Online research in philosophy

According to the error theory, normative judgements are beliefs that ascribe normative properties to objects, even though such properties do not exist. In this paper, I argue that we cannot fully believe the error theory, and that this means that there is no reason for us to fully believe this theory. It may be thought that this is a problem for the error theory, but I argue that it is not. Instead, I argue, our inability to fully believe the error theory undermines many objections that have been made to this theory.

Sydney Shoemaker has recently given an account of emergent properties according to which emergent properties are a special type of structural property and the determination relation holding between emergent properties and their base properties is one of “mere nomological supervenience.” According to Shoemaker, emergent properties are what he calls type-2 microstructural properties, whereas physical properties are type-1 microstructural properties. After highlighting the advantages of viewing emergent properties as a special class of microstructural properties, I show how according to his own causal theory of properties type-2 microstructural properties actually reduce to type-1 microstructural properties, and thus do not truly count as emergent. I then suggest an alternative view according to which emergent properties are actually a third type of microstructural property, one not considered by Shoemaker. I conclude with reflections why we might view the dependence relation between emergent properties and their physical base properties as a causal relation rather than one of mere supervenience.

The paper argues in favour of (1) a causal-functional theory of all properties including the physical ones and (2) a conception of properties as tropes or modes in the sense of particular ways that objects are. It shows how these premises open up a version of functionalism according to which the properties on which the special sciences focus are identical with configurations of physical properties and thereby causally efficacious without there being any threat of eliminativism.

Emergence has traditionally been described as satisfying specific properties, notably nonreducibility of the emergent object or properties to their substrate, novelty, and unpredictability from the properties of the substrate. Sometimes more mysterious properties such as independence from the substrate, separate substances and teleological properties are invoked. I will argue that the latter are both unnecessary and unwarranted. The descriptive properties can be analyzed in more detail in logical terms, but the logical conditions alone do not tell us how to identify the conditions through interactions with the world. In order to do that we need dynamical properties – properties that do something. This paper, then, will be directed at identifying the dynamical conditions necessary and sufficient for emergence. Emergent properties and objects all result or are maintained by dissipative and radically nonholonomic processes. Emergent properties are relatively common in physics, but have been ignored because of the predominant use of Hamiltonian methods assuming energy conservation. Emergent objects are all dissipative systems, which have been recognized as special only in the past fifty years or so. Of interest are autonomous systems, including living and thinking systems. They show functionality and are self governed.

Aesthetic properties are often thought to have either no evaluative component or an evaluative component that can be isolated from their descriptive component. The present article argues that this popular view is without adequate support. First, doubt is cast on the idea that some paradigmatic aesthetic properties are purely descriptive. Second, the idea that the evaluative component of an aesthetic property can always be neatly separated from its descriptive component is called into question. Meanwhile, a speculative hypothesis is launched regarding the structure of being garish and being cacophonous. Finally, an explanation is given of how the issue of the structure of aesthetic properties bears on their reality and (presumed) response-dependence.

Several prominent philosophers have held that physical properties are dispositions. The aim of this paper is to establish the following conjunction: if the thesis that physical properties are dispositions is unsupplemented by controversial assumptions about dispositions, it entails a contradiction; and if it is so supplemented the resulting theory has the consequence that either many worlds which seem to be possible worlds are not possible worlds or some properties which seem to be identical are not identical. In this way it is shown that a dispositional account of physical properties is implausible.

I discuss a strategy for grounding ethical naturalism propounded by Frank Jackson and more recently by Allan Gibbard: that the undisputed supervenience of the moral upon the natural (or descriptive) entails that moral properties are natural (or descriptive) properties. I show that this strategy falls foul of certain indubitable constraints governing natural kinds; and I then rebut some objections. The upshot is that no viable strategy for supporting ethical naturalism is to be found along these lines. This result has additional consequences, both for Jackson's attempt to accommodate ethical discourse into the natural world, and for Gibbard's purported 'meta-ethical synthesis'.

Based on a conception that a musical composition is constituted by normative properties, it is argued that every such composition has one ideal performance—a performance that fulfils all the aesthetic-normative properties that the composition determines. A performance is conceived of (and evaluated) as inherently and essentially ‘intentionalistic’—being, by its very nature, a performance of a certain composition. This conception allows for various different performances, none of which is preferable over the others. The properties concerned are conceived of broadly as comprising not only the tones themselves and various ‘theoretical’ features such as thematic relations, harmonic progressions, rhythmical structures, but also descriptive, emotive, and ‘rhetorical’ properties, which are ‘objective’ properties of the composition. It is further claimed that these are indicated in the score when properly understood in the light, inter alia, of pertinent conventions, which are the business of theoreticians and musicologists to determine. The main significance of the result lies both in highlighting some important implications of the intentionalistic character of a performance, and in the style of conceptual connection it indicates between a musical composition, its aesthetic-normative properties, and features of performance or ways of fulfilling them.

Jonathan Dancy thinks that there are irreducibly normative properties. Frank Jackson has given a well-known argument against this view, and I have elsewhere defended this argument against many objections, including one made by Dancy. But Dancy remains unconvinced. In this chapter, I hope to convince him.

Frank Jackson has argued that, given plausible claims about supervenience, descriptive predicates and property identity, there are no irreducibly normative properties. Philosophers who think that there are such properties have made several objections to this argument. In this paper, I argue that all of these objections fail. I conclude that Jackson's argument shows that there are no irreducibly normative properties.