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The role of supervenience and constitution in neuroscientific research

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Abstract

This paper is concerned with the notions of supervenience and mechanistic constitution as they have been discussed in the philosophy of neuroscience. Since both notions essentially involve specific dependence and determination relations among properties and sets of properties, the question arises whether the notions are systematically connected and how they connect to science. In a first step, some definitions of supervenience and mechanistic constitution are presented and tested for logical independence. Afterwards, certain assumptions fundamental to neuroscientific inquiry are made explicit in order to show that the presented definitions of supervenience are virtually uninteresting for theory construction in this field. In a third step, a new formulation of supervenience is developed that makes explicit reference to the notion of constitution and that bridges the gap between the philosophical concepts and explanatory practice in neuroscience.

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Notes

  1. In the view of all of these authors, the dispute is no longer about whether certain supervenience statements are actually presupposed in neuroscientific theorizing, but whether they ought to be interpreted as implying reduction. For instance, Soom et al. (2010) take it to be “\(\ldots \)common ground that \(\ldots \) the mental strongly supervenes on the physical.” Mandik (2011) believes that supervenience is presupposed by “psychoneural reductionists” as well as “nonreductive functionalist physicalists”, where he seems to take all neuroscientists (as well as philosophers with an interest in neuroscience) to fall under one of these two categories. See also Bickle (1996, p. 57) and Soom (2011, Sect. 3.3.1).

  2. The general idea has received formulations of varying strengths and generality. For an excellent overview over the different definitions and their various interconnections, cf. (McLaughlin and Bennett 2008). Important recent contributions to the debate not mentioned by McLaughlin and Bennett include (Hoffmann and Newen 2007; Moyer 2008; Shagrir 2009; Hoffmann-Kolss 2010).

  3. The notion of mechanistic constitution should not be identified with the notion of material constitution (cf. Wasserman 2009). Whereas material constitution is a first-order relation between individuals, mechanistic constitution has been discussed as a second-order relation between mechanistic types. A detailed clarification of the interconnection between these two notions will have to be left for future research.

  4. The regularity-based analysis of constitution has been developed by Harbecke (2010) and Couch (2011). It should be distinguished from the interventionist analysis of constitution favored by the proponents of the mechanistic approach, notably by Craver (2007, pp. 152–154).

  5. A conflation of the different meanings of “dependence” and “determination” is prevalent, for instance, in the debate on supervenience and mental causation. As an example, (Kim 1984a, p. 153) uses the terms synonymously when he says “things are connected with one another in that whether something exists, or what properties it has, is dependent on, or determined by, what other things exist and what kinds of things they are.” Worley (1997, p. 283) follows Kim when she claims with respect to mental and physical events that “[t]he determination or dependence relationship goes the other way.” However, “dependence” and “determination” are no synonyms.

  6. Note that, when such a dependence between the property sets is presupposed in order to rationalize empirical investigation, it is at the same time subject to that investigation, because it can be falsified.

  7. The thought behind this argument is that, if some properties in \(\mathcal{P }\) can be instantiated without any properties in \(\mathcal{E }\), there may be little reason to think that the remaining properties in \(\mathcal{P }\) are related to properties in \(\mathcal{E }\) in a scientifically interesting way.

  8. Above, a property \(\phi \) was described as determining\(_{univ}\) a property \(\psi \) iff \(\phi \) is sufficient, but not necessary, for \(\psi \).

  9. Above, a property \(\phi \) was described as determining\(_{occ}\) a property \(\psi \) iff \(\phi \) is a necessary part of a sufficient condition of \(\psi \).

  10. The definition of constitution presupposed that any individual instantiating \(\mathbf{X }_1\) is a part of an individual instantiating \(\psi \) such that this latter individual is also a part of the former individual. Since mutual parthood implies identity, there is no need to make reference to mereology in this short form of the definition.

  11. In the present context, “having a neuron” is understood as a property and neurons are not considered individuals themselves. If neurons were treated as individuals here, a recombination principle would render the sketched example impossible. But the fundamental problem for Strong Supervenience \(_{MO}\) remains (cf. footnote 12).

  12. This point reflects the scenario of the “wayward atom”, introduced by Kim (1989, p. 42) and discussed by Paull and Sider (1992) who claim that Kim’s example does not threaten a dependence\(_{set}\) of \(\mathcal{A }\) and \(\mathcal{B }\) as expressed by (global) supervenience. The authors are right about this. However, Kim’s scenario in correspondence to our present example nevertheless shows that the mere knowledge of a dependence\(_{set}\) contributes little to a scientific theory.

  13. This problem actually applies to Strong Supervenience \(_{MO}\) and Strong Supervenience \(_{PW}\) in an analogous way.

  14. The logical constant “\(\subset \)” is here intended to denote strict subsumption.

  15. Note that this is not dependence\(_{set}\) as defined in Sect. 2.1, but that it captures a very similar idea.

  16. The point is that many obvious counterexamples can be found in which a mere parthood relation \(Pw_1z,\ldots , Pw_nz\) does not secure \(z\)’s having \(\phi \) even if \(\psi _1w_1,\ldots , \psi _nw_n\) (cf. Harbecke 2010, p. 276). The mutual parthood condition avoids this problem.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful advice. I would also like thank Michael Baumgartner, Bill Bechtel, Carl Craver, Eli Dresner, Markus Eronen, Vera Hoffmann-Kolss, Lena Kästner, Oron Shagrir, and Patrice Soom for help at the various stages of this paper.

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  1. Philosophy of Science, Witten/Herdecke University, Alfred-Herrhausen-Str. 50, 58448, Witten, Germany

    Jens Harbecke

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Harbecke, J. The role of supervenience and constitution in neuroscientific research. Synthese 191, 725–743 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0308-y

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