparisons between the causal powers of our biceps is this: that there is a thing x and a pair of contexts C and C´ such that you can lift x in C and I cannot lift x in C´. Thus suppose, for example, that in C (a context in which this chair is not nailed to the floor) you can lift it; and in C´ (a context in which this chair is nailed to the floor) I cannot. That eventuality would give your biceps nothing to crow about. Your biceps—to repeat the moral—have cause for celebration only if they can lift xs in context in which my biceps can’t.”

  18. These changes to the possible effects of C-fiber firing must, of course, leave unchanged the original effect of withdrawing one’s hand from the fire. Perhaps, then, we cannot allow Lewis’s finger snapping, but we can certainly allow effects that are equally eccentric.

  19. This might seem to conflict with the earlier claim that an object’s functional properties are determined by its causal role rather than by its causal powers, for dispositions, like causal powers and unlike causal roles, are typically thought to be intrinsic. But while all powers are intrinsic, not all dispositions are. To be famous, for example, is to be disposed to be recognized by others (McKitrick 2003). If, as some have argued, these extrinsic dispositions are merely pseudo-dispositions—or mere Cambridge dispositions—it simply follows that functionalists analyze mental states in terms of pseudo-dispositions rather than dispositions. I prefer to keep powers intrinsic and allow dispositions to be extrinsic, but any disagreement on this score is merely verbal.

  20. See Dretske (1981, pp. 26-40) for the example and the principle behind it.

  21. As one might expect, informational content is itself vulnerable to mere Cambridge change. See (Rellihan 2015) for further discussion.

  22. At one point, Fodor suggests that his case for the computational theory of mind would be undermined if “there were a conceptual role notion of content” because there would then be “no obvious basis for contrasting formal/syntactic mental processes with intentional mental laws” (Fodor 1991b, p. 281). But this is not true. The whole point of positing syntactic properties in the first place is that, as Crane (1990, p 191) nicely puts it, psychology needs a ‘causal surrogate’ for content. But if the arguments of this paper are sound, functional properties, being extrinsic, cannot act as causal surrogates for anything.

  23. Fodor’s confusion on this score is further evident from the fact that he once argued against epiphenomenalism on the basis of the principle that “P is a causally responsible property if it’s a property in virtue of which individuals are subsumed by causal laws” (Fodor 1990b, p. 143). Call this the cause/law principle. Since there are intentional laws, the cause/law principle entails that intentional properties must be causally responsible. But this is flatly inconsistent with Fodor’s defense of the computational theory of mind (CTM), according to which it is a mental state’s syntactic rather than its semantic properties that are causally responsible for transitions between mental states. Intentional/semantic properties are not causally responsible, according to CTM. Consistency is restored by rejecting the cause/law principle, as Fodor does in the passages quoted in the text and elsewhere. There can be nomic relations between properties even when there are no causal relations.

  24. Lewis’s (1973a, 1986) original analysis of causation provides both sufficient and necessary conditions, but, as Loewer notes, the purported necessary conditions fall prey to various counter-examples. The sufficient condition is far less controversial. See also Paul and Hall (2013, p. 16) and Paul (2009, p. 159). Moreover, it is only the sufficient condition that is needed to establish the causal efficacy of mental properties.

  25. Crane’s inference is not valid in the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterfactuals. Indeed it is an instance of a fallacy Lewis (1973b, p. 32) explicitly warns against: □(–M⊃–N); –N>–E; ∴ –M>–E. For the conclusion to follow, Crane’s second premise must be strengthened to (−M&–N) > −E. In other words, Crane must also assume that the closest –M & –N-worlds are –E worlds.

  26. Provided, that is, that we follow Lewis in rejecting backtracking counterfactuals. Of course, there is a way of changing the fact that c is F that will affect the dependence of e on c—namely by changing the intrinsic properties in virtue of which c’s occurrence elicits the occurrence of e. But according to Lewis’s own semantics for counterfactuals, it’s not enough to show that some of the closest not-F worlds are not-e worlds. To establish counterfactual dependence, one must show that all of them are. I submit that worlds in which c fails to be F in virtue of changes to its extrinsic properties are at least as close to actuality as worlds in which it fails to be F in virtue of changes to its intrinsic properties.

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Rellihan, M. Functional Properties are Epiphenomenal. Philosophia 48, 1171–1195 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00118-z

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