Abstract
According to the subset view of realization, a property realizes another if the causal powers of the latter are a subset of those of the former. Against this view, some authors (in particular, Kevin Morris and Paul Audi) have argued that it has an untenable consequence that realizing properties are less fundamental than the properties they realize, because the subset view characterizes realized properties as parts (subsets) of their realizers whereas it is generally true that a part is prior to its whole. This paper defends the subset view from this “part-whole” objection, by arguing that if we compare individual powers of realizer and realizee with particular attention to their manifestation conditions, it turns out that each power of a realizee is grounded in some power of its realizer. This grounding relation between powers, I shall argue, allows subset theorists to explain why a realizer is more fundamental than its realizee, even while having the latter as a part.
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Notes
For instance, Audi (2012: 668f) and Pineda and Vicente (2017: 101) are explicit on this. It would seem, however, that the part-whole objection can be raised even when the subset view is not combined with the cluster view, provided that this account maintains that the instantiation of a property in a world is constituted by the presence of all the powers associated with it in that world.
It has been argued that the subset view can secure other main theses of NRP, namely the multiple realizability and the supervenience, more or less straightforwardly (Clapp 2001: 133; Wilson 2011: 128–30; Audi 2012: 658; Pineda & Vicente 2017: 99f). Also, the subset theorists have claimed that they can address Kim’s (1992b) disjunctivist challenge against the reality or scientific status of multiple realizable properties (Antony 2003; Clapp 2001).
There are other challenges to the subset view, including the epiphenomenalist worry (McLaughlin 2007: 152f; Walter 2010: 221f; Morris 2011: 373f); the problem about property entailment (McLaughlin 2007: 159ff, Gibb 2014: 555ff); the inability to secure the autonomy of realized properties and sciences thereof (Funkhouser 2014: 102f); and the concern about efficacy of properties with wide content (Pineda & Vicente 2017: 114ff). Although this paper will not try to respond to all of them, our discussion in §4 below will touch on the first and third challenges just mentioned.
As Morris notes, the part-whole objection in fact need not appeal to the physicalist aspiration of the subset view; what it needs is only the general assumption that “an account of realization should not have the consequence that realizer properties depend on realized properties” (Morris 2011: 369). While this is correct, I will continue to consider the part-whole objection against the background of the physicalist aspiration in question because this objection becomes most pressing when considered that way (by threatening the subset view’s presumably most central motivation).
In a recent paper, Zhang (2022: §4) argues that the subset view can dodge the part-whole objection by claiming that (a) besides ordinary parthood relations in which parts are separable from whole, there is another kind of parthood relation in which parts are inseparable from the whole and thus posterior to it; and (b) a realized property bears this second sort of parthood relation to its realizer. While I ultimately agree with both these claims, simply asserting them will not do as a reply to the part-whole objection. In particular, on what grounds can one assert (b)? The only potential answer we find in Zhang’s text is that “mental [or other higher-level property] instance, as a realized one, simply cannot exist without its physical realizer” (ibid.: 9). However, this is precisely what the part-whole objectors claim the subset theorists do not have the right to say—though they surely want to say (cf. Pineda & Vicente 2017: 108–113; Morris 2011: 368f). Thus, what is required is to give good reasons for (b), which the following discussion attempts to do.
Although it would not be impossible to deny it (cf. Schaffer 2010).
For a related discussion, see also Shoemaker (1980: 223f; 2007: 27). As for Pereboom, although his view is often accused of doubling up token powers of the same type (Wilson 2011: 140f; Audi 2012: 665ff), I think there is a more charitable reading of his view. According to this reading, what Pereboom means by “underlying microphysical causal powers” (2002: 503) are exclusively those relatively complex powers which belong to the realizer but not to its realizee (i.e., only those like p* and not p below). Under this interpretation, it will be no longer mysterious why Pereboom could say that “any token mental causal powers … would not be identical with the token microphysical causal powers of its realization” (2002: 503), since these powers would indeed have different manifestations (as p and p* below do), and—as we shall see shortly—powers are individuated partly by their manifestations (Shoemaker 1980: 213).
In many cases, g1–g3 will be disjoint from (i.e., share no part with) f1–f3. But this will not always be the case. In the above example, for instance, although f1 cannot be identical with g1 it grounds, it may be identical with g2, in which case g1–g3 and f1–f3 share a common part. I thank an anonymous referee for pointing out this possibility.
Indeed, that g1–g3 are included in the set of F’s powers is not merely asserted by (SV) but can be regarded as a consequence of (PG) plus a certain assumption held by Shoemaker. To see this, let us first note that the following two are true under (PG) and the current assumptions: (i) g1–g3 are grounded in f1–f3; (ii) f1–f3 are included in the set of F’s powers. Now, let us further assume with Shoemaker that (iii) a set of powers that constitutes a property is “closed under nomic and metaphysical entailment—that for every conditional power contained in the set, the set contains every conditional power nomically or metaphysically entailed by that conditional power” (2007: 25). Given (i)–(iii), it will follow that g1–g3 are included in the set of F’s powers, provided that grounding is a kind of (nomic or metaphysical) entailment.
Pineda and Vicente dismiss a response that appeals to a thesis like (PG) on grounds that “we do not seem to have any reason to believe [such a thesis], unless we assume physicalism” (2017: 109, original emphasis). Put differently, they take the subset theorist’s (especially Shoemaker’s) intention to be that of giving a theory of realization that entails physicalism’s priority thesis (2017: 100–1) and argue that the appeal to a thesis like (PG) would undermine this intention (since such an appeal would presuppose, rather than explain, physicalism itself). Although I am inclined to think that this may be too strong a requirement for a physicalist theory of realization (as the compatibility with physicalism might seem enough), the following argument for (PG) in any case does not rest on physicalism itself, but on a more general consideration about part and whole.
Here I follow Armstrong (1978: 69) in using the term “structural property” this way. The assumption that realizer properties are such complex structural properties is quite common (e.g., Kim 1998: 84; Endicott 2016: 2209; Piccinini 2020: 12), and this seems indeed natural especially when realizees are functional properties. For a realizer of a functional property would have to be a member of those properties that jointly constitute a mechanism mediating the characteristic causes and effects of that property (cf. Kim 1993a: 343f), and this role fits well with structural properties. However, in §4.1 below I will discuss a worry concerning this assumption.
The process sketched here is called humoral immune response; additionally, there is another process called cell-mediated immune response, which is omitted here.
Note that whether this relation holds between two powers depends not on the degrees of specificity with which we describe or represent the relevant powers. Rather, it depends on the natures of the powers themselves, i.e., on what types of states of affairs constitute their respective stimulus and manifestation conditions. A related concern will be discussed in §4.4 below.
Admittedly, there may be some senses in which the multiple-determinability is already enough for autonomy—e.g., the sense in which a multiple determinable property can figure in certain law-like generalizations in which any of its determinates cannot figure. However, it seems plausible that in many other important senses, the multiple-determinability is not enough for autonomy—e.g., in the sense that a multiple determinable property does not “crosscuts” the classifications given by its determinates (cf. Funkhouser 2014: 97; Ehring 1996: 472f), nor does it render a different method of investigation appropriate than its determinates (Funkhouser 2014: 99f, 113).
I thank an anonymous referee for raising this question.
If we use the label introduced at the end of the previous section, what is invoked here is the existence component of WDP as applied to individual powers (rather than to power-clusters).
Some subset theorists (e.g., Shoemaker 2001: 435f, 2007: 14; Wilson 2011: 129) have appealed to the so-called proportionality constraint on causation (stemming from Yablo (1992)) in this context. When we take this into account, it may be argued that their official response to the exclusion problem is not the argument by analogy but the appeal to this constraint. If this is so, then my proposal here can be understood as that of replacing the appeal to the proportionality constraint with the appeal to the interventionism. The reason why I recommend the latter is that the former has been subject to some severe criticism (e.g., McLaughlin 2007: 163ff; Woodward 2015: 305 n.1; McDonnell 2017: §5) that the latter can avoid.
To be more precise, such an intervention must be of “unconfounded” sort (Woodward 2015: 314).
For instance, a person may retain the same power to correctly tell her birthday even after the underlying complex power that she actually possesses is replaced with another appropriate one.
For a related objection to the view that reality contains only a single level (perhaps that of elementary particles), see also Piccinini (2020: 18–22).
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Akiba, T. The Subset View of Realization and the Part-Whole Problem. Acta Anal 39, 97–115 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00553-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-023-00553-4