Skip to main content
Log in

On two arguments for subset inheritance

Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A physicalist holds, in part, that what properties are instantiated depends on what physical properties are instantiated; a physicalist thinks that mental properties, for example, are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical “realizer” properties. One issue that arises in this context concerns the relationship between the “causal powers” of instances of physical properties and instances of dependent properties, properties that are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical properties. After explaining the significance of this issue, I evaluate two core lines of thought that have been advanced in favor of Subset Inheritance, the view that instances of dependent properties typically have some, but not all, of the powers of physical realizers, and do not have any powers that are not also powers of physical realizers. The first argument that I address turns on our intuitive reactions to certain cases; the second appeals to the phenomenon of multiple realization. I argue that neither line of thought succeeds, and thus that insofar as we grant that an instance of a dependent property inherits some of the powers of its physical realizer, defenders of subset inheritance have not provided a compelling reason to think that it will not inherit all of the powers of its physical realizer.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. “Realization” is here used in a generic sense to express an especially intimate, asymmetric dependence relation; I discuss the concept of realization at length in Morris (2010). See fn. 8 for related discussion.

  2. The expression “causal inheritance”, and the associated locution of a property instance “inheriting” a power from another property instance, was, I believe, first introduced in Kim (1992).

  3. See, for instance, Wilson (1999).

  4. Kim (2005, p. 168). See also Kim (2008).

  5. See, for instance, Shoemaker (2007) and Wilson (1999); see Morris (2011b) for critical discussion.

  6. Kim (1998, pp. 103–105). It is in this way that Kim challenges the extent to which the phenomenon of “multiple realization” truly supports a nonreductive physicalist position.

  7. The “nonreductive physicalist credentials” of Subset Inheritance is endorsed in Clapp (2001), Shoemaker (2001, 2007) and Wilson (1999) in the context of developing the “Subset View of Realization” (see below), and is critically discussed in Kim (2010) and Morris (2011a, b).

  8. Defenders of the Subset View have suggested that on this conception of realization, realized properties are not perspicuously understood as “second-order” properties, at least not in the same sense at work in more standard formulations according to which having a realized property amounts to having some other property that plays a certain role (see Shoemaker 2001, 2007). On one hand, this issue is nontrivial, as the “second order” conception of realized properties may provide some reason to favor Full Inheritance; according to Kim, for example, it is plausible to think that an instance of a second-order property is nothing over and above its physical realizer, and this may provide some reason to think that the powers of the realized property instance are identical with those of the physical realizer. Nonetheless, the arguments that have been advanced in favor of Subset Inheritance do not turn on the particular conception of realized properties that we endorse; similarly, as noted in the text, defenders of the Subset View of Realization have seemed to hold that our endorsement of the Subset View, and the conception of realized properties that it involves, turns our prior endorsement of Subset Inheritance. This suggests that the issue of Subset Inheritance—and, in particular, the arguments advanced in favor of Subset Inheritance—can be profitably discussed without explicitly discussing the particular conception of realized properties at work. It is in part because of this that I have tried to characterize the notion of realization (as in Sect. 1) in generic terms.

  9. Shoemaker (2001, pp. 431–432; 2007, p. 14) and Wilson (1999, p. 48). See Yablo (1992).

  10. Shoemaker (2001, pp. 431–432; 2007, p. 14).

  11. Shoemaker (2001, p. 432).

  12. These intuitions can be taken to support a “proportionality” constraint on causation, that there is an important sense in which causes must be “proportional” to their effects (see Yablo (1992) for details; Bontly (2005) provides a critique of the proportionality view). Shoemaker (2001, p. 436, fn. 14) tells us that “proportionality requires that effects be contingent on their cases, and that causes be adequate or their effects, required by them, and enough for them.” On one hand, it is important for a defender of Subset Inheritance to have a view of causation that can systematize the Pigeon Intuitions. On the other hand, the issues here of interest can be fruitfully discussed without explicitly framing them in the context of the proportionality view, and without delving into the details of this view.

  13. See Bontly (2005) and McLaughlin (2007).

  14. See fn. 12.

  15. McLaughlin (2007). McLaughlin is addressing the worry that the proportionality view (see fn.12) seems to force us to conclude that instances of dependent properties do not, in fact, overlap in their causal powers with physical realizers, in which case we will not be able to hold that such properties are “subset realized” by physical properties.

  16. This sort of “emergentism” is discussed in Kim (1999) and McLaughlin (1992), and is usually traced back to the “British Emergentism” found in Broad (1925) and elsewhere.

  17. See McLaughlin (2007, 2009) and Morris (2011b) for related points.

  18. Shoemaker (2001, p. 432).

  19. See Wilson (1999, pp. 45, 50) and Clapp (2001, pp. 129–130).

  20. Polger and Shapiro (2008) argue that accounts that take realization to be a relationship between property instances fail to countenance multiple realization on the grounds that property instances are not repeatable, and so cannot have multiple realizers. But even if realization is first and foremost defined in terms of property instances, we can straightforwardly derive an account of property realization from such an account. In particular, we can maintain that a property P realizes, or is a realizer of, a property M just in case at least one instance of M is realized by an instance of P. And we can then maintain that a property M is multiply realized just in case instances of M are realized by instances of distinct physical properties. See Endicott (2010) and Gillett (forthcoming) for related responses to Polger and Shapiro.

  21. See Shoemaker (1980) for a classic defense of the causal view of properties. A conditional power is a power that a property contributes to an entity, “conditional” on the entity having certain other properties (for example, the property of being knife shaped contributes the power to cut bread, conditional on the knife-shaped object being made of steel).

  22. Clapp (2001, pp. 129–130).

References

  • Bontly, T. (2005). Proportionality, causation, and exclusion. Philosophia, 32, 331–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broad, C. D. (1925). The mind and its place in nature. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clapp, L. (2001). Disjunctive properties: Multiple realizations. The Journal of Philosophy, 98, 111–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Endicott, R. (2010). Realization, reductios, and category inclusion. The Journal of Philosophy, 107, 213–219.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillett, C. (Forthcoming). Multiply realizing properties and their instances. Philosophical Psychology.

  • Kim, J. (1992). Multiple realization and the metaphysics of reduction. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52, 1–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J. (1998). Mind in a physical world. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J. (2005). Philosophy of mind (2nd ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J. (2008). Reduction and reductive explanation: Is one possible without the other? In J. Hohwy & J. Kallestrup (Eds.), Being reduced: New essays on reduction, explanation, and causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J. (2010). Thoughts on Sydney Shoemaker’s physical realization. Philosophical Studies, 148, 101–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLaughlin, B. (1992). The rise and fall of British emergentism. In A. Beckermann, H. Flohr & J. Kim (Eds.), Emergence or Reduction? Berlin: De Gruyter.

  • McLaughlin, B. (2007). Mental causation and Shoemaker-realization. Erkenntnis, 67, 149–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLaughlin, B. (2009). Review of Sydney Shoemaker’s Physical Realization, Notre Dame philosophical reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=16607.

  • Morris, K. (2010). Guidelines for theorizing about realization. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 84, 393–416.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, K. (2011a). Subset realization, parthood, and causal overdetermination. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 92, 363–379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, K. (2011b). Subset realization and physical identification. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 41, 317–335.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Polger, T., & Shapiro, L. (2008). Understanding the dimensions of realization. The Journal of Philosophy, 105, 213–222.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shoemaker, S. (1980). Causality and properties. In P. van Inwagen (Ed.), Time and cause. Dordrecht: Reidel.

  • Shoemaker, S. (2001). Realization and mental causation. In C. Gillett & B. Loewer (Eds.), Physicalism and its discontents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reprinted in Shoemaker 2003.

  • Shoemaker, S. (2003). Identity, Cause, and Mind (expanded ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Shoemaker, S. (2007). Physical realization. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, J. (1999). How superduper does a physicalist supervenience need to be? The Philosophical Quarterly, 49, 33–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yablo, S. (1992). Mental causation. The Philosophical Review, 101, 245–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kevin Morris.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Morris, K. On two arguments for subset inheritance. Philos Stud 163, 197–211 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9807-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9807-1

Keywords

Navigation