Abstract
Physicalism should be characterized in a way that makes it compatible with the possibility that the physical world is infinitely decomposable. Some have proposed solving this problem by replacing a widely accepted No Fundamental Mentality requirement on physicalism with a more general No Low-Level Mentality requirement. The latter states that physicalism could be true if there is a level of decomposition beneath which nothing is mental, whereas physicalism is false otherwise. Brown (Erkenntnis 82:1339–1350, 2017a) argues that this solution does not work. He devises an infinitely decomposable possible world in which physicalism should come out as true even though there is mentality all the way down. I propose a solution that circumvents his argument. The key is to specify the sort of mentality that physicalism cannot abide at any level, namely, mentality that does not consist solely in a structural-dynamic arrangement of entities. I also argue that the problem Brown identifies has significant implications for what is at stake in the debate over physicalism’s truth or falsity—implications he undersells.
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Notes
Not all do. See, for example, Howell 2013.
One could separate the claim that the physical world is infinitely decomposable from the idea that the physical world is stratified into levels (Morris 2019). But here this distinction does not matter much.
The issue of how to characterize physicalism is (in a sense) terminological but not trivial. One wants a characterization that makes sense of the debate, which most recognize as substantive. See Wilson (2006).
I use “entity” in the broadest possible sense, to include properties, objects, and anything else.
The No Fundamental Mentality requirement was so named by Wilson (2006). Brown focusses largely on “via negativa physicalism,” which defines the physical negatively, e.g., as the not-fundamentally-mental. But as he notes (Brown 2017a, 1343), what is most relevant to his main argument is the No Fundamental Mentality requirement, which says only that the absence of fundamental mentality is necessary (and perhaps not sufficient) for physicalism’s truth.
More precisely, the Only Structural-Dynamic requirement is a plausible constraint on non-Russellian versions of physicalism. See Sect. 3.3 below.
That literature is not sizeable. According to Brown, “Thus far, there is only one proposed solution to this problem…” (Brown 2017a, 1340), namely, (what I call) the No Low-Level Mentality solution.
Brown does not describe the real-world brain, but I presume it is a normal brain of an animal with a mental life.
Brown explains why role functionalism and type identity theory entail the structural-dynamic account of mentality, and he argues that all non-eliminativist versions of physicalism are committed to that account. But his argument does not extend to some versions of physicalism, such as a Russellian variety; see Sect. 3.3 below.
Brown does not define “structural-dynamic.” But a structural-dynamic arrangement of entities could be characterized as one that satisfies a structural-dynamic description in Chalmers’s (2010, p. 120, fn. 17) sense: “[A] structural-dynamic description is one that is equivalent to a Ramsey sentence whose O-terms include at most spatiotemporal expressions, nomic expressions, and logical and mathematical expressions.”.
I include the phrase “of its constituent parts” because Brown does. But suppose a physical system owes its mentality partly to relations to physical entities that are not parts of that system. Why wouldn’t that system be physicalism friendly?
Brown (2017a, 1346, fn. 7) writes, “there is a set of relatively plausible assertions that would determine the actual world to be like MPW. At least the following would have to be accepted: (1) infinite decomposition, (2) a very generous criterion for mentality ascription, for instance something is mental if it realizes functional properties of any kind, (3) causal properties can always be functionally described, and (4) all entities have causal properties.”.
Primitivism encompasses at least some versions of dualism, at least some versions of idealism, and perhaps other views as well, such as one proposed in Pautz (2009).
Here I rely on the distinction between constitutive dependence (also known as metaphysical grounding), and nomological/causal dependence. As an anonymous referee points out, how to flesh out that distinction is not clear. In particular, the distinction cannot be just modal. As Bliss and Trogdon (2016) put it, “the relations of modal entailment, supervenience, and the like are too coarse-grained” to capture the relevant notion of constitution. Indeed, as the referee points out, there are necessitarian dualist theories, on which structural-dynamic relations metaphysically (not just nomologically or causally) necessitate mental features. (Bennett (2008) contends that such theories are incoherent or unmotivated but, as Brown (2019) argues, her contention is doubtful.) Nevertheless, the distinction between constitution and nomological/causal relations, though vexed, is widely believed to be defensible and respectable, and here is not the place to try to vindicate that belief.
What infinite physical decomposition would look like on Russellian physicalism is not clear. In particular, it is not clear how a quiddity could consist in more basic quiddities. Perhaps it could not.
Here “individually having or individually bestowing mentality” should be understood broadly: as Morris (2016) and Brown (2017b) point out (following Howell 2009), even quiddities that are not themselves mental properties would not qualify as “properly physical” if they are individuated in terms of mentality.
An anonymous referee for Erkenntnis points out an interesting contrast between the Only Structural-Dynamic Mentality requirement, on the one hand, and both the No Fundamental Mentality requirement and the No Low-Level Mentality requirement, on the other hand—a contrast that might provide further support for the explanatory hypothesis. The contrast is as follows (thanks here to the referee not only for the point but for the phrasing). The latter two requirements attach specifically to fundamental (i.e., compositionally basic, or in any case individual lower-level) entities. That is useful in ruling out (non-Russellian) physicalism's compatibility with panpsychism, but it does not rule out physicalism's compatibility with emergentist dualism: emergentist dualists agree that no fundamental (or lower-level) entities individually have or bestow mentality. Correspondingly, versions of physicalism appealing to the No Fundamental Mentality requirement and the No Low-Level Mentality requirement have to rule out compatibility with emergentist dualism in some other way. By contrast, the Only Structural-Dynamic Mentality requirement rules out physicalism’s compatibility with not only panpsychism but emergentist dualism as well.
To be clear, I propose the Only Structural-Dynamic Mentality requirement as at most necessary condition for physicalism’s truth and not as a sufficient condition. After all, physicalism is usually conceived as a general metaphysical view, which concerns the entire concrete world and not just mentality.
For helpful discussions, I thank two anonymous referees for Erkenntnis, Adam Arico, Jessica Wilson, my Fall 2019 Philosophy of Mind class at The University of Alabama, and especially Christopher Devlin Brown and Rekha Nath.
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Alter, T. Physicalism Without Fundamentality. Erkenn 87, 1975–1986 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00285-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00285-6