Books
A Variety of Causes (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, )592 pp (ISBN 9780199251469)
This is the first book length defence of a counterfactual theory of causation. The analysis defended is new. It expresses the idea that, independent of its competitors, a cause raises the chance of an effect over its mean background chance by a complete causal chain. The analysis depends upon a novel development of David Lewis's Theory of Counterfactuals. One consequence of the analysis is that causation is not transitive. Causation is also nonsymmetric. The counterfactual basis of causal nonsymmetry is the result of a number of different, and sometimes interacting, nonsymmetries. The analysis allows for the development of a novel theory of events whose nature is independent of their role in causation and the identification of one other important causal relationship: property causation. Although compatible with Hume's denial of necessary connections between distinct existences, a key feature of the theory is that it benefits from being independent of the Humean framework. There are two ways in which something may be metaphysically fundamental: vertically and horizontally. Many metaphysicians emphasise vertical fundamentality and focus on truth making. The book rejects this emphasis and the truth making approach in particular. Horizontally fundamental metaphysical entities are those that are necessary components in different possible universes. Causation has a claim to be horizontally fundamental: the cement of any universe. Laws are patterns of causation realised in different metaphysical frameworks such as those articulated by Lewis, Armstrong and the powers ontologists. The book recognises varieties of causation both in, for example, counting cases of double prevention and causation by genuine processes as types of causation, and allowing that the analysis identifies causes across these different metaphysical frameworks.
Papers
(48) 'The transparent failure of norms to keep up standards of belief', Philosophical Studies, 2020, 177, pp. 1213-1227.
(47) ‘Dependence’ Sophie Gibb, Robin Hendry and Tom Lancaster (eds., 2019), The Routledge Handbook of Emergence(London, New York, Routledge) (ISBN 978-1-138-925508-3)
Dependence is the most general notion under which a host of familiar metaphysical relations between entities – causation, supervenience, grounding, realisation etc. – fall. In the first section of this chapter, I offer offer some preliminary clarifications to outline the territory in a little more detail. Some years back this would have primarily involved differentiating kinds of dependence in terms of the strength of the modal operators used, and the other details of an analysis deploying them. Now, there has been a proliferation of non-purely modal accounts of dependence. The second section identifies the various reasons that have been offered for this proliferation. The third section discusses a notion of ontological dependence and grounding, each of which draws on an appeal to the essence of the depending, or depended upon, entities. In spite of their popularity, we will see that such notions are of little assistance in capturing a central case of interest to us: the proper understanding of emergence. In the light of this, the fourth section defends a purely modal treatment of some of the problem cases outlined in the first section and also discussed a non-modal notion of construction. I close with a hypothesis that the combination of three features: a non-dependence account of fundamentality, various notions of construction and purely modal properties remove the motivation for appeal to an independent account of grounding in this, and perhaps any, area.
(46) 'Sensory Substitution and the Challenge from Acclimatisation', Fiona Macpherson (ed., 2019), Sensory Substitution and Augmentation(Oxford, Oxford University Press).
A refined characterisation of sensory substitution has, as a consequence, that the substituting sense plus sensory substitution device is not always appropriately classified as the substituted sense. As a result, I argue, acclimatisation to a sensory substitution device is plausibly thought of as providing presentations of properties. Externalist accounts of experience together with objectivist characterisations of such properties have the upshot that properties putatively proprietary to a sense modality can be presented in another modality in cases of substitution. I consider three objections to this argument. I close by explaining how reflection on the phenomena of sensory substitution and, in particular, acclimatisation is important for the development of any kind of representationalist or relationist theory of phenomenal properties or, at the very least, suggests we need to refine the idea of certain properties - rather than particular ways in which their presentation is bundled together - being proprietary to the particular senses.
(45) 'Evaluative Perception as Response-Dependent Representation', Anna Bergqvist and Robert Cowan (eds.), Evaluative Perception (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 80-108 (ISBN 9780198786054). For copy, please email [email protected]
One dimension of the controversy over whether evaluative properties are presented in perceptual content has general roots in the debate over whether perceptual content, in general, is rich or austere. I argue that we need to recognise a level of rich non-sensory perceptual content, drawing on experiences of chicken sexing and speech perception, to capture what our experience is like and our epistemic entitlements. In both cases (and many others), we are not conscious of the precise perceptual cues that are the basis for discriminations and, thus, the characterisation of the phenomenal content of such experiences must go beyond sensory properties. Nevertheless, this point is arguably insufficient to establish the perception of evaluative properties. Their representation requires the subject to respond in certain ways. I discuss how this should go for the case of pain and then, in outline, for moral properties.
(44) 'Imaginative Content', Fabian Dorsch and Fiona Macpherson (eds), Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 96-129 (ISBN: 9780198717881). For copy, please email [email protected]
Sensuous imaginative content presents a problem for unitary accounts of phenomenal character (or content) such as relationism, representationalism or qualia theory. Four features of imaginative content are at the heat of the issue: its perspectival nature, the similarity with corresponding perceptual experiences, the multiple use thesis, and its non-presentational character. I reject appeals to the dependency thesis to account for these features and explain how a representationalist approach can be developed to accommodate them. I defend the multiple use thesis against Kathleen Stock’s objections but separate the putative non-presentational character of imaginative content into two elements. Loss of presentation is accounted for by the reduced representations involved in imagination and lack of potential response-dependent representational properties. Absence of commitment to reality is accounted for by representational properties characterised in terms of the absence of a certain kind of aetiology.
(43) ‘Appunti per una teoria della percezione espressiva’, Marta Benenti and M. Ravasio (eds., 2017), Espressivita: Un dibattito contemporaneo (Milan, Mimesis), pp. 119-143.
(42) (with Ema Sullivan-Bissett) ‘Another Defence of Owens’s Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims’, Logos and Episteme, 2017, 8 (1), pp. 147-153.
David Owens objected to the truth-aim account of belief on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not meet a necessary condition on aims, namely, that aims can be weighed against other aims. If the putative aim of belief cannot be weighed, then belief does not have an aim after all. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen responded to this objection by appeal to other deliberative contexts in which the aim could be weighed, and we argued that this response to Owens failed for two reasons. Steglich-Petersen has since responded to our defence of Owens’s objection. Here we reply to Steglich-Petersen and conclude, once again, that Owens’s challenge to the truth-aim approach remains to be answered.
(41) 'Mental Causation: Ontology and Patterns of Variation’, Sophie Gibb, E. J. Lowe and R. D. Ingthorsson (eds., 2013), Mental Causation and Ontology (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 88-125 (ISBN: 978-0-19-960377-0).
The paper uses two overreactions to Kim’s challenge to the efficacy of mental properties, if nonreductive physicalism is true, to motivate an alternative. According to the first, property causation involves patterns of dependency, according to the second, it is ensured by property identification. The former has problems with redundant causation, the latter with justifying the proposed property identifications - e.g. by the causal powers of one being a subset of the causal powers of the other. The former places the emphasis on inference-basing, the latter on truth-making. The recommended approach seeks to respect both by having a determination – rather than identification - condition and a generality condition which does not appeal to law. Discussion of the approach suggests a different conception of non-reductive physicalism, appealing to harmony or co-ordination.
(40) (with Ema Sullivan-Bissett) ‘A Defence of Owens’ Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims’, Philosophical Studies, 2013, 163, no. 2, pp. 453-457.
(39) ‘Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mind’,James Garvey (2011, ed.), The Continuum Companion to Philosophy of Mind (London, Continuum), pp. 239-279 (ISBN: HB: 0826431887 978-0-8264-3188-2), reprinted in James Garvey (2015, ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Mind (London, Bloomsbury), pp. 239-279 (ISBN: PB: 978-1-47424-390-2).
(38) ‘Emergent Causation and Property Causation’,Cynthia MacDonald and Graham Macdonald (eds., 2010), Emergence in Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 69-99 (ISBN 978-0-19-958362-1).
In the first section of this paper, I will provide a characterisation of the different relationship of broadly physical properties and emergent properties to narrowly physical properties and defend it against objections, in particular, that the characterisation I favour will not work if a causal theory of properties is true. I will also criticise the alternatives which have been offered as either not allowing for the existence of broadly physical properties or lacking appropriate independence from the key idea to which I appeal. In the second section, I will explain why, given Kim’s exclusion argument, the verdicts that a counterfactual theory of property instance causation supplies for broadly physical properties requires independent justification where those for emergent properties do not. In the third section, I outline how such a justification may be provided and develop an account of property causation which builds upon it. In the fourth section, I examine the implications of my analysis for the question of emergent causation, focussing in particular upon the question, does all emergent causation involve emergent property causation? My negative conclusion here will enable me to identify a second kind of emergence: emergent non-reductive physicalism. In the concluding fifth section, I briefly consider the consequences of my discussion for two candidates for emergence: phenomenal consciousness and free will.
(37) 'Counterfactuals,Causation and Humean Supervenience', Robrecht Vanderbeeken and Bart D’Hooghe (2010, eds.), Worldviews, Science and
Us: Studies of Analytic Metaphysics (World Scientific), pp. 167-206 (ISBN-13 978-981-4295-81-9).
Counterfactual theories of causation are standardly put forward by proponents of the doctrine of Humean Supervenience. Nevertheless, the plausibility of such counterfactual theories does not rely upon, nor does it entail, the truth of Humean Supervenience. To illustrate the significance of these points, I consider three problem areas for the counterfactual theory of causation arising from the key component in evaluating its success: the semantics of the counterfactuals constituting the analysis. The first is the future similarity objection. The second relates to the connection between counterfactuals and chance. The third concerns the relationship between counterfactual asymmetry and causal asymmetry. In response to the first two difficulties, I place a constraint upon Lewis’s perfect match condition for the similarity weighting for counterfactuals and recommend appealing, more generally, to the idea of failure of fit rather than law violation in formulating the conditions. I explain how the constraint is motivated, and distinguished from something stronger that applies in certain contexts, and not others, by considering the connection between chance and frequency. I argue that the combination of this solution to the first two problems and recognition of the, at best, contingent truth of the doctrine of Humean Supervenience provides a successful treatment of the third problem. I draw out the methodological implications of my approach both with regard to the traditional aims of analysis and, more particularly, with regard to the proper understanding of the aims of counterfactual analyses of causation in the final section of the chapter.
(36) ‘The Essential Instability of Self-Deception’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009, 35, no. 1, pp. 45-71 (ISSN-0037-802X).
(35) 'Expressive Perception as Projective Imagining', Mind and Language, 23, 2008, no. 3, pp. 329-358 (ISSN 0268-1064).
I argue that our experience of expressive properties (such as the joyfulness or sadness of a piece of music) essentially involves the sensuous imagination (through simulation) of an emotion-guided process which would result in the production of the properties which constitute the realisation of the expressive properties experienced. I compare this proposal with arousal theories, Wollheim’s Freudian account, and other more closely related theories appealing to imagination such as Kendall Walton’s. I explain why the proposal is most naturally developed in terms of simulation and briefly comment upon the impact of work on cross-cultural perception of facial expression, modularity and autism for the proposal.
(34) 'A coherentist response to Stoneham's reductio', Analysis, 67, no. 3, July (2007), pp. 267-268 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Tom Stoneham's key charge against coherentists is that they are committed to rejecting the theorem from probability that pr (p & q) is always less than or equal to pr (q). I argue this is incorrect. They are not committed to holding that, relative to some set of beliefs, credence in the conjunction will be higher than the conjuncts. Stoneham's main objection to this response is that it is not in general true that the mere fact that I believe something can make it more reasonable for me to believe it. I argue that this is not a premise to which we can appeal in a reductio of coherentism.
(33) 'The Success of Consciousness', Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13, no. 7-8, July/August 2006, pp. 109-119 (ISSN 1355 8250), and in Anthony Freeman (ed., 2006), Radical Externalism (Exeter, Imprint-Academic), pp. 109-119 (ISBN 1845400682).
According to Honderich, consciousness, or more precisely, perceptual consciousness is the existence of a world. In the first and section sections of the paper, I consider the motivations for adopting this theory rather than representationalism or an ambitious development of disjunctivism. In the third section, I consider whether Honderich’s theory performs well with regard to what he considers a crucial feature of perceptual states, namely that they have causal consequences for our behaviour. In the fourth section, I discuss Honderich’s approach to reflective consciousness and argue that it contains an important insight that representationalists should use to answer a substantial objection against their position – one pressed by Honderich. I close with a brief discussion of the impact of hallucinations on Honderich’s theory.
(32) 'Environment-Dependent Content and the Virtues of Causal Explanation', Synthese, 149, April 2006, pp. 551-575 (ISSN 0023-7857) (Special Edition edited by Alexander Bird and Johannes Persson).
The paper focuses on two related objections to Externalism or Anti-Individualism. The first, which I dub the Argument from Precision, holds that if Externalism were true, then we would have to concede that content-bearing mental states so construed would be explanatorily redundant. There would always be a more precise explanation of behaviour which did not mention them. The second, the Argument from Causal Powers, holds that intentional properties should not figure in scientifically advanced causal explanations if Externalism were true because individuation by intentional properties is not individuation by causal powers. I claim that the Argument from Causal Powers is flawed because it ignores the distinctive causal contribution of content-bearing states in the minds of the relevant experts. Yet, on any plausible account of distinctness of causal powers, this is exactly what should be considered. Recognition of this fact enables us to answer the first argument. It is because individuation by intentional properties is individuation by psychologically important causal powers that reference to content-bearing mental states and events fails to be redundant in causal explanations of behaviour. Generalising this point, I argue that causal explanations have at least two virtues: precision and individuation by causal powers. An explanation is not redundant if it has at least one of these.
(31) 'In a State of Pain', Murat Aydede (2005, ed.), Pain (Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press), pp. 151-162 (ISBN 0-262-51188-6).
I continue the debate with Michael Tye over the question of whether representationalism about pain enables us to see that the 'in' in phrases like "He had a pain in his foot" can be taken to be purely spatial as opposed to state-attributing discussing a range of cases and his responses to them. I then broaden the discussion to make three further points about his theory. First, I argue that Tye has not succeeded in providing a decisive consideration against a related theory which takes pains as representationally unmediated objects of pain experiences. Second, I defend Tye against an objection from Murat Aydede that Tye's theory cannot capture the fact that we dislike pain because it hurts. Third, I question whether Tye's characterisation of the content of pain experience is correct.
(30) 'Morgenbesser's Coin, Counterfactuals and Independence', Analysis, 65, no. 3, July 2005, pp. 261-263 (ISSN 0003-2638).
I argue that, contrary to what Jonathan Schaffer urges, when assessing counterfactuals we should consider circumstances which match the actual circumstances in all facts probabilistically independent (rather than causally independent) of the truth of the antecedent. As a result, one reason for supposing that a counterfactual analysis of causation is not possible is removed.
(29) 'TheTransmogrification of A Posteriori Knowledge: Reply to Brueckner', Analysis, 65, no. 1, January 2005, pp. 88-89 (ISSN 0003-2638).
I argue that, even if a posteriori knowledge is required in order to possess a concept, this does not mean that knowledge we obtain as masters of the concept fails to be a priori. Thus, contrary to what Brueckner supposed, it is necessary to challenge directly Brown's argument that truths arrived at solely through possession of a concept are a priori.
(28) 'Outsmarting the McKinsey-Brown Argument?', Analysis, 64, no. 1, January 2004, pp. 48-56 (ISSN 0003-2638).
I argue that the externalist's response to the McKinsey-Brown argument should be as follows. First, nothing you have said persuades me that I must know a priori that I am agnostic about the concept of A but, second, even if I'm wrong, that's not a problem because you need me to know a priori that I haven't manufactured the concept of A at the same time and that is not at all plausible. However, third, suppose I give you this, then it still doesn't follow that you threaten my position. The conviction upon which you trade, namely that we can't find out things about the external world a priori, either establishes that the truth of externalism is not a priori (in which case, fair enough) or is false when it is realised what 'finding out' comes to in this context.
(27) 'Prospects for a Counterfactual Theory of Causation', Phil Dowe and Paul Noordhof (2004, ed.), Cause and Chance (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 188-201 (ISBN 0-415-30098-3).
(26) 'Self-Deception, Interpretation and Consciousness', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57, no. 1, July 2003, pp. 75-100 (ISSN: 0031-8205).
I argue that the extant theories of self-deception face a counterexample which shows the essential role of instability in the face of attentive consciousness in characterizing self-deception. I argue further that this poses a challenge to the interpretist approach to the mental. I consider two revisions of the interpretist approach which might be thought to deal with this challenge and outline why are unsuccessful. The discussion reveals a more general difficulty for interpretism. Principles of reasoning--in particular, the requirement of total evidence--are given a weight in attentive consciousness which does not correspond to our reflective judgment of their weight. Successful interpretation does not involve ascribing beliefs and desires by reference to what a subject ought to believe and desire, contrary to what interpretists suggest.
(25) 'Not old ... but not that new either: Explicability, Emergence and the Characterisation of Materialism', Sven Walter and Heinz-Dieter Heckman (eds., 2003), Physicalism and Mental Causation: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action (Charlottesville, Imprint Academic), pp. 85-108 (ISBN 0-907-84547-9).
Supervenience formulations of 'physicalism' have come under attack for being unable to distinguish 'physicalism' from 'British emergentism' and 'ethical non-naturalism'. An appeal to the notion of one level of properties explicating another is said to be necessary. In response, I argue that strong supervenience with the first operator that of nomological necessity and the second that of metaphysical necessity does the job. I consider the claim that materialism formulated in my favored way does not capture the asymmetric dependence of the broadly physical on the physical as identified by physics. I argue that this failure does not undermine the formulation. Finally, I consider the claim that my formulation fails to capture other distinctive features of physicalism, for instance, that the only basic causal properties are basic physical properties and that the only fundamental laws are the laws of physics. I present a dilemma. Understand 'fundamental' one way and my proposal captures the idea. Understand it another way and it's not essential to the proper characterization of physicalism.
(24) 'Something Like Ability', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81, no. 1, March 2003, pp. 21-40 (ISSN 0004-8402).
One diagnosis of what is wrong with the 'knowledge argument' rests on the 'ability hypothesis'. This couples an ability analysis of knowing what an experience is like together with a denial that phenomenal propositions exist. I argue against both components. I consider three arguments against the existence of phenomenal propositions and find them wanting. Nevertheless, I deny that knowing phenomenal propositions is part of knowing what an experience is like.
(23) 'Tooley on Backward Causation', Analysis, 63, no. 2, April 2003, pp. 157-162 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Michael Tooley has argued that, if backward causation (of a certain kind) is possible, then a Stalnaker-Lewis account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals cannot be sound. I explain how his argument overlooks two things: first, that there may be assumed contexts in the assessment of particular counterfactuals and, second, that closeness of possible worlds is relative to the antecedent of a counterfactual. Once these are recognised, there is no threat to the Stalnaker-Lewis account.
(22) 'Epiphenomenalism and Causal Asymmetry', Hallvard Lillehammer and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (eds., 2003), Real Metaphysics (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 98-119. (ISBN 0-415-24981-3).
Epiphenomenal Dualists hold that the mental does not affect the physical but the physical affects the mental. I argue that, since the empirical basis of this claim is questionable, the attraction of this position must stem from elsewhere: the metaphysical unattractiveness of denying causal autonomy to the physical. This must rest on a particular view of causal asymmetry. But now Epiphenomenal Dualists face a dilemma. Reductive accounts of causal asymmetry can’t explain why it would be metaphysically unattractive. On the other hand, if Epiphenomenal Dualists appeal to a primitive notion of asymmetric necessitation to characterise causal asymmetry, they must appeal, at least in part, to a causal theory of temporal precedence to explain why, metaphysically necessarily, causes usually precede their effects. This undermines the physical’s claim to autonomy in just as damaging a way due to the problem of situating non-physical mental events in time.
(21) 'Imagining Objects and Imagining Experiences', Mind and Language, 17, no. 4, September 2002, pp. 426-455 (ISSN 0268-1064).
A number of philosophers have argued in favour of the Dependency Thesis: if a subject sensorily imagines a F then he or she sensorily imagines from the inside perceptually experiencing a F in the imaginary world. They claim that it explains certain important features of imaginative experience, in brief: the fact that it is perspectival, the fact that it does not involve presentation of sensory qualities and the fact that mental images can serve a number of different imaginings. I argue that the Dependency Thesis is false and that, in any event, it does not have the explanatory credentials claimed for it. Some of the features of imaginative experience are incorrectly specified, namely the absence of presentation of sensory qualities. With a more precise idea of what we need to explain, I argue that the explanation should proceed by noting that imagination and perception have phenomenally similar contents and that this is to be explained in terms of the similar kinds of representations in play. I trace the consequences of my discussion for disjunctivist theories of perception, Berkeleian Idealism and the characterisation of knowing what an experience is like.
(20) 'Personal Dualism and the Argument from Differential Vagueness', Philosophical Papers, 31, no. 1, March 2002, pp. 63-85 (ISSN 0556-8641).
In Causing Actions, Pietroski defends a distinctive view of the relationship between mind and body which he calls Personal Dualism. Central to his defence is the Argument from Differential Vagueness. It moves from the claim that mental events have different vagueness of spatiotemporal boundaries from neural events to the claim that mental events are not identical to neural events. In response, I argue that this presupposes an ontological account of vagueness that there is no reason to believe in this context. I further argue that Pietroski's reasons for rejecting the possibility that mental events are vaguely constituted from neural events are inadequate. I go on to show how Pietroski's Personal Dualism is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of mental causation because of its apparently necessary appeal to ceteris paribus laws.
(19) 'More in Pain', Analysis, 62, no. 2, April 2002, pp. 153-154 (ISSN 0003-2638).
In his reply to my article 'In Pain', Michael Tye takes me to reject Representationalism. In this response, I correct that impression. More crucially, Tye suggests that he may deal with the invalidity of the inferences I discussed in the original article by distinguishing two spatial senses of 'in'. I provide other cases which suggest that he will have to proliferate spatial senses of 'in' to explain the invalidity of a whole host of other inferences. I suggest that this speaks in favour of the claim that there is a sense of 'in' which is used in ascribing a certain state to an object.
(18) 'Sungho Choi and the "actual events" clause', Analysis, 62, no. 1, January 2002, pp. 46-47 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Sungho Choi argued that the type of case I described to motivate my formulation of the 'actual events' clause of my theory of causation (Mind, 1999) failed to support the clause in question. He considered another type of case which might provide a justification and argues otherwise. I agree with him about the case I described but argue that he makes two unwarranted assumptions about the second case he considers. My formulation of the 'actual events' clause is justified by the fact that these assumptions need not be made for my theory to yield the correct verdicts.
(17) 'In Defence of Influence?', Analysis, 61, no. 4, October 2001, pp. 323-327 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Jonathan Schaffer provided two alleged counterexamples to Lewis's new theory of causation: causation as influence. They purport to show that he identifies neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. I argue that the counterexamples don't work. However, a revised version of one of them establishes that Lewis has failed to identify a sufficient condition for causation. Indeed, the very thing that enabled him to deal with some cases of trumping is the basis of the problem. In order to avoid this upshot, Lewis has to provide a principled account of the kind of alterations that are appropriate to consider. It is unlikely that such an account is available.
(16) 'Believe What You Want', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2001, 101, no. 3, pp. 247-265 (ISSN 0066-7374).
The Uncontrollability thesis is that it is metaphysically impossible to consciously believe that p at will. I review the standard ways in which this might be explained. They focus on the aim or purpose of belief being truth. I argue that these don’t work. They either explain the aim in a way which makes it implausible that the Uncontrollability thesis is true or they fail to justify their claim that beliefs should be understood as aimed at the truth. I further argue that the explanations don’t cut deep enough. Making the aim of truth internal to a state does not explain why we can’t produce at will states without this feature but sharing these states’ motivational role. I put forward a different explanation. I argue that consciousness makes manifest the attraction of the norm of truth. If we are consciously attending to the question of whether p, we cannot help but make a judgement in line with what the evidence gives us grounds for believing is true.
(15) 'In pain', Analysis, 61, no. 2, April 2001, pp. 95-97 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Michael Tye has claimed that a consideration in favour of Representationalism is that it enables us to adopt a univocal sense of ‘in’ in terms of spatial location. I argue that this is not the case. There is a distinct sense of ‘in’ used to characterise states of objects to which the Representationalist, as much as anybody else, will have to appeal in order to capture what we mean when we say that there is a pain in a finger.
(14) 'Ramachandran's Four Counterexamples', Mind, April 2000, 109, no. 434, pp. 315-324 (ISSN 0026-4423).
(13) 'Moral Requirements are still not Rational Requirements', Analysis, 59, no. 3, July 1999, pp. 127-136 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Michael Smith argued that the truism that we legitimately expect agents to do what they are morally required to do could only be explained if moral requirements were requirements of reason. I argue that this is not so. Moral requirements may count as reasons for an agent S if they have the relevant perceptual capacity or inculcated desires. Moral rationalism only appears superior if one assumes that rational agency is indivisible. I argue further that Smith does not explain the legitimacy of our expectations because he fails to distinguish between sagacity and rationality. It is not legitimate to expect agents to be sagacious.
(12) 'Causation by Content', Mind and Language, 14, no. 3, September 1999, pp. 291-320 (ISSN 0268-1064).
Nonreductive physicalism together with environment-dependence of content has been thought to be incompatible with the claim that beliefs are efficacious partly in virtue of their possession of content, that is, in virtue of their intentional properties. I argue that this is not so. First, I provide a general account of property causation. Then, I explain how, even given the truth of nonreductive physicalism and the environment-dependence of content, intentional properties will be efficacious according to this account. I go on to relate my discussion to that concerning whether anomalous monism is committed to epiphenomenalism. I close by considering how my proposal suggests we should conceive of different levels of causation in a layered world.
(11) 'The Overdetermination Argument versus the Cause-and-Essence Principle - No Contest', Mind, April 1999, 108, no. 430, pp. 367-375 (ISSN 0026 -
4423).
(10) 'Probabilistic Causation, Preemption and Counterfactuals', Mind, January 1999, 108, no. 429, pp. 95-125 (ISSN 0026 - 4423).
Counterfactual theories of causation have had problems with cases of probabilistic causation and preemption. I put forward a counterfactual theory that seems to deal with these problematic cases and also has the virtue of providing an account of the alleged asymmetry between hasteners and delayers: the former usually being counted as causes, the latter not. I go on to consider a new type of problem case that has not received so much attention in the literature, those I dub 'catalysts' and 'anticatalysts', and show how my account needs to be adjusted to deliver the right verdicts in these cases. The net result is a particular conception of a cause that I try to spell out in the closing section of the paper. In that section, I also briefly discuss asymmetry and the purpose behind providing a counterfactual theory of causation.
(9) 'Micro-based Properties and the Supervenience Argument: a response to Kim', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1999, 99, Part 1, pp. 109-114
(ISSN 0066-7374).
I argue that, if the Supervenience argument challenges the efficacy of supervening properties, then the Supervenience Argument can be reformulated to threaten the efficacy of micro-based properties. I argue that mental properties can be seen as micro-based properties. Finally, I provide a reason for supposing that some supervening properties are efficacious. If a property is variably realised, it has the causal powers which accrue to it from its various realisations. That means that it may have causal powers which exceed the causal powers of any one particular realising property.
(8) 'Critical Notice: Causation, Probability, and Chance, D. H. Mellor, The Facts of Causation', Mind, October 1998, 107, no. 428, pp. 855-877 (ISSN 0026 - 4423).
In this critical notice, I assess four key claims of Hugh Mellor's book, 'The Facts of Causation'. The first claim is that the fundamental kind of causal statement concerns facts rather than events. I argue that, contrary to what Mellor supposes, one can formulate cases of iterated causation and negative causation in terms of events and that Mellor's arguments partly fail because he does not attend to the distinction between the claim that even statements are primary and the claim that the fundamental constituents of reality that make causal statements true include events. I also question his derivation of statements of effect-causation from statements of fact-causation. The second claim of Mellor's book is that causation is not a relation. I argue that he overlooks the possibility that there may be causal relations in the world without every causal statement being made true by its own distinctive causal relation. The third claim of Mellor's book is that causes raise the chances of their effects. I argue that Mellor's theory has the resources to deal with problematic cases like those of early preemption so long as certain adjustments are made to his account of the circumstances relative to which a cause must be a chance-raiser. However, I question whether Mellor's theory succeeds in capturing our intuitive notion of causal necessity in terms of counterfactuals involving chance-raising plus an appeal to continguity. The fourth key claim of Mellor's book is that there can be no backward causation. I argue that this conclusion rests upon an unwarranted assumption that chances are logically independent.
(7) 'Problems for the M-Set Analysis of Causation', Mind, April 1998, 107, no. 426, pp. 457-463. (ISSN 0026 - 4423).
I present three problems for Ramachandran's M-Set Analysis of Causation. First, it cannot deal with purely temporal cases of preemption (cases of 'frustration'). Second, it cannot deal with standard cases of indeterministic causation. Third, it loses the asymmetry of cause and effect. The first and third problems show that Ramachandran's analysis is not sufficient for causation, the second that it is not necessary.
(6) 'Do Tropes Resolve the Problem of Mental Causation?' Philosophical Quarterly, April 1998, 48, no. 191, pp. 221-226 (ISSN 0031-8094).
David Robb has argued (in "The Properties of Mental Causation", 'The Philosophical Quarterly', 47 (1997), pp. 178-94), that tropes are the properties of causation, i.e., the properties in virtue of which causal relations hold. He thinks that the welcome upshot of this is that there is no problem of mental causation. I argue that his reasons for thinking that tropes are the properties of causation are unsound. In addition, even if one takes the trope approach as a reasonable reform of our current practice, the problem of mental causation still arises. It is just been hidden in the question of what makes tropes identical.
(5) 'For a (revised) PCA-analysis', (with Murali Ramachandran and Jonardon Ganeri) Analysis, 1998, 58, no. 1, pp. 45-47 (ISSN 0003-2638).
We respond to criticisms made by Byrne and Hall ('Analysis', same issue), of our earlier theory ('Analysis', 56, 1996) of causation, a counterfactual analysis based on the notion of a "potentially complete ancestor" to a causal event.
(4) 'Making the Change: the Functionalist's way', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 48, 1997, pp. 233-250 (ISSN 0007 0882).
The paper defends functionalism against the charge that it would make mental properties inefficacious. It outlines two ways of formulating the doctrine that mental properties are functional properties and shows that both allow mental properties to be efficacious. The first (Lewis) approach takes functional properties to be the 'occupants' of causal roles. I show why this is not a problem. The second way of formulating the doctrine takes functional properties to be causal role properties. I claim that mental properties so understood would only be inefficacious if a 'law-centred' rather than a 'property-centred' approach is adopted to the introduction of efficacy into the world. I develop a property-centred account that explains how mental properties can be efficacious without introducing systematic overdetermination.
(3) 'The Mysterious Grand Properties of Forrest', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75, no. 1, March 1997, pp. 99-101 (ISSN 0004-8402).
Forrest argues that supervening properties are properties of properties (Forrest (1988)). He claims that this is a way of getting out of what he calls the 'mystery or reduction' dilemma. Those supervenient properties that do not reduce to their supervenience-base stand in a mysterious relation to it. I argue that if one is worried about the mystery in this case, there is an analogous mystery that his own proposal introduces. Why is it that some properties essentially possess certain other properties?
(2) 'Counterfactuals and Preemptive Causation', (with Murali Ramachandran and Jonardon Ganeri) Analysis, 56, no. 4, 1996, pp. 219-225 (ISSN 0003-2638).
We put forward a counterfactual analysis of deterministic causation (the Potentially Complete Ancestor analysis) which, we argue, deals with cases of preemptive causation better than Lewis’s Quasi-Dependence approach. The basic idea is that, if c is a cause of e, then, perhaps in the absence of a candidate competitor cause of e, e might be a descendent c. e is a descendent of c if and only if there is a chain of counterfactual dependence beginning with c and ending with e involving only actual events. Candidate effects cannot be descendents of pre-empted causes because there will always be an event missing in the pre-empted chain.
(1) 'Accidental Associations, Local Potency and a dilemma for Dretske', Mind and Language, 11, no. 2, June 1996, pp. 216-222 (ISSN 0268-1064).
I argue that Fred Dretske's account of the causal relevance of content only works if another account works better, that put forward by Gabriel Segal and Elliot Sober. Dretske needs to appeal to it to deal with two problems he faces: one arising because he accepts that the mere association between indicators and indicated is causally relevant to the recruitment of indicators in causing behaviour, the other from the need to explain how a present token of a certain type of content is causally relevant. For this and other reasons their approach has clear advantages over Dretske's.
A Variety of Causes (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, )592 pp (ISBN 9780199251469)
This is the first book length defence of a counterfactual theory of causation. The analysis defended is new. It expresses the idea that, independent of its competitors, a cause raises the chance of an effect over its mean background chance by a complete causal chain. The analysis depends upon a novel development of David Lewis's Theory of Counterfactuals. One consequence of the analysis is that causation is not transitive. Causation is also nonsymmetric. The counterfactual basis of causal nonsymmetry is the result of a number of different, and sometimes interacting, nonsymmetries. The analysis allows for the development of a novel theory of events whose nature is independent of their role in causation and the identification of one other important causal relationship: property causation. Although compatible with Hume's denial of necessary connections between distinct existences, a key feature of the theory is that it benefits from being independent of the Humean framework. There are two ways in which something may be metaphysically fundamental: vertically and horizontally. Many metaphysicians emphasise vertical fundamentality and focus on truth making. The book rejects this emphasis and the truth making approach in particular. Horizontally fundamental metaphysical entities are those that are necessary components in different possible universes. Causation has a claim to be horizontally fundamental: the cement of any universe. Laws are patterns of causation realised in different metaphysical frameworks such as those articulated by Lewis, Armstrong and the powers ontologists. The book recognises varieties of causation both in, for example, counting cases of double prevention and causation by genuine processes as types of causation, and allowing that the analysis identifies causes across these different metaphysical frameworks.
Papers
(48) 'The transparent failure of norms to keep up standards of belief', Philosophical Studies, 2020, 177, pp. 1213-1227.
(47) ‘Dependence’ Sophie Gibb, Robin Hendry and Tom Lancaster (eds., 2019), The Routledge Handbook of Emergence(London, New York, Routledge) (ISBN 978-1-138-925508-3)
Dependence is the most general notion under which a host of familiar metaphysical relations between entities – causation, supervenience, grounding, realisation etc. – fall. In the first section of this chapter, I offer offer some preliminary clarifications to outline the territory in a little more detail. Some years back this would have primarily involved differentiating kinds of dependence in terms of the strength of the modal operators used, and the other details of an analysis deploying them. Now, there has been a proliferation of non-purely modal accounts of dependence. The second section identifies the various reasons that have been offered for this proliferation. The third section discusses a notion of ontological dependence and grounding, each of which draws on an appeal to the essence of the depending, or depended upon, entities. In spite of their popularity, we will see that such notions are of little assistance in capturing a central case of interest to us: the proper understanding of emergence. In the light of this, the fourth section defends a purely modal treatment of some of the problem cases outlined in the first section and also discussed a non-modal notion of construction. I close with a hypothesis that the combination of three features: a non-dependence account of fundamentality, various notions of construction and purely modal properties remove the motivation for appeal to an independent account of grounding in this, and perhaps any, area.
(46) 'Sensory Substitution and the Challenge from Acclimatisation', Fiona Macpherson (ed., 2019), Sensory Substitution and Augmentation(Oxford, Oxford University Press).
A refined characterisation of sensory substitution has, as a consequence, that the substituting sense plus sensory substitution device is not always appropriately classified as the substituted sense. As a result, I argue, acclimatisation to a sensory substitution device is plausibly thought of as providing presentations of properties. Externalist accounts of experience together with objectivist characterisations of such properties have the upshot that properties putatively proprietary to a sense modality can be presented in another modality in cases of substitution. I consider three objections to this argument. I close by explaining how reflection on the phenomena of sensory substitution and, in particular, acclimatisation is important for the development of any kind of representationalist or relationist theory of phenomenal properties or, at the very least, suggests we need to refine the idea of certain properties - rather than particular ways in which their presentation is bundled together - being proprietary to the particular senses.
(45) 'Evaluative Perception as Response-Dependent Representation', Anna Bergqvist and Robert Cowan (eds.), Evaluative Perception (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 80-108 (ISBN 9780198786054). For copy, please email [email protected]
One dimension of the controversy over whether evaluative properties are presented in perceptual content has general roots in the debate over whether perceptual content, in general, is rich or austere. I argue that we need to recognise a level of rich non-sensory perceptual content, drawing on experiences of chicken sexing and speech perception, to capture what our experience is like and our epistemic entitlements. In both cases (and many others), we are not conscious of the precise perceptual cues that are the basis for discriminations and, thus, the characterisation of the phenomenal content of such experiences must go beyond sensory properties. Nevertheless, this point is arguably insufficient to establish the perception of evaluative properties. Their representation requires the subject to respond in certain ways. I discuss how this should go for the case of pain and then, in outline, for moral properties.
(44) 'Imaginative Content', Fabian Dorsch and Fiona Macpherson (eds), Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 96-129 (ISBN: 9780198717881). For copy, please email [email protected]
Sensuous imaginative content presents a problem for unitary accounts of phenomenal character (or content) such as relationism, representationalism or qualia theory. Four features of imaginative content are at the heat of the issue: its perspectival nature, the similarity with corresponding perceptual experiences, the multiple use thesis, and its non-presentational character. I reject appeals to the dependency thesis to account for these features and explain how a representationalist approach can be developed to accommodate them. I defend the multiple use thesis against Kathleen Stock’s objections but separate the putative non-presentational character of imaginative content into two elements. Loss of presentation is accounted for by the reduced representations involved in imagination and lack of potential response-dependent representational properties. Absence of commitment to reality is accounted for by representational properties characterised in terms of the absence of a certain kind of aetiology.
(43) ‘Appunti per una teoria della percezione espressiva’, Marta Benenti and M. Ravasio (eds., 2017), Espressivita: Un dibattito contemporaneo (Milan, Mimesis), pp. 119-143.
(42) (with Ema Sullivan-Bissett) ‘Another Defence of Owens’s Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims’, Logos and Episteme, 2017, 8 (1), pp. 147-153.
David Owens objected to the truth-aim account of belief on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not meet a necessary condition on aims, namely, that aims can be weighed against other aims. If the putative aim of belief cannot be weighed, then belief does not have an aim after all. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen responded to this objection by appeal to other deliberative contexts in which the aim could be weighed, and we argued that this response to Owens failed for two reasons. Steglich-Petersen has since responded to our defence of Owens’s objection. Here we reply to Steglich-Petersen and conclude, once again, that Owens’s challenge to the truth-aim approach remains to be answered.
(41) 'Mental Causation: Ontology and Patterns of Variation’, Sophie Gibb, E. J. Lowe and R. D. Ingthorsson (eds., 2013), Mental Causation and Ontology (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 88-125 (ISBN: 978-0-19-960377-0).
The paper uses two overreactions to Kim’s challenge to the efficacy of mental properties, if nonreductive physicalism is true, to motivate an alternative. According to the first, property causation involves patterns of dependency, according to the second, it is ensured by property identification. The former has problems with redundant causation, the latter with justifying the proposed property identifications - e.g. by the causal powers of one being a subset of the causal powers of the other. The former places the emphasis on inference-basing, the latter on truth-making. The recommended approach seeks to respect both by having a determination – rather than identification - condition and a generality condition which does not appeal to law. Discussion of the approach suggests a different conception of non-reductive physicalism, appealing to harmony or co-ordination.
(40) (with Ema Sullivan-Bissett) ‘A Defence of Owens’ Exclusivity Objection to Beliefs Having Aims’, Philosophical Studies, 2013, 163, no. 2, pp. 453-457.
(39) ‘Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mind’,James Garvey (2011, ed.), The Continuum Companion to Philosophy of Mind (London, Continuum), pp. 239-279 (ISBN: HB: 0826431887 978-0-8264-3188-2), reprinted in James Garvey (2015, ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Mind (London, Bloomsbury), pp. 239-279 (ISBN: PB: 978-1-47424-390-2).
(38) ‘Emergent Causation and Property Causation’,Cynthia MacDonald and Graham Macdonald (eds., 2010), Emergence in Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 69-99 (ISBN 978-0-19-958362-1).
In the first section of this paper, I will provide a characterisation of the different relationship of broadly physical properties and emergent properties to narrowly physical properties and defend it against objections, in particular, that the characterisation I favour will not work if a causal theory of properties is true. I will also criticise the alternatives which have been offered as either not allowing for the existence of broadly physical properties or lacking appropriate independence from the key idea to which I appeal. In the second section, I will explain why, given Kim’s exclusion argument, the verdicts that a counterfactual theory of property instance causation supplies for broadly physical properties requires independent justification where those for emergent properties do not. In the third section, I outline how such a justification may be provided and develop an account of property causation which builds upon it. In the fourth section, I examine the implications of my analysis for the question of emergent causation, focussing in particular upon the question, does all emergent causation involve emergent property causation? My negative conclusion here will enable me to identify a second kind of emergence: emergent non-reductive physicalism. In the concluding fifth section, I briefly consider the consequences of my discussion for two candidates for emergence: phenomenal consciousness and free will.
(37) 'Counterfactuals,Causation and Humean Supervenience', Robrecht Vanderbeeken and Bart D’Hooghe (2010, eds.), Worldviews, Science and
Us: Studies of Analytic Metaphysics (World Scientific), pp. 167-206 (ISBN-13 978-981-4295-81-9).
Counterfactual theories of causation are standardly put forward by proponents of the doctrine of Humean Supervenience. Nevertheless, the plausibility of such counterfactual theories does not rely upon, nor does it entail, the truth of Humean Supervenience. To illustrate the significance of these points, I consider three problem areas for the counterfactual theory of causation arising from the key component in evaluating its success: the semantics of the counterfactuals constituting the analysis. The first is the future similarity objection. The second relates to the connection between counterfactuals and chance. The third concerns the relationship between counterfactual asymmetry and causal asymmetry. In response to the first two difficulties, I place a constraint upon Lewis’s perfect match condition for the similarity weighting for counterfactuals and recommend appealing, more generally, to the idea of failure of fit rather than law violation in formulating the conditions. I explain how the constraint is motivated, and distinguished from something stronger that applies in certain contexts, and not others, by considering the connection between chance and frequency. I argue that the combination of this solution to the first two problems and recognition of the, at best, contingent truth of the doctrine of Humean Supervenience provides a successful treatment of the third problem. I draw out the methodological implications of my approach both with regard to the traditional aims of analysis and, more particularly, with regard to the proper understanding of the aims of counterfactual analyses of causation in the final section of the chapter.
(36) ‘The Essential Instability of Self-Deception’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009, 35, no. 1, pp. 45-71 (ISSN-0037-802X).
(35) 'Expressive Perception as Projective Imagining', Mind and Language, 23, 2008, no. 3, pp. 329-358 (ISSN 0268-1064).
I argue that our experience of expressive properties (such as the joyfulness or sadness of a piece of music) essentially involves the sensuous imagination (through simulation) of an emotion-guided process which would result in the production of the properties which constitute the realisation of the expressive properties experienced. I compare this proposal with arousal theories, Wollheim’s Freudian account, and other more closely related theories appealing to imagination such as Kendall Walton’s. I explain why the proposal is most naturally developed in terms of simulation and briefly comment upon the impact of work on cross-cultural perception of facial expression, modularity and autism for the proposal.
(34) 'A coherentist response to Stoneham's reductio', Analysis, 67, no. 3, July (2007), pp. 267-268 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Tom Stoneham's key charge against coherentists is that they are committed to rejecting the theorem from probability that pr (p & q) is always less than or equal to pr (q). I argue this is incorrect. They are not committed to holding that, relative to some set of beliefs, credence in the conjunction will be higher than the conjuncts. Stoneham's main objection to this response is that it is not in general true that the mere fact that I believe something can make it more reasonable for me to believe it. I argue that this is not a premise to which we can appeal in a reductio of coherentism.
(33) 'The Success of Consciousness', Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13, no. 7-8, July/August 2006, pp. 109-119 (ISSN 1355 8250), and in Anthony Freeman (ed., 2006), Radical Externalism (Exeter, Imprint-Academic), pp. 109-119 (ISBN 1845400682).
According to Honderich, consciousness, or more precisely, perceptual consciousness is the existence of a world. In the first and section sections of the paper, I consider the motivations for adopting this theory rather than representationalism or an ambitious development of disjunctivism. In the third section, I consider whether Honderich’s theory performs well with regard to what he considers a crucial feature of perceptual states, namely that they have causal consequences for our behaviour. In the fourth section, I discuss Honderich’s approach to reflective consciousness and argue that it contains an important insight that representationalists should use to answer a substantial objection against their position – one pressed by Honderich. I close with a brief discussion of the impact of hallucinations on Honderich’s theory.
(32) 'Environment-Dependent Content and the Virtues of Causal Explanation', Synthese, 149, April 2006, pp. 551-575 (ISSN 0023-7857) (Special Edition edited by Alexander Bird and Johannes Persson).
The paper focuses on two related objections to Externalism or Anti-Individualism. The first, which I dub the Argument from Precision, holds that if Externalism were true, then we would have to concede that content-bearing mental states so construed would be explanatorily redundant. There would always be a more precise explanation of behaviour which did not mention them. The second, the Argument from Causal Powers, holds that intentional properties should not figure in scientifically advanced causal explanations if Externalism were true because individuation by intentional properties is not individuation by causal powers. I claim that the Argument from Causal Powers is flawed because it ignores the distinctive causal contribution of content-bearing states in the minds of the relevant experts. Yet, on any plausible account of distinctness of causal powers, this is exactly what should be considered. Recognition of this fact enables us to answer the first argument. It is because individuation by intentional properties is individuation by psychologically important causal powers that reference to content-bearing mental states and events fails to be redundant in causal explanations of behaviour. Generalising this point, I argue that causal explanations have at least two virtues: precision and individuation by causal powers. An explanation is not redundant if it has at least one of these.
(31) 'In a State of Pain', Murat Aydede (2005, ed.), Pain (Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press), pp. 151-162 (ISBN 0-262-51188-6).
I continue the debate with Michael Tye over the question of whether representationalism about pain enables us to see that the 'in' in phrases like "He had a pain in his foot" can be taken to be purely spatial as opposed to state-attributing discussing a range of cases and his responses to them. I then broaden the discussion to make three further points about his theory. First, I argue that Tye has not succeeded in providing a decisive consideration against a related theory which takes pains as representationally unmediated objects of pain experiences. Second, I defend Tye against an objection from Murat Aydede that Tye's theory cannot capture the fact that we dislike pain because it hurts. Third, I question whether Tye's characterisation of the content of pain experience is correct.
(30) 'Morgenbesser's Coin, Counterfactuals and Independence', Analysis, 65, no. 3, July 2005, pp. 261-263 (ISSN 0003-2638).
I argue that, contrary to what Jonathan Schaffer urges, when assessing counterfactuals we should consider circumstances which match the actual circumstances in all facts probabilistically independent (rather than causally independent) of the truth of the antecedent. As a result, one reason for supposing that a counterfactual analysis of causation is not possible is removed.
(29) 'TheTransmogrification of A Posteriori Knowledge: Reply to Brueckner', Analysis, 65, no. 1, January 2005, pp. 88-89 (ISSN 0003-2638).
I argue that, even if a posteriori knowledge is required in order to possess a concept, this does not mean that knowledge we obtain as masters of the concept fails to be a priori. Thus, contrary to what Brueckner supposed, it is necessary to challenge directly Brown's argument that truths arrived at solely through possession of a concept are a priori.
(28) 'Outsmarting the McKinsey-Brown Argument?', Analysis, 64, no. 1, January 2004, pp. 48-56 (ISSN 0003-2638).
I argue that the externalist's response to the McKinsey-Brown argument should be as follows. First, nothing you have said persuades me that I must know a priori that I am agnostic about the concept of A but, second, even if I'm wrong, that's not a problem because you need me to know a priori that I haven't manufactured the concept of A at the same time and that is not at all plausible. However, third, suppose I give you this, then it still doesn't follow that you threaten my position. The conviction upon which you trade, namely that we can't find out things about the external world a priori, either establishes that the truth of externalism is not a priori (in which case, fair enough) or is false when it is realised what 'finding out' comes to in this context.
(27) 'Prospects for a Counterfactual Theory of Causation', Phil Dowe and Paul Noordhof (2004, ed.), Cause and Chance (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 188-201 (ISBN 0-415-30098-3).
(26) 'Self-Deception, Interpretation and Consciousness', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57, no. 1, July 2003, pp. 75-100 (ISSN: 0031-8205).
I argue that the extant theories of self-deception face a counterexample which shows the essential role of instability in the face of attentive consciousness in characterizing self-deception. I argue further that this poses a challenge to the interpretist approach to the mental. I consider two revisions of the interpretist approach which might be thought to deal with this challenge and outline why are unsuccessful. The discussion reveals a more general difficulty for interpretism. Principles of reasoning--in particular, the requirement of total evidence--are given a weight in attentive consciousness which does not correspond to our reflective judgment of their weight. Successful interpretation does not involve ascribing beliefs and desires by reference to what a subject ought to believe and desire, contrary to what interpretists suggest.
(25) 'Not old ... but not that new either: Explicability, Emergence and the Characterisation of Materialism', Sven Walter and Heinz-Dieter Heckman (eds., 2003), Physicalism and Mental Causation: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action (Charlottesville, Imprint Academic), pp. 85-108 (ISBN 0-907-84547-9).
Supervenience formulations of 'physicalism' have come under attack for being unable to distinguish 'physicalism' from 'British emergentism' and 'ethical non-naturalism'. An appeal to the notion of one level of properties explicating another is said to be necessary. In response, I argue that strong supervenience with the first operator that of nomological necessity and the second that of metaphysical necessity does the job. I consider the claim that materialism formulated in my favored way does not capture the asymmetric dependence of the broadly physical on the physical as identified by physics. I argue that this failure does not undermine the formulation. Finally, I consider the claim that my formulation fails to capture other distinctive features of physicalism, for instance, that the only basic causal properties are basic physical properties and that the only fundamental laws are the laws of physics. I present a dilemma. Understand 'fundamental' one way and my proposal captures the idea. Understand it another way and it's not essential to the proper characterization of physicalism.
(24) 'Something Like Ability', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81, no. 1, March 2003, pp. 21-40 (ISSN 0004-8402).
One diagnosis of what is wrong with the 'knowledge argument' rests on the 'ability hypothesis'. This couples an ability analysis of knowing what an experience is like together with a denial that phenomenal propositions exist. I argue against both components. I consider three arguments against the existence of phenomenal propositions and find them wanting. Nevertheless, I deny that knowing phenomenal propositions is part of knowing what an experience is like.
(23) 'Tooley on Backward Causation', Analysis, 63, no. 2, April 2003, pp. 157-162 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Michael Tooley has argued that, if backward causation (of a certain kind) is possible, then a Stalnaker-Lewis account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals cannot be sound. I explain how his argument overlooks two things: first, that there may be assumed contexts in the assessment of particular counterfactuals and, second, that closeness of possible worlds is relative to the antecedent of a counterfactual. Once these are recognised, there is no threat to the Stalnaker-Lewis account.
(22) 'Epiphenomenalism and Causal Asymmetry', Hallvard Lillehammer and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (eds., 2003), Real Metaphysics (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 98-119. (ISBN 0-415-24981-3).
Epiphenomenal Dualists hold that the mental does not affect the physical but the physical affects the mental. I argue that, since the empirical basis of this claim is questionable, the attraction of this position must stem from elsewhere: the metaphysical unattractiveness of denying causal autonomy to the physical. This must rest on a particular view of causal asymmetry. But now Epiphenomenal Dualists face a dilemma. Reductive accounts of causal asymmetry can’t explain why it would be metaphysically unattractive. On the other hand, if Epiphenomenal Dualists appeal to a primitive notion of asymmetric necessitation to characterise causal asymmetry, they must appeal, at least in part, to a causal theory of temporal precedence to explain why, metaphysically necessarily, causes usually precede their effects. This undermines the physical’s claim to autonomy in just as damaging a way due to the problem of situating non-physical mental events in time.
(21) 'Imagining Objects and Imagining Experiences', Mind and Language, 17, no. 4, September 2002, pp. 426-455 (ISSN 0268-1064).
A number of philosophers have argued in favour of the Dependency Thesis: if a subject sensorily imagines a F then he or she sensorily imagines from the inside perceptually experiencing a F in the imaginary world. They claim that it explains certain important features of imaginative experience, in brief: the fact that it is perspectival, the fact that it does not involve presentation of sensory qualities and the fact that mental images can serve a number of different imaginings. I argue that the Dependency Thesis is false and that, in any event, it does not have the explanatory credentials claimed for it. Some of the features of imaginative experience are incorrectly specified, namely the absence of presentation of sensory qualities. With a more precise idea of what we need to explain, I argue that the explanation should proceed by noting that imagination and perception have phenomenally similar contents and that this is to be explained in terms of the similar kinds of representations in play. I trace the consequences of my discussion for disjunctivist theories of perception, Berkeleian Idealism and the characterisation of knowing what an experience is like.
(20) 'Personal Dualism and the Argument from Differential Vagueness', Philosophical Papers, 31, no. 1, March 2002, pp. 63-85 (ISSN 0556-8641).
In Causing Actions, Pietroski defends a distinctive view of the relationship between mind and body which he calls Personal Dualism. Central to his defence is the Argument from Differential Vagueness. It moves from the claim that mental events have different vagueness of spatiotemporal boundaries from neural events to the claim that mental events are not identical to neural events. In response, I argue that this presupposes an ontological account of vagueness that there is no reason to believe in this context. I further argue that Pietroski's reasons for rejecting the possibility that mental events are vaguely constituted from neural events are inadequate. I go on to show how Pietroski's Personal Dualism is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of mental causation because of its apparently necessary appeal to ceteris paribus laws.
(19) 'More in Pain', Analysis, 62, no. 2, April 2002, pp. 153-154 (ISSN 0003-2638).
In his reply to my article 'In Pain', Michael Tye takes me to reject Representationalism. In this response, I correct that impression. More crucially, Tye suggests that he may deal with the invalidity of the inferences I discussed in the original article by distinguishing two spatial senses of 'in'. I provide other cases which suggest that he will have to proliferate spatial senses of 'in' to explain the invalidity of a whole host of other inferences. I suggest that this speaks in favour of the claim that there is a sense of 'in' which is used in ascribing a certain state to an object.
(18) 'Sungho Choi and the "actual events" clause', Analysis, 62, no. 1, January 2002, pp. 46-47 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Sungho Choi argued that the type of case I described to motivate my formulation of the 'actual events' clause of my theory of causation (Mind, 1999) failed to support the clause in question. He considered another type of case which might provide a justification and argues otherwise. I agree with him about the case I described but argue that he makes two unwarranted assumptions about the second case he considers. My formulation of the 'actual events' clause is justified by the fact that these assumptions need not be made for my theory to yield the correct verdicts.
(17) 'In Defence of Influence?', Analysis, 61, no. 4, October 2001, pp. 323-327 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Jonathan Schaffer provided two alleged counterexamples to Lewis's new theory of causation: causation as influence. They purport to show that he identifies neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. I argue that the counterexamples don't work. However, a revised version of one of them establishes that Lewis has failed to identify a sufficient condition for causation. Indeed, the very thing that enabled him to deal with some cases of trumping is the basis of the problem. In order to avoid this upshot, Lewis has to provide a principled account of the kind of alterations that are appropriate to consider. It is unlikely that such an account is available.
(16) 'Believe What You Want', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2001, 101, no. 3, pp. 247-265 (ISSN 0066-7374).
The Uncontrollability thesis is that it is metaphysically impossible to consciously believe that p at will. I review the standard ways in which this might be explained. They focus on the aim or purpose of belief being truth. I argue that these don’t work. They either explain the aim in a way which makes it implausible that the Uncontrollability thesis is true or they fail to justify their claim that beliefs should be understood as aimed at the truth. I further argue that the explanations don’t cut deep enough. Making the aim of truth internal to a state does not explain why we can’t produce at will states without this feature but sharing these states’ motivational role. I put forward a different explanation. I argue that consciousness makes manifest the attraction of the norm of truth. If we are consciously attending to the question of whether p, we cannot help but make a judgement in line with what the evidence gives us grounds for believing is true.
(15) 'In pain', Analysis, 61, no. 2, April 2001, pp. 95-97 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Michael Tye has claimed that a consideration in favour of Representationalism is that it enables us to adopt a univocal sense of ‘in’ in terms of spatial location. I argue that this is not the case. There is a distinct sense of ‘in’ used to characterise states of objects to which the Representationalist, as much as anybody else, will have to appeal in order to capture what we mean when we say that there is a pain in a finger.
(14) 'Ramachandran's Four Counterexamples', Mind, April 2000, 109, no. 434, pp. 315-324 (ISSN 0026-4423).
(13) 'Moral Requirements are still not Rational Requirements', Analysis, 59, no. 3, July 1999, pp. 127-136 (ISSN 0003-2638).
Michael Smith argued that the truism that we legitimately expect agents to do what they are morally required to do could only be explained if moral requirements were requirements of reason. I argue that this is not so. Moral requirements may count as reasons for an agent S if they have the relevant perceptual capacity or inculcated desires. Moral rationalism only appears superior if one assumes that rational agency is indivisible. I argue further that Smith does not explain the legitimacy of our expectations because he fails to distinguish between sagacity and rationality. It is not legitimate to expect agents to be sagacious.
(12) 'Causation by Content', Mind and Language, 14, no. 3, September 1999, pp. 291-320 (ISSN 0268-1064).
Nonreductive physicalism together with environment-dependence of content has been thought to be incompatible with the claim that beliefs are efficacious partly in virtue of their possession of content, that is, in virtue of their intentional properties. I argue that this is not so. First, I provide a general account of property causation. Then, I explain how, even given the truth of nonreductive physicalism and the environment-dependence of content, intentional properties will be efficacious according to this account. I go on to relate my discussion to that concerning whether anomalous monism is committed to epiphenomenalism. I close by considering how my proposal suggests we should conceive of different levels of causation in a layered world.
(11) 'The Overdetermination Argument versus the Cause-and-Essence Principle - No Contest', Mind, April 1999, 108, no. 430, pp. 367-375 (ISSN 0026 -
4423).
(10) 'Probabilistic Causation, Preemption and Counterfactuals', Mind, January 1999, 108, no. 429, pp. 95-125 (ISSN 0026 - 4423).
Counterfactual theories of causation have had problems with cases of probabilistic causation and preemption. I put forward a counterfactual theory that seems to deal with these problematic cases and also has the virtue of providing an account of the alleged asymmetry between hasteners and delayers: the former usually being counted as causes, the latter not. I go on to consider a new type of problem case that has not received so much attention in the literature, those I dub 'catalysts' and 'anticatalysts', and show how my account needs to be adjusted to deliver the right verdicts in these cases. The net result is a particular conception of a cause that I try to spell out in the closing section of the paper. In that section, I also briefly discuss asymmetry and the purpose behind providing a counterfactual theory of causation.
(9) 'Micro-based Properties and the Supervenience Argument: a response to Kim', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1999, 99, Part 1, pp. 109-114
(ISSN 0066-7374).
I argue that, if the Supervenience argument challenges the efficacy of supervening properties, then the Supervenience Argument can be reformulated to threaten the efficacy of micro-based properties. I argue that mental properties can be seen as micro-based properties. Finally, I provide a reason for supposing that some supervening properties are efficacious. If a property is variably realised, it has the causal powers which accrue to it from its various realisations. That means that it may have causal powers which exceed the causal powers of any one particular realising property.
(8) 'Critical Notice: Causation, Probability, and Chance, D. H. Mellor, The Facts of Causation', Mind, October 1998, 107, no. 428, pp. 855-877 (ISSN 0026 - 4423).
In this critical notice, I assess four key claims of Hugh Mellor's book, 'The Facts of Causation'. The first claim is that the fundamental kind of causal statement concerns facts rather than events. I argue that, contrary to what Mellor supposes, one can formulate cases of iterated causation and negative causation in terms of events and that Mellor's arguments partly fail because he does not attend to the distinction between the claim that even statements are primary and the claim that the fundamental constituents of reality that make causal statements true include events. I also question his derivation of statements of effect-causation from statements of fact-causation. The second claim of Mellor's book is that causation is not a relation. I argue that he overlooks the possibility that there may be causal relations in the world without every causal statement being made true by its own distinctive causal relation. The third claim of Mellor's book is that causes raise the chances of their effects. I argue that Mellor's theory has the resources to deal with problematic cases like those of early preemption so long as certain adjustments are made to his account of the circumstances relative to which a cause must be a chance-raiser. However, I question whether Mellor's theory succeeds in capturing our intuitive notion of causal necessity in terms of counterfactuals involving chance-raising plus an appeal to continguity. The fourth key claim of Mellor's book is that there can be no backward causation. I argue that this conclusion rests upon an unwarranted assumption that chances are logically independent.
(7) 'Problems for the M-Set Analysis of Causation', Mind, April 1998, 107, no. 426, pp. 457-463. (ISSN 0026 - 4423).
I present three problems for Ramachandran's M-Set Analysis of Causation. First, it cannot deal with purely temporal cases of preemption (cases of 'frustration'). Second, it cannot deal with standard cases of indeterministic causation. Third, it loses the asymmetry of cause and effect. The first and third problems show that Ramachandran's analysis is not sufficient for causation, the second that it is not necessary.
(6) 'Do Tropes Resolve the Problem of Mental Causation?' Philosophical Quarterly, April 1998, 48, no. 191, pp. 221-226 (ISSN 0031-8094).
David Robb has argued (in "The Properties of Mental Causation", 'The Philosophical Quarterly', 47 (1997), pp. 178-94), that tropes are the properties of causation, i.e., the properties in virtue of which causal relations hold. He thinks that the welcome upshot of this is that there is no problem of mental causation. I argue that his reasons for thinking that tropes are the properties of causation are unsound. In addition, even if one takes the trope approach as a reasonable reform of our current practice, the problem of mental causation still arises. It is just been hidden in the question of what makes tropes identical.
(5) 'For a (revised) PCA-analysis', (with Murali Ramachandran and Jonardon Ganeri) Analysis, 1998, 58, no. 1, pp. 45-47 (ISSN 0003-2638).
We respond to criticisms made by Byrne and Hall ('Analysis', same issue), of our earlier theory ('Analysis', 56, 1996) of causation, a counterfactual analysis based on the notion of a "potentially complete ancestor" to a causal event.
(4) 'Making the Change: the Functionalist's way', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 48, 1997, pp. 233-250 (ISSN 0007 0882).
The paper defends functionalism against the charge that it would make mental properties inefficacious. It outlines two ways of formulating the doctrine that mental properties are functional properties and shows that both allow mental properties to be efficacious. The first (Lewis) approach takes functional properties to be the 'occupants' of causal roles. I show why this is not a problem. The second way of formulating the doctrine takes functional properties to be causal role properties. I claim that mental properties so understood would only be inefficacious if a 'law-centred' rather than a 'property-centred' approach is adopted to the introduction of efficacy into the world. I develop a property-centred account that explains how mental properties can be efficacious without introducing systematic overdetermination.
(3) 'The Mysterious Grand Properties of Forrest', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75, no. 1, March 1997, pp. 99-101 (ISSN 0004-8402).
Forrest argues that supervening properties are properties of properties (Forrest (1988)). He claims that this is a way of getting out of what he calls the 'mystery or reduction' dilemma. Those supervenient properties that do not reduce to their supervenience-base stand in a mysterious relation to it. I argue that if one is worried about the mystery in this case, there is an analogous mystery that his own proposal introduces. Why is it that some properties essentially possess certain other properties?
(2) 'Counterfactuals and Preemptive Causation', (with Murali Ramachandran and Jonardon Ganeri) Analysis, 56, no. 4, 1996, pp. 219-225 (ISSN 0003-2638).
We put forward a counterfactual analysis of deterministic causation (the Potentially Complete Ancestor analysis) which, we argue, deals with cases of preemptive causation better than Lewis’s Quasi-Dependence approach. The basic idea is that, if c is a cause of e, then, perhaps in the absence of a candidate competitor cause of e, e might be a descendent c. e is a descendent of c if and only if there is a chain of counterfactual dependence beginning with c and ending with e involving only actual events. Candidate effects cannot be descendents of pre-empted causes because there will always be an event missing in the pre-empted chain.
(1) 'Accidental Associations, Local Potency and a dilemma for Dretske', Mind and Language, 11, no. 2, June 1996, pp. 216-222 (ISSN 0268-1064).
I argue that Fred Dretske's account of the causal relevance of content only works if another account works better, that put forward by Gabriel Segal and Elliot Sober. Dretske needs to appeal to it to deal with two problems he faces: one arising because he accepts that the mere association between indicators and indicated is causally relevant to the recruitment of indicators in causing behaviour, the other from the need to explain how a present token of a certain type of content is causally relevant. For this and other reasons their approach has clear advantages over Dretske's.
