In this paper I argue that causation is an essentially macroscopic phenomenon, and that mental causes are therefore capable of outcompeting their more specific physical realizers as causes of physical effects. But I also argue that any causes must be type-identical with physical properties, on pain of positing inexplicable physical conspiracies. I therefore allow macroscopic mental causation, but only when it is physically reducible.
The basic form of the exclusion problem is by now very, very familiar. 2 Start with the claim that the physical realm is causally complete: every physical thing that happens has a sufficient physical cause. Add in the claim that the mental and the physical are distinct. Toss in some claims about overdetermination, give it a stir, and voilá—suddenly it looks as though the mental never causes anything, at least nothing physical. As it is often put, the physical does (...) all the work, and there is nothing left for the mental to do. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument says that if all physical effects have sufficient physical causes, and no physical effects are caused twice over by distinct physical and mental causes, there cannot be any irreducible mental causes. In addition, Kim has argued that the nonreductive physicalist must give up completeness, and embrace the possibility of downward causation. This paper argues first that this extra argument relies on a principle of property individuation, which the nonreductive physicalist need not accept, and second (...) that once we get clear on overdetermination, there is a way to reject the exclusion principle upon which the causal exclusion argument depends, but third that this should not lead to the belief that mental causation is easily accounted for in terms of counterfactual dependencies. (shrink)
Given their physical realization, what causal work is left for functional properties to do? Humean solutions to the exclusion problem (e.g. overdetermination and difference-making) typically appeal to counterfactual and/or nomic relations between functional property-instances and behavioural effects, tacitly assuming that such relations suffice for causal work. Clarification of the notion of causal work, I argue, shows not only that such solutions don't work, but also reveals a novel solution to the exclusion problem based on the relations between dispositional (...) properties at different levels of mechanism, which involves three central claims: (i) the causal work of properties consists in grounding dispositions, (ii) functional properties are dispositions, and (iii) the dispositions of mechanisms are grounded in the dispositions of their components. Treating functional mental properties as dispositions of components in psychological mechanisms, I argue that such properties do the causal work of grounding agent-level dispositions. These dispositions, while ultimately grounded in the physical realizers of mental properties, are indirectly so grounded, through a hierarchy of grounding relations that extends upwards, of necessity, through the mental domain. (shrink)
Terry Horgan University of Memphis In this paper I address the problem of causal exclusion, specifically as it arises for mental properties (although the scope of the discussion is more general, being applicable to other kinds of putatively causal properties that are not identical to narrowly physical causal properties, i.e., causal properties posited by physics). I summarize my own current position on the matter, and I offer a defense of this position. I draw upon and synthesize relevant discussions in (...) various <blockquote> [1] </blockquote> other papers of mine (some collaborative) that bear on this topic. (shrink)
I argue that the completeness of physics is composed of two distinct claims. The first is the commonly made claim that, roughly, every physical event is completely causally determined by physical events. The second has rarely, if ever, been explicitly stated in the literature and is the claim that microphysics provides a complete inventory of the fundamental categories that constitute both the causal features and intrinsic nature of all the events that causally affect the physical universe. After showing that these (...) claims are distinct, I argue that they can be used to solve a difficulty with existing responses to the exclusion problem—namely, that these existing responses also undermine the powerful causal argument for physicalism. Recognizing that there are two kinds of completeness opens up room for the nonreductive physicalist to solve the exclusion problem while also endorsing a modified, cogent causal argument for a kind of physicalism compatible with her position. (shrink)
The anti-reductionist who wants to preserve the causal efficacy of mental phenomena faces several problems in regard to mental causation, i.e. mental events which cause other events, arising from her desire to accept the ontological primacy of the physical and at the same time save the special character of the mental. Psychology tries to persuade us of the former, appealing thereby to the results of experiments carried out in neurology; the latter is, however, deeply rooted in our everyday actions and (...) beliefs and despite the constant opposition of science still very much alive. Difficulties, however, arise from a combination of two claims that are widely accepted in philosophy of mind, namely, physical monism and mental realism, the acceptance of which leads us to the greatest problem of mental causation: the problem of causal exclusion. Since physical causes alone are always sufficient for physical effects mental properties are excluded from causal explanations of our behaviour, which makes them “epiphenomenal”. The article introduces Van Gulick’s solution to the exclusion problem which tries to prove that physical properties, in contrast to mental properties, do not have as much of a privileged status with respect to event causation as usually ascribed. Therefore, it makes no sense to say that physical properties are causally relevant whereas mental properties are not. This is followed by my objection to his argument for levelling mental and physical properties with respect to causation of events. I try to show that Van Gulick’s argument rests on a premise that no serious physicalist can accept. (shrink)
In a series of influential articles (Kim 1989b, 1992b, 1993a and 1998), Jaegwon Kim has developed a strong argument against nonreductive physicalism as a plausible solution to mental causation. The argument is commonly called the ’causal exclusion argument’, and it has become, over the years, one of the most serious threats to the nonreductivist point of view. In the first part of this paper I offer a careful reconstruction and detailed discussion of the exclusion argument. In the second (...) part I show why some important objections to it actually fail. (shrink)
The precondition of any feminist politics – a usable category of ‘woman’ – has proved to be difficult to construct, even proposed to be impossible, given the ‘problem of exclusion’. This is the inevitable exclusion of at least some women, as their lives or experiences do not fit into the necessary and sufficient condition(s) that denotes group membership. In this paper, I propose that the problem of exclusion arises not because of inappropriate category membership criteria, but because (...) of the presumption that categories can only be organised by identity relations or shared properties among their members. This criterion of sameness as well as the characterisation of this exclusion as essentialism attests to a metaphysics that is not conducive to resistance and liberatory projects. Following a strain of hybrid thinking in feminist and post-colonial theory, I outline an alternative pluralist logic that confronts oppressive binaries that impede theory work in gender, sexuality, and race theory, and limit political action and resistance. The problem of exclusion is neither irresolvable nor is it essentialism. Instead it is a denial of subjectivity due to pseudodualistic self/Other dichotomies that can be resisted by adopting a new categorial logic. While this paper focuses on the specific problem of formulating a category of ‘woman’, it has implications for other areas of gender, critical race, and postcolonial theory. Rather than working toward an inclusive category founded on sameness, theorists need to develop independent and positive categories grounded in difference. Our current categorial logic does not permit such a project, and therefore a new metaphysics must be adopted. (shrink)
In this paper, I argue that Locke is not in fact agnostic about the ultimate nature of the mind. In particular, he produces an argument, much like Jaegwon Kim's exclusion argument, to show that any materialist view that takes mental states to supervene on physical states is committed to epiphenomenalism. This result helps illuminate Locke's otherwise puzzling notion of 'superaddition.'.
It is quite obvious why the antireductionist picture of mental causation that rests on supervenience is an attractive theory. On the one hand, it secures uniqueness of the mental; on the other hand, it tries to place the mental in our world in a way that is compatible with the physicalist view. However, Kim reminds us that anti-reductionists face the following dilemma: either mental properties have causal powers or they do not. If they have them, we risk a violation of (...) the causal closure of the physical domain; if they do not have them, we embrace epiphenomenalism, which denies any sort of causal powers to the mental. So, either we violate the causal closure of physics, or we end up with epiphenomenalism. The first two sections of the article describe the problem of causal exclusion and Kim’s causal dilemma. The last two introduce Horgan’s antireductionist answer and my objection to that answer. (shrink)
The paper argues that dualism can explain mental causation and solve the exclusion problem. If dualism is combined with the assumption that the psychophysical laws have a special status, it follows that some physical events counterfactually depend on, and are therefore caused by, mental events. Proponents of this account of mental causation can solve the exclusion problem in either of two ways: they can deny that it follows that the physical effect of a mental event is overdetermined by (...) its mental and physical causes, or they can accept that the physical effect is overdetermined but claim that this is unproblematic because the case is sufficiently dissimilar to prototypical cases of overdetermination. (shrink)
In this brief note I claim that, contrary to what Esfeld argues in his paper in this same volume, Kim's position with respect to the problem of causal exclusion does indeed commit him to the causal heterogeneity of realized properties.
The uncertainties associated with the precise nature of legalization regimes and with their expected outcomes sometimes are used to justify the maintenance of drug prohibition. This paper details the role that buyer licensing and exclusion might play in implementing a low-risk, post-prohibition drug regulatory regime. Buyer licensing and exclusion provide assistance to those who exhibit or are worried about self-control problems with drugs, while not being significantly constraining upon those who are informed and satisfied drug consumers. Relative to (...) prohibition, licensing and self-exclusion can be part of a drug regulatory structure that is much more finely tuned to the risks of harms stemming from drug use. (shrink)
While concerns of the mental being causally excluded by the physical have persistently plagued non-reductive physicalism, such concerns are standardly taken to pose no problem for reductive type physicalism. Type physicalists have the obvious advantage of being able to countenance the reduction of mental properties to their physical base properties by way of type identity, thereby avoiding any causal competition between instances of mental properties and their physical bases. Here, I challenge this widely accepted advantage of type physicalism over non-reductive (...) physicalism in avoiding the causal exclusion of the mental. In particular, I focus on Jaegwon Kim’s influential version of the causal exclusion argument, namely, his supervenience argument. I argue that type physicalism’s advantage is undermined by the following two things: (1) the generalizability of the supervenience argument, and (2) type physicalism’s incompatibility with mental properties at the fundamental level. This involves evaluating the generalization objection to the supervenience argument, probing the metaphysics of physicalism, and showing how (1) and (2) combine in a way that appears underappreciated given the general confidence in type physicalism’s advantage. (shrink)
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) types are sexually transmitted infections that cause a number of human cancers. According to the competitive exclusion principle in ecology, HPV types that have lower transmission probabilities and shorter durations of infection should be outcompeted by more virulent types. This, however, is not the case, as numerous HPV types co-exist, some which are less transmissible and more easily cleared than others. This paper examines whether this exception to the competitive exclusion principle can be explained by (...) the aggregation of infection with HPV types, which results in patchy spatial distributions of infection, and what implications this has for the effect of vaccination on multiple HPV types. A deterministic transmission model is presented that models the patchy distribution of infected individuals using Lloyd’s mean crowding. It is first shown that higher aggregation can result in a reduced capacity for onward transmission and reduce the required efficacy of vaccination. It is shown that greater patchiness in the distribution of lower prevalence HPV types permits co-existence. This affirms the hypothesis that the aggregation of HPV types provides an explanation for the violation of the competitive exclusion principle. Greater aggregation of lower prevalence types has important implications where type-specific HPV vaccines also offer cross-protection against non-target types. It is demonstrated that the degree of cross-protection can be less than the degree of vaccine protection conferred against directly targeted types and still result in the elimination of non-target types when these non-target types are patchily distributed. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim argues that if mental properties are irreducible with respect to physical properties then mental properties are epiphenomenal. I believe this conditional is false and argue that mental properties, along with their physical counterparts, may overdetermine their effects. Kim contends, however, that embracing overdetermination in the mental case, due to supervenience, renders the attribution of overdetermination vacuous. This way of blocking the overdetermination option, however, makes the attribution of mental epiphenomenalism equally vacuous. Furthermore, according to Kim’s own logic, physical (...) properties, and not mental properties, may be in danger of losing their causal relevance. (shrink)
At the beginning of the 16 th century, Transylvania had been an officially Catholic land belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary and led by an elite consisting of three nations, the Hungarian nobles (increasingly referred to as the Hungarian nation), the Saxons and the Szeklers. However, the general population, deprived of any political power, consisted of Orthodox Romanians. In other words, in Transylvania the Latin West met the Byzantine Orient. The old Hungary fell apart between 1526 and 1541, its central (...) regions taken by the Ottoman Empire, the west and the north by the Habsburgs, while the eastern part, Transylvania, became an autonomous principality under Ottoman suzerainty. At the same time, various Protestant trends made their presence felt among the leading nations, eventually crystallizing in the form of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism. In the space of three decades (1540–1570) these rival denominations gained legal status and joined Catholicism as the official religions of the country. Catholicism became a marginal denomination, deprived of assets and of its hierarchy. Under Protestant pressure, the Orthodox Romanians were still kept away from power. The last three decades of the century saw some attempts at Counterreformation and at a Catholic Reformation, at a time when the principality was once again led by a Catholic dynasty. In this context, new Catholic cultural (educational) models, supported by the Jesuits, were implemented in the existing Protestant and Orthodox context, in an often desperate attempt to reverse or at least balance the situation. In this respect, the Jesuit College of Cluj (today Cluj-Napoca, Romania), established in 1581, remains a most memorable episode, whose consequences can still be seen today. By resorting to education and learning, the college was meant to influence and alter the surrounding Protestant and Orthodox world. In fact, it became an interesting facet of the multicultural, multiethnic and multiconfessional character of Transylvania, a miniature Europe inhabited by Latin, Germanic, Finno-Ugrian, Slavic peoples etc., by Byzantines, Catholics and Protestants, by rightful citizens and “tolerated” inhabitants, by masters and servants, by privileged categories and by groups merely “allowed to exist”. The troubled events of those years have left us with a model of cohabitation based on both cooperation and rivalry that truly deserves consideration. (shrink)
It is often argued that higher-level special-science properties cannot be causally efficacious since the lower-level physical properties on which they supervene are doing all the causal work. This claim is usually derived from an exclusion principle stating that if a higher-level property F supervenes on a physical property F* that is causally sufficient for a property G, then F cannot cause G. We employ an account of causation as difference-making to show that the truth or falsity of this principle (...) is a contingent matter and derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a version of it holds. We argue that one important instance of the principle, far from undermining non-reductive physicalism, actually supports the causal autonomy of certain higher-level properties. (shrink)
Karen Bennett (2008). Exclusion Again. In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation. Oxford University Press.score: 12.0
I think that there is an awful lot wrong with the exclusion problem. So, it seems, does just about everybody else. But of course everyone disagrees about exactly _what_ is wrong with it, and I think there is more to be said about that. So I propose to say a few more words about why the exclusion problem is not really a problem after all—at least, not for the nonreductive physicalist. The genuine _dualist_ is still in trouble. Indeed, (...) one of my main points will be that the nonreductive physicalist is in a rather different position vis à vis the exclusion problem than the dualist is. Properly understanding nonreductive physicalism—and clearly recognizing that it is, after all, a form of _physicalism_—goes a long way toward solving the exclusion problem. (shrink)
This is about a proposed solution to the exclusion problem, one I've defended elsewhere (for example, in "The Properties of Mental Causation"). Details aside, it's just the identity theory: mental properties face no threat of exclusion from, or preemption by, physical properties, because every mental property is a physical property. Here I elaborate on this solution and defend it from some objections. One of my goals is to place it in the context of a more general ontology of (...) properties, in particular, a trope ontology. (shrink)
The exclusion problem is held to show that mental and physical events are identical by claiming that the denial of this identity is incompatible with the causal completeness of physics and the occurrence of mental causation. The problem relies for its motivation on the claim that overdetermination of physical effects by mental and physical causes is objectionable for a variety of reasons. In this paper, I consider four different definitions of ?overdetermination? and argue that, on each, overdetermination in all (...) cases of mental causation either does not occur or is unobjectionable, even when mental and physical events are non-identical. I therefore conclude that the exclusion problem cannot be used as a reason to accept that mental and physical events are identical unless some other definition of ?overdetermination? is provided. (shrink)
This paper is about the causal exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism. Many philosophers think that this argument poses a serious problem for non-reductive theories of the mind — some think that it is decisive against them. In the first part I will outline non-reductive physicalism and the exclusion argument. Then I will distinguish between three versions of the argument that address three different versions of non-reductive physicalism. According to the first, the relation between mental and physical events is (...) token-identity. According to the second, mental events are distinct from physical events, but the latter metaphysically include and determine the former. And on the third version, mental and physical events are entirely distinct. I will argue that the causal exclusion argument is not decisive against non-reductive physicalism in any of the three versions. According to non-reductive physicalism, mental events are dependent on physical events. Causal exclusion and overdetermination, however, requires distinct and independent causes. I will argue that the burden of proof lies with the opponents of non-reductive physicalism, who have to explain how metaphysically dependent events can possibly overdetermine an effect or exclude each other from being causally efficacious. (shrink)
The first part of this paper presents an argument showing that the currently most highly acclaimed interventionist theory of causation, i.e. the one advanced by Woodward, excludes supervening macro properties from having a causal influence on effects of their micro supervenience bases. Moreover, this interventionist exclusion argument is demonstrated to rest on weaker premises than classical exclusion arguments. The second part then discusses a weakening of interventionism that Woodward suggests. This weakened version of interventionism turns out either to (...) be inapplicable to cases of downward causation involving supervening macro properties or to render corresponding causal claims meaningless. In sum, the paper argues that, contrary to what many non-reductive physicalists claim, interventionism does not render non-reductive physicalism immune to the problem of causal exclusion. (shrink)
The issue of downward causation (and mental causation in particular), and the exclusion problem is discussed by taking into account some recent advances in the philosophy of science. The problem is viewed from the perspective of the new interventionist theory of causation developed by Woodward. It is argued that from this viewpoint, a higher-level (e.g., mental) state can sometimes truly be causally relevant, and moreover, that the underlying physical state which realizes it may fail to be such.
On one very simple formulation, the exclusion argument against dualism starts from the assertion that the following theses are inconsistent:
(1) Being in pain causes me to wince. (2) Being in phys1 causes me to wince. (3) Being in pain is distinct from being in phys. (4) If being in pain causes me to wince, nothing distinct from being in pain
Given Kim’s principle of explanatory exclusion (EE), it follows that in addition to the problem of mental causation, dualism faces a problem of mental explanation. However, the plausibility of EE rests upon the acceptance of a further principle concerning the individuation of explanation (EI). The two methods of defending EI—either by combining an internal account of the individuation of explanation with a semantical account of properties or by accepting an external account of the individuation of explanation—are both metaphysically implausible. (...) This is not, however, to reject the problem of mental explanation, for EE can be replaced with a far weaker principle, which does not require the acceptance of EI, but which generates a similar problem for dualism. (shrink)
Geographies of Exclusion identifies forms of social and spatial exclusion and subsequently examines the fate of knowledge of space and society which has been produced by members of excluded groups. Evaluating writing on urban society by women and black writers, David Sibley asks why such work is neglected by the academic establishment, suggesting that both the practices which result in the exclusion of minorities and those which result in the exclusion of knowledge have important implications for (...) theory and method in human geography. Drawing on a range of ideas from social anthropology, feminist theory, sociology, human geography and psychoanalysis, this book presents a fresh approach to geographical theory, highlighting the tendency of powerful groups to "purify" space and to view minorites as defiled and polluting, and exploring the nature of "difference" and the production of knowledge. (shrink)
A quite popular approach to solving the Causal Exclusion Problem is to adopt a counterfactual theory of causation. In this paper, I distinguish three versions of the Causal Exclusion Argument. I argue that the counterfactualist approach can block the first two exclusion arguments, because the Causal Inheritance Principle and the Upward Causation Principle upon which the two arguments are based respectively are problematic from the perspective of the counterfactual account of causation. However, I attempt to show that (...) the counterfactualist approach is unable to refute a sophisticated version (i.e. the third version) of the exclusion argument in that the Downward Causation Principle, a premise of the third exclusion argument, is actually implied by the counterfactual theory of causation. Therefore, even if other theories of causation might help the non-reductive physicalist to solve the exclusion problem, the counterfactual theory of causation cannot. (shrink)
In this paper I develop a novel response to the exclusion problem. I argue that the nature of the events in the causally complete physical domain raises the “problem of many causes”: there will typically be countless simultaneous low-level physical events in that domain that are causally sufficient for any given high-level physical event (like a window breaking or an arm raising). This shows that even reductive physicalists must admit that the version of the exclusion principle used to (...) pose the exclusion problem against non-reductive physicalism is too strong. The burden is on proponents of the exclusion problem to provide a reason to think that any qualifications placed on the exclusion principle will solve the problem of many causes while ruling out causation by irreducible mental events. (shrink)
The hypothesis of the mental state-causation of behavior (the MSC hypothesis) asserts that the behaviors we classify as actions are caused by certain mental states. A principal reason often given for trying to secure the truth of the MSC hypothesis is that doing so is allegedly required to vindicate our belief in our own agency. I argue that the project of vindicating agency needs to be seriously reconceived, as does the relation between this project and the MSC hypothesis. Vindication requires (...) addressing what I call the agent-exclusion problem: the prima facie incompatibility between the intentional content of agentive experience and certain metaphysical hypotheses often espoused in philosophy. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim argues that unreduced mental causes are excluded from efficacy because physical causes are sufficient in themselves. One response to this causal exclusion argument is to embrace some form of overdetermination. In this paper I consider two forms of overdetermination. Independent overdetermination suggests that two individually sufficient causes bring about one effect. This model fails because the sufficiency of one cause renders the other cause unnecessary. Dependent overdetermination suggests that a physical cause is necessary and sufficient for a (...) given effect, but it necessitates a mental cause of the effect as well. This model fails because the necessity of the mental cause renders the physical cause individually insufficient. (shrink)
This interdisciplinary paper identifies principles of an affluent country (im)migration policy that avoids: (1) the positivist inclusion/exclusion mechanism of liberalism and communitarianism; and (2) the idealism of most cosmopolitan (im)migration theories. First, I: (a) critique the failure of liberalism and communitarianism to consider (im)migration under distributive justice; and (b) present cosmopolitan (im)migration approaches as a promising alternative. This paper’s central claim is that cosmopolitan (im)migration theory can determine normative shortcomings in (im)migration policy by coupling elements of Frankfurt School methodology (...) to case studies of (im)migration regimes. Lastly, I apply this analytical procedure to recent special changes in Spanish and UK immigration law. (shrink)
Philosophical dialetheism, whose main exponent is Graham Priest, claims that some contradictions hold, are true, and it is rational to accept and assert them. Such a position is naturally portrayed as a challenge to the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). But all the classic formulations of the LNC are, in a sense, not questioned by a typical dialetheist, since she is (cheerfully) required to accept them by her own theory. The goal of this paper is to develop a formulation of the (...) Law which appears to be unquestionable, in the sense that the Priestian dialetheist is committed to accept it without also accepting something inconsistent with it, on pain of trivialism—that is to say, on pain of lapsing into the position according to which everything is the case. This will be achieved via (a) a discussion of Priest's dialetheic treatment of the notions of rejection and denial; and (b) the characterization of a negation via the primitive intuition of content exclusion. Such a result will not constitute a cheap victory for the friends of consistency. We may just learn that different things have been historically conflated under the label of 'Law of Non-Contradiction'; that dialetheists rightly attack some formulations of the Law, and orthodox logicians and philosophers have been mistaken in assimilating them to the indisputable one. (shrink)
Emergent properties are intended to be genuine, natural higher level causally efficacious properties irreducible to physical ones. At the same time they are somehow dependent on or 'emergent from' complexes of physical properties, so that the doctrine of emergent properties is not supposed to be returned to dualism. The doctrine faces two challenges: (i) to explain precisely how it is that such properties emerge - what is emergence; (ii) to explain how they sidestep the exclusion problem - how it (...) is that there is room for these properties to be causally efficacious, given the causal completeness of the physical. In this paper I explain how functional properties can meet both challenges. (shrink)
Relying on Niklas Luhmann's systems theoretical redescription of modern society, this article aims at questioning the basic theoretical notions of the ongoing inclusion/exclusion debate. The most remarkable aspect of Luhmann's reassessment of the inclusion/exclusion relationship within functionally differentiated societies is that individuals are basically situated within the exclusion domain of society, and thus cannot but partially be included within society's function systems and organizations. This reassessment not only allows Luhmann to raise fundamental questions with respect to the (...) implicit norm of full inclusion which still dominates the debate on inclusion and exclusion, but it also directs his attention to the different inclusion/exclusion conditions within function systems, organizations and interaction systems. Eventually Luhmann's position comes down to the idea that exclusion rather than inclusion is the rule, and, moreover, that inclusions differ from one another. The article closes off with a critical evaluation of Luhmann's redescription of the inclusion/exclusion debate. It is argued that systems theory might suffer from empirical deficiency, as it seems to have difficulties to detect and to depict the actual mechanisms of social exclusion without resorting to theories that are more geared to empirical reality and that are of help in observing it. Key Words: evolution • function systems • inclusion/exclusion • Niklas Luhmann • networks • organizations. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument has rarely been evaluated from an empirical perspective. This is puzzling because its conclusion seems to be making a testable claim about the world: supervenient properties are causally inefficacious. An empirical perspective, however, reveals Kim’s argument to rest on a mistaken conception about how to test whether a property is causally efficacious. Moreover, the empirical perspective makes visible a metaphysical bias that Kim brings to his argument that involves a principle of non-inclusion.
From the time of Descartes a strong tendency emerged to exclude the consideration of metaphysical questions as a necessary step towards developing truly scientific disciplines. Within human geography, positivism had a significant influence in moulding the discipline as "spatial science", resulting in a reductionist vision of humanity. Since the 1970s, in reaction to the limitations of this narrow vision and also to the deterministic perspective of marxism, humanistic approaches became important, but have failed to adequately deal with the exclusion (...) of metaphysical issues. The more recent emergence of postmodern influences within human geography, while being critical of the rigidities associated with Enlightenment thinking, and suggesting a greater tolerance of "difference", appears reluctant to reconsider the exclusion of metaphysics. This paper suggest that such a reconsideration could contribute significantly towards increasing human geography's capacity to help policy makers deal more adequately with some of the major issues facing humanity. (shrink)
The exclusion problem for mental causation is one of the most discussed puzzles in the mind-body literature. There has been a general agreement among philosophers, especially because most of them are committed to some form of physicalism, that the dualist cannot escape the exclusion problem. I argue that a proper understanding of dualism --its form, commitments, and intuitions?makes the exclusion problem irrelevant from a dualist perspective. The paper proposes a dualist approach, based on a theory of event (...) causation, according to which events are medium-grained, namely, parsed into mental and physical property components. A theory of contrastive mental causation is built upon this theory of events, for which the problem of exclusion does not arise. (shrink)
In this paper we explore Jaegwon Kim’s principle of explanatory exclusion. Kim’s support for the principle is clarified and we critically evaluate several versions of the dual explananda response authors have offered to undermine it. We argue that none of the standard versions of the dual explananda reply are entirely successful and propose an alternative approach that reveals a deep tension in Kim’s metaphysics. We argue that Kim can only retain the principle of explanatory exclusion if he abandons (...) his longstanding critique of nonreductive physicalism. (shrink)
In numerous papers Jaegwon Kim argues that nonreductive materialists (i.e., those philosophers who believe that there are no irreducible non-physical objects in the universe, and yet there are irreducible psychological properties which are indispensable in intentional psychological explanations) face two problems. One is that intentional mental properties are not causally relevant; the other is that explanations appealing to these properties are excluded by explanations appealing to physical, in particular, microphysical, properties.1 The first problem can be called the problem of epiphenomenalism. (...) The second problem is what Kim calls the problem of explanatory/causal exclusion. Epiphenomenalism is not just a problem for nonreductive materialists, but a problem for psychology (as a science of psychological explanation), and for anyone who believes that our thought is the cause of our action. Kim argues that the exclusion problem, on the other hand, is especially a problem for nonreductive materialists. Nonreductive materialists typically buy into the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain, according to which "any physical event that has a cause at time t has a physical cause at t..... [I]f we trace the causal ancestry of a physical event, we need never go outside the physical domain." [Kim 1989b, p. 280] One cannot reject this principle unless one is willing to go back to Cartesian dualism. But the problem is, if all causation is done at the physical level, then there is no causal work left for mental kinds. If mental kinds do not play any causal role, then intentional psychological explanations that appeal to mental properties are not warranted. Therefore, Kim concludes, nonreductive materialism is an untenable position. Some nonreductionists (Davidson, Dretske, LePore & Loewer, Jackson & Pettit, for example) have tried to argue for the causal relevancy of mental properties from an.. (shrink)
There is a growing consensus among philosophers of science that scientific endeavors of understanding the human mind or the brain exhibit explanatory pluralism. Relatedly, several philosophers have in recent years defended an interventionist approach to causation that leads to a kind of causal pluralism. In this paper, I explore the consequences of these recent developments in philosophy of science for some of the central debates in philosophy of mind. First, I argue that if we adopt explanatory pluralism and the interventionist (...) approach to causation, our understanding of physicalism has to change, and this leads to what I call pluralistic physicalism. Secondly, I show that this pluralistic physicalism is not endangered by the causal exclusion argument. (shrink)
Is there a problem of causal exclusion between micro- and macro-level physical properties? I argue (following Kim) that the sorts of properties thatin fact are in competition are macro properties, viz., the property of a (macro-) system of `having such-and-such macro properties'' (call this a `macro-structural property'') and the property of the same system of `being constituted by such-and-such a micro-structure'' (call this a `micro-structural property''). I show that there are cases where, for lack of reducibility, there is a (...) prima facie intra-level causal competition between the two kinds of properties. The problem can be resolved without giving up on the causal efficacy of the macro-structural properties if we understandinstances of macro-structural properties to be parts ofmicro-structural property instances. The parthood relation between both kinds of property instances can bemapped onto the way physical theory deals with the relation of their descriptionsin the framework of perturbation theory. The application of this framework to theproblem of emergent properties is discussed. (shrink)
Deliberative democratic theorists typically use accounts of public reason— that is, constraints on the types of reasons one can invoke in public, political discourse—as a tool to resist political exclusion; at its most basic level, the aim of a theory of public reason is to prevent situations in which powerful majority groups are able to justify policy choices based on reasons that are not even assessable by minority groups. However, I demonstrate here that a type of exclusion I (...) call "conceptual exclusion" complicates this picture. I argue that the possibility of conceptual exclusion creates the potential for public reason constraints to further exclude already marginalized groups— contrary to the standard view—and thus that taking conceptual exclusion seriously requires both a revision of traditional accounts of public reason and a reconceptualization of our civic obligations. (shrink)
On one very simple formulation, the exclusion argument against dualism starts from the assertion that the following theses are inconsistent: (1) Being in pain causes me to wince. (2) Being in phys1 causes me to wince. (3) Being in pain is distinct from being in phys. (4) If being in pain causes me to wince, nothing distinct from being in pain causes me to wince. The dualist is then invited to agree that (1) and (2) are empirical claims that (...) are (in the context) non-negotiable; and that (4) is a principle of causation or an instance of a principle we must accept, often called ‘the exclusion principle’. The conclusion of the argument is that (3)—a thesis distinctive of traditional dualism—has to go.2 This argument is widely thought to put considerable pressure on dualism if not to refute it outright. In this paper we argue to the contrary that, whether or not their position is ultimately true, dualists have a simple response. Whether there is an inconsistency in (1)-(4) depends on how ‘distinctness’ is interpreted in claims (3) and (4). (Of course the same thing applies, mutatis mutandis to the other terms in (1)-(4); we concentrate here on ‘distinctness’.) As one of us has argued elsewhere, there are a number of different but still legitimate interpretations of ‘distinctness’ (see Stoljar 2006; see also Sandford 2005). Usually the term.. (shrink)
Does rational bargaining yield a social contract that is efficient and so inclusive? A core allocation, that is, an allocation that gives each coalition at least as much as it can get on its own, is efficient. However, some coalitional games lack a core allocation, so rationality does not require one in those games. Does rationality therefore permit exclusion from the social contract? I replace realization of a core allocation with another type of equilibrium achievable in every coalitional game. (...) Fully rational agents coordinate the pursuit of incentives so that equilibria of this type are efficient. They adopt a social contract that is efficient and inclusive. (shrink)
Ausonio Marras has argued that Jaegwon Kim's principle of explanatory exclusion depends on an implausibly strong interpretation of explanatory realism that should be rejected because it leads to an extensional criterion of individuation for explanations. I examine the role explanatory realism plays in Kim's justification for the exclusion principle and explore two ways in which Kim can respond to Marras's criticism. The first involves separating criteria for explanatory truth from questions of explanatory adequacy, while the second appeals to (...) Kim's fine-grained theory of events. I argue that the first response is unconvincing on its own but when coupled with the second might provide a viable way for Kim to avoid Marras's criticism. However, I show that the second strategy is weak from a polemical point of view because Kim's theory of events already assumes what the principle of explanatory exclusion was introduced to establish: the falsity of nonreductive physicalism. (shrink)
Christian List and Peter Menzies 2009 have looked to interventionist theories of causation for an answer to Jaegwon Kim's causal exclusion problem. Important to their response is the idea of realization-insensitivity. However, this idea becomes mired in issues concerning multiple realization, leaving it unable to fulfil its promise to block exclusion. After explaining why realization-insensitivity fails as a solution to Kim's problem, I look to interventionism to describe a different kind of solution.
Discussions about biotechnology tend to assume that it is something to do with genetics or manipulating biological processes in some way. However, the field of biometrics––the measurement of physical characteristics––is also biotechnology and is likely to affect the lives of more people more quickly than any other form. The possibility of social exclusion resulting from the use of biometrics data for such uses as identity cards has not yet been fully explored. Social exclusion is unethical, as it unfairly (...) discriminates against individuals or classes of people. Social exclusion is unethical, as it unfairly discriminates against individuals or classes of people. This article looks at some of the ways in which social exclusion might arise from the use of biometric data, and introduces a model of balancing individual interests with which to analyse whether it is justified to run the risk of excluding some members of society for the benefit of others. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim’s principle of Explanatory Exclusion says there can be no more than a single complete and independent explanation of any one event. Accordingly, if we have a complete neurological explanation for some piece of human behavior, the mental explanation must either be excluded, or it must not be distinct from the neurological explanation. Jaegwon Kim argues that mental explanations are not distinct from neurological explanations on account of the fact that they refer to the same objective causal relation (...) between events. A number of critics have argued that this extensional model of explanatory individuation allows for too many descriptions to state the same explanation. In this paper I consider, and ultimately reject, a possible response to these critics called the Constitutive Property Reply. (shrink)
Central to the freedom of association is the freedom to exclude. In fact, American constitutional law permits associations to discriminate on otherwise prohibited grounds, a principle of expressive discrimination or what I call "expressive exclusion." However, we lack a complete normative defense of it. Too often, expressive exclusion is justifi ed as a simple case of religious accommodation, or a simple case of freedom of association or speech—justifi cations that are defi cient. I argue that expressive exclusion (...) is essential in creating genuine space for democratic dissent. It stands at the intersection of speech, association, and democracy. (shrink)
The exclusion problem for mental causation is one of the most discussed puzzles in the mind-body literature. There has been a general agreement among philosophers, especially because most of them are committed to some form of physicalism, that the dualist cannot escape the exclusion problem. I argue that a proper understanding of dualism - its form, commitments, and intuitions - makes the exclusion problem irrelevant from a dualist perspective. The paper proposes a dualist approach, based on a (...) theory of event causation, according to which events are medium-grained, namely parsed into mental and physical property components. A theory of contrastive mental causation is built upon this theory of events, for which the problem of exclusion does not arise. (shrink)
This paper concerns the question of whether Pauli's Exclusion Principle (EP) vindicates the contingent truth of Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) for fermions as H. Weyl first suggested with the nomenclature ‘Pauli–Leibniz principle’. This claim has been challenged by a time-honoured argument, originally due to H. Margenau and further articulated and champione by other authors. According to this argument, the Exclusion Principle—far from vindicating Leibniz's principle—would refute it, since the same reduced state, viz. an improper (...) mixture, can be assigned as a separate state to each fermion of a composite system in antisymmetric state. As a result, the two fermions do have the same monadic state-dependent properties and hence are indiscernibles. PII would then be refuted in its strong version (viz. for monadic properties). I shall argue that a misleading assumption underlies Margenau's argument: in the case of two fermions in antisymmetric state, no separate states should be invoked since the states of the two particles are entangled and the improper mixture—assigned to each fermion by reduction—cannot be taken as an ontologically separate state nor consequently as encoding monadic properties. I shall then conclude that the notion of monadic properties together with the strong version of PII are inapplicable to fermions in antisymmetric state and this undercuts Margenau's argument. (shrink)
In a series of recent papers, Crispin Wright has developed and defended an epistemic account of borderline cases which he calls ‘Liberalism’. If Verdict Exclusion is the claim that no polar verdict on borderline cases is knowledgeable, then Liberalism implies the view that Verdict Exclusion is itself nothing we are in a position to know. It is a matter of ongoing discussion what more Liberalism implies. In any case, Wright argues that Liberalism affords the means to account for (...) the intuition that polar verdicts on borderline cases are equally permissible. Here I argue that Liberalism fails to deliver and that an account of borderline cases based on Verdict Exclusion fares much better when it comes to showing that our ordinary practice of reaching verdicts on borderline cases is fully legitimate: all it needs is a reassessment of the nature of the claims such verdicts express. (shrink)
A typical thesis of contemporary materialism holds that mental properties and events supervene on, without being reducible to, physical properties and events. Many philosophers have grown skeptical about the causal efficacy of irreducibly supervenient properties, however, and one of the main reasons is an assumption about causation which Jaegwon Kim calls the causal exclusion principle. I argue here that this principle runs afoul of cases of genuine causal overdetermination.Many would argue that causal overdetermination is impossible anyway, but a careful (...) analysis of these arguments shows them to be misguided. Finally, I examine the reasons given in support of the causal exclusion principle, and I conclude that it is plausible if, and probably only if, a certain view of the nature of causation turns out to be correct. Since that view of causation is unacceptable to nonreductivists on other grounds, however, it turns out that exclusion-based arguments essentially beg the question. (shrink)
The principle of causal exclusion is based on two distinct causal notions: causal sufficiency and causation simpliciter. The principle suggests that the former has the power to exclude the latter. But that is problematic since it would amount to claiming that sufficient causes alone can take the roles of causes simpliciter. Moreover, the principle also assumes that events can sometimes have both sufficient causes and causes simpliciter. This assumption is in conflict with the first part of the principle that (...) claims that sufficient causes must exclude causes simpliciter. (shrink)
The first part of this paper makes five points: First, the problem of Otherness is different and differently constructed in modern differentiated societies. Therefore, approaches to Otherness based on traditional notions of difference and boundary between societies and systems of shared belief will not suffice; Second, because solidarity can no longer be maintained through boundaries between ingroup and outgroup, social cohesion has to take a different form; Third, to the extent that Otherness is not a condition of demographic, or belief (...) based, exclusion in modern societies, but rather something that happens to people otherwise available to one another in interaction, othering is a processthat occurs over the course of interaction, turn by turn, not a set of beliefs or a state of mind; Fourth, othering may be supported by accounts and narratives, and these may exist before the fact – or be articulated after the fact. But, over the course of an ongoing interaction, beliefs and narratives do not explain what goes wrong with practices; Fifth, practices require reciprocity and trust. Therefore, practices require a morestringent form of morality – not a less stringent form – and moresocial cohesion – not less – than traditional society.The second part of the paper illustrates these five points with an extended analysis of a cross-race interaction in which accounts are invoked, reciprocity breaks down, and participants are rendered as Accountable Others. (shrink)
Studies of coexistence are based ultimately on the assumption that competitive exclusion is a general and accredited phenomenon in nature. However, the ecological and evolutionary impact of interspecific competition is of questionable significance. Review of three reputed examples of competitive exclusion in the field (Aphytis wasps, red and grey squirrels, and triclads) demonstrates that the widely-accepted competition-based interpretations are unlikely, that alternative explanations are overlooked, and that all other reported cases need critical reinvestigation. Although interspecific competition does undoubtedly (...) occur, the evidence suggests it is usually too weak and intermittent a force to achieve competitive exclusion or any other ecologically-significant result, except perhaps rarely and on a minor scale. Coexistence and community structure are therefore not ecological conditions to be especially accounted for, especially since their inherently comparative methods generate information that is largely superficial. Alternative questions that relate directly to species, the units of diversity, are discussed and they emphasize the primary habitat requirements of species, which are fixed during speciation. Neither the comparative approach of coexistence studies, nor the investigation of pattern is likely to be profitable, since the acquisition of species-specific characteristics during speciation requires historical research. At least one alternative theory of ecology, based on the close adaptation of organisms to the environment, is available. (shrink)
In recent years a growing number of democratic theorists have proposed ways to increase citizen engagement, while channeling those democratic energies in positive directions and away from systematic marginalization, exclusion and intolerance. One novel answer is provided by a strain of democratic theory known as agonistic pluralism, which valorizes adversarial engagement and recognizes the marginalizing tendencies implicit in drives to consensus and stability. However, the divergences between competing variants of agonistic pluralism remain largely underdeveloped or unrecognized. In this article, (...) I address this shortcoming, examining these strains of agonism around the constraints placed upon democratic discourse. I argue that the ‘associative agonism’ of theorists such as Bonnie Honig and William Connolly offers the best means for cultivating virtues necessary to revitalize a contentious democratic politics which also fosters receptivity to pluralism and difference. (shrink)
Judgments of explanatory exclusion are a necessary part of the explanatory practice of any historian or social scientist. In this article, the author argues that all explanatory exclusion results from mutual explanatory incompatibility of some sort. Different types of exclusion arise primarily as a result of the different elements composing "an explanation." Of most philosophical interest are judgments of explanatory exclusion resulting from the incompatibility of explanatory relevance claims. The author demonstrates that an ontic theory of (...) explanation is necessary to make sense of this type of exclusion and in so doing develops an analysis similar to Jaegwon Kim’s well-known analysis of explanatory exclusion. To conclude, the author demonstrates the differences and connections between Kim’s analysis and his own. Key Words: explanation • social science • history • exclusion • compatibility. (shrink)
Taking into account the difficulties that all attempts at a solution of the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion have experienced, we analyze in this paper the chances that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination, a line of attack that has scarcely been explored. Our conclusion is that claiming that behaviors are causally overdetermined cannot solve the problem of causal-explanatory exclusion. The reason is the problem of massive coincidence, that can only be avoided by establishing a relation between mind (...) and body; that is, by denying overdetermination. The only way to defend that mind-body causation is a case of overdetermination would be by denying any modal force whatever to the principle of the causal closure of the physical, and this is a claim we would not like to reject. (shrink)
Dussel's ethics begins with a consideration of the importance of history for ethics in general and for us, in particular, in an age of globalization and exclusion. The first part of the work concerns foundational ethics, where he grounds three principles: a material principle, a formal or validity principle, and a feasibility principle. The second part deals with critical ethics, where he grounds three additional principles of ethics: a principle of the recognition of the corporeal dignity of co-subjects, the (...) critical-discursive principle, and the liberation principle. This ethics offers itself as a third way between neo-Kantianism and neo-Aristotelianism, and as an ethics that reflects out of the pressing problem of the growing impoverishment of 75 per cent of humans on the planet. Key Words: critique • ethics • formal • globalization • justification • liberation • material • universalization. (shrink)
Abstract: Does democracy or popular sovereignty imply exclusion and drawing borders? And if so, what type of exclusion and borders, and what kind of justification can we give for them? Moreover, if democracy really requires some kind of exclusion, is global democracy then a paradoxical union of two contradictory ideals? Can we create a demos on the global level? The focus of this collection of essays is on this potential conflict and its underlying values.
Despite its importance to Chemistry, the Pauli Exclusion Principle appears as a rather ad hoc addition to quantum mechanics. In this paper a description of its origin is given together with a critical discussion of its use and significance in Chemistry and Quantum Physics.
I first discuss reasons for feminists to attend to the role of women in the military, despite past emphasis on antimilitarism. I then focus on the exclusion of women from combat duty, reviewing its sanction by the U.S. Supreme Court and the history of its adoption. I present arguments favoring the exclusion, defending strong replies to each, and demonstrate that reasoning from related cases and feminist analyses of equality explain why exclusion remains entrenched.
There is a dichotomy in the Humean thought that morality is more properly felt than judged of. The idea of a moral sensibility with an epistemic and rational content is grounded in the experience of the state of nature, and a distinction made between a defensive and a constructive morality, constituted by a set of motivations, against the law of the strongest, and protective of the relationships of education and creative work, exclusion from which undermines the conditions for a (...) constructive morality. Aesthetic education is a means of overcoming the sectarianism of defensive morality. (shrink)
The problem of exclusion threatens non-reductive physicalist theories of the mind by implying that they cannot account for mental causation. This paper attempts to clarify what exactly the exclusion problem is, and, given the problem, to survey the theoretical options open. First I reconstruct the problem from its most influential sources (Malcolm and Kim), showing that it should be understood as an ontological rather than an explanatory problem. I then distinguish the problem from some consequences that seem to (...) follow from it. Finally I sketch a map of possible answers to exclusion. (shrink)
The Pauli Exclusion Principle and the reduction of chemistry have been the subject of considerable philosophical debate, The present article considers the view that the lack of derivability of the Exclusion Principle represents a problem for physics and denies the reduction of chemistry to quantum mechanics. The possible connections between the Exclusion Principle and the hidden variable debate are also briefly criticised.
The roles of linguistic, cognitive, and social-pragmatic processes in word learning are well established. If statistical mechanisms also contribute to word learning, they must interact with these processes; however, there exists little evidence for such mechanistic synergy. Adults use co-occurrence statistics to encode speech–object pairings with detailed sensitivity in stochastic learning environments (Vouloumanos, 2008). Here, we replicate this statistical work with nonspeech sounds and compare the results with the previous speech studies to examine whether exclusion constraints contribute equally to (...) the statistical learning of speech–object and nonspeech–object associations. In environments in which performance could benefit from exclusion, we find a learning advantage for speech over nonspeech, revealing an interaction between statistical and exclusion processes in associative word learning. (shrink)
A critical analysis of recent interventionist responses to the causal exclusion problem is presented. It is argued that the response can indeed offer a solution to the problem, but one that is based on renouncing the multiple realizability thesis. The account amounts to the rejection of nonreductive physicalism and would thus be unacceptable to many. It is further shown that if the multiple realizability thesis is brought back in and conjoined with the interventionist notion of causation, inter-level causation is (...) ruled out altogether. (shrink)
From the Middle Ages onto the 19th century, following the trend set in leper hospitals, madness was to be hidden, secluded in dark places, far away from the mainstream of society. The emergence of the mad person, perceived as inevitably different, allows to make the boundaries between reason and folly, between human and inhuman, irrelevant. If leper hospitals have almost emptied out, if there are much fewer confinement facilities, the values and images related to the leper or the mad person, (...) as well as the sense of exclusion, continue to persist. The purpose of this paper is to show clearly that this matter of exclusion is a serious legacy that could very well apply nowadays to other figures that, each in their own way, symbolize menace or mockery. It applies notably to the aged and the dying who both appear as the opposite of modern society and its values of efficiency, productivity and profitability. The multiplication of places where old people are left to die, and the elderly who are crowded in old folks homes, stand as proof of their exclusion from society. Nevertheless, youth and old age coexist, as well as life and death. If care of others is the trait of a humane civilization, must it be understood that barbarism consists in ignoring its own humanity as well as that of others? In view of such practices of exclusion, policy statements based on recognition of human dignity, where ethical obligation rests on recognition of others and humanism, are rather paradoxical. Is this a paradox or a deadlock; a condition of exclusion or of reconnaissance? (shrink)
The different experience of unemployment and of poverty in the two main Western economic systems (roughly, Europe and the US) demonstrates that a simple economic approach to these problems does not exist. In this paper I deal with the question of the impact of technological change on productive activities, employment and income distribution.The main idea is the following: technological progress may lead to an impoverishment of the disadvantaged people in a free-market society, as a consequence of their inability to adjust (...) their skills to the new requirements of the labour market. By contrast, a just society, grounded on moral principles, recognizes that the distributive criterion has to take into account not only individual contributions to production, but also the relative needs of the individuals. In that context, everyone should be better off after a technological change, since it is fair that everyone gains some advantage from a generalized improvement in the productive conditions of society. A policy that adopts this perspective should provide an effective guard against the danger of social exclusion that strikes modern societies. (shrink)
Many argue that transgenic technology will have wide-ranging implications for farmers in developing nations. A key concern is that competencies may be destroyed by predominantly foreign multinational transgenic technologies, exacerbating problems of social exclusion in the case of subsistence farmers. Conversely, those that fail to adopt the technology may become uncompetitive, particularly in commodity-based export markets. Drawing on interview data conducted in Brazil and supporting data collected in North America, Europe and China, we found that the impact of transgenic (...) technology varies. It has less impact on farmers that adapt the products to their crop systems and environment, and greater negative implications for less formally educated subsistence farmers in consequence of both complexity and compatibility. Earlier attempts at industrializing agriculture through technological innovation led to vastly improved agricultural output and exports, but the benefits of productivity was not equitably distributed [D. Lee: 2005, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87(5), 1325–1334], nor was it designed to meet specific local environmental and socioeconomic farmer conditions, exacerbating social exclusion. Multinationals attempting to introduce transgenic technology without considering the broader social and ethical implications will invite resistance. We discuss the implications for policy makers, multinationals and small-scale farmers. (shrink)
Social integration is a basic ingredient of any description of a good society. We feel that all people should get the opportunity to realise their full human potential, i.e. to realise their own goals and aspirations. In this paper we claim that this is also part of the responsibility of private sector firms and, therefore, an integral aspect of business ethics. We first argue against the (popular) conviction that the situation of the unemployed is their own responsibility, either because they (...) choose to be unemployed (section 2), or because they choose to be low skilled (section 3). As a consequence, we do not believe that the dismantling of the social security system or the restructuring of the educational system can fully solve the problem of the least skilled in our societies. Nor do we think that the integration of the least skilled is a matter for government policy alone. In section 4 we argue that job creation remains indispensable for a real attack on the problem of social exclusion. In section 5, we highlight the important role of the private sector in this regard. Such job creation will require a lot of effort and imagination at the micro-level of the firm and a lot of creative thinking about how to structure the macrosocial market environment within which private firms operate. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim's causal exclusion argument has rarely been evaluated from an empirical perspective. This is puzzling because its conclusion seems to be making a testable claim about the world: supervenient properties are causally inefficacious. An empirical perspective, however, reveals Kim's argument to rest on a mistaken conception about how to test whether a property is causally efficacious. Moreover, the empirical perspective makes visible a metaphysical bias that Kim brings to his argument that involves a principle of non-inclusion.
A nonnegative interger is called a number, a collection of numbers a set and a collection of sets a class. We write ε for the set of all numbers, o for the empty set, N(α) for the cardinality of $\alpha, \subset$ for inclusion and $\subset_+$ for proper inclusion. Let α, β 1 ,...,β k be subsets of some set ρ. Then α' stands for ρ-α and β 1 ⋯ β k for β 1 ∩ ⋯ ∩ β k . For (...) subsets α 1 ,..., α r of ρ we write: $\alpha_\sigma - \{x \in v \ (\nabla i) \lbrack i \in \sigma \Rightarrow x \in \alpha_i\rbrack\} \text{for} \sigma \subset (1, \ldots, r),\\ s_i = \sum \{N(\alpha_\sigma) \mid \sigma \subset (1,\ldots, r) \& N(\sigma) = i\}, \text{for} 0 \leqq i \leqq r$ . Note that α 0 = v, hence s 0 = N(v). If the set v is finite, the classical inclusion-exclusion principle (abbreviated IEP) states $(a) N(\alpha_1 \cup \cdots \cup \alpha_r) = \sum^r_{t=1} (-1)^{t-1} s_t = \sum_{o \subset_+\sigma \subset (1,\ldots,r)}$ (b) N(α' 1 ⋯ α' r ) = ∑ r t=0 (-1) t s t = ∑ (-1) N(σ) N (α σ ). In this paper we generalize (a) and (b) to the case where α 1 ,⋯, α r are subsets of some countable but isolated set v. Then the role of the cardinality N(α) of the set α is played by the RET (recursive equivalence type) Req α of α. These generalization of (a) and (b) are proved in § 3. Since they involve recursive distinctness, this notion is discussed in § 2. In § 4l we consider a natural extension of "the sum of the elements of a finite set σ" to the case where σ is countable. § 5 deals with valuations, i.e., certain mappings μ from classes of isolated sets into the collection λ of all isols which permit us to further generalize IEP by substituting μ(α) for $\operatorname{Req} \alpha$. (shrink)
This study identified and described adolescents' exclusion rules and how they were related to their real world exclusionary behaviours. Adolescents (N = 682) were asked to provide (a) an account and rationale for excluding a peer who wanted to join their group; and (b) general rules for when exclusion was fair. A content analysis of the narratives suggested seven rejection rules that were somewhat consistent with adolescents' reported acts of social exclusion: (a) unattractive; (b) punishment; (c) dangerous; (...) (d) group loyalty; (e) benevolent protection; (f) unqualified; and (g) never. The data demonstrated that adolescent peer groups provide fertile soil for cultivating and performing moral exclusion. Both theoretical and applied implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)
This paper argues that there is an inconsistency between Jaegwon Kim's earlier work on supervenience and his more recent work on explanatory exclusion. In his work on supervenience Kim advocates an explanatory agnosticism that, by the time of his later work, is replaced by an endorsement of reductive explanation. My argument is that this tension between Kim's early and later work is unfortunate since explanatory exclusion is highly questionable in its own right and is not reconcilable with his (...) earlier work on supervenience anyway. /// El presente artículo sostiene que existe una inconsistencia entre los primeros textos sobre superveniencia de Jaegwon Kim y sus trabajos más recientes sobre exclusión explicativa. En sus escritos sobre superveniencia, Kim defiende un agnosticismo explicativo que, en sus textos posteriores, sustituye con su aprobación a la explicación reductiva. Mi argumento es que esta tensión entre las dos etapas de la obra de Kim es poco afortunada, pues la exclusión explicativa es por derecho propio sumamente cuestionable y de todos modos no se puede conciliar con sus primeros textos sobre superveniencia. (shrink)
This volume marks the first English translation of Jnanasrimitra's Monograph on Exclusion, a careful, critical investigation into language, perception, and conceptual awareness.
We propose an approach to natural language inference based on a model of natural logic, which identifies valid inferences by their lexical and syntactic features, without full semantic interpretation. We greatly extend past work in natural logic, which has focused solely on semantic containment and monotonicity, to incorporate both semantic exclusion and implicativity. Our system decomposes an inference problem into a sequence of atomic edits linking premise to hypothesis; predicts a lexical entailment relation for each edit using a statistical (...) classifier; propagates these relations upward through a syntax tree according to semantic properties of intermediate nodes; and composes the resulting entailment relations across the edit sequence. We evaluate our system on the FraCaS test suite, and achieve a 27% reduction in error from previous work. We also show that hybridizing an existing RTE system with our natural logic system yields significant gains on the RTE3 test suite. (shrink)
In order to take ethical considerations of patenting biological material into account, the so-called “ordre public or morality clause” was implemented as Article 6 in the EC directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, 98/44/EC. At first glance, this seems to provide a significant advantage to the European patent system with respect to ethics. The thesis of this paper argues that the ordre public or morality clause does not provide sufficient protection against ethically problematic uses of the patent system (...) within the area of life. On the contrary, there are worrisome obstacles to any effective and comprehensive critical analysis of the ethical aspects of bio-patenting, especially in the field of agriculture. These obstacles can be seen as indirect consequences of the implementation of ethical considerations in form of the ordre public and morality clause in the EC Directive. Therefore, Article 6 of the EC Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions seems to ultimately weaken the position of ethics in the debate concerning bio-patenting because the ordre public and morality clause is usually interpreted in an exclusively bio-ethical way in the sense of an “intrinsic ethics,” which is primarily interested in questions regarding the moral status of particular entities. It is argued that an important cause of this phenomenon is that the decisive reasons against bio-patenting are concerns of social ethics, and not bio-ethics. (shrink)
Women's access to health and medicine in developed countries has been characterized by a range of inconsistent inclusions and exclusions. Health policy has been asymmetrically interested in womens reproductive capacities and has sought to regulate, control, and manage aspects of womens reproductive decision making in a manner unwitnessed in relation to men's reproductive health and reproductive decision making. In other areas, research that addresses health concerns that affect both men and women sometimes is designed so as not to yield data (...) relating to the ways in which women's physiology and gendered location may affect their experience of the condition and its response to treatment, despite a literature on the significance of sex and gender differences in health research. This paper draws on the situation in Australia to explore the ethical significance of these inconsistencies as failing the ideals of high-quality medical research and evidenced-based health care. (shrink)
An analysis and rebuttal of Jaegwon Kim's reasons for taking nonreductive physicalism to entail the causal irrelevance of mental features to physical phenomena, particularly the behaviour of human bodies.
In this note, I will discuss one issue concerning the main argument of Mind in a Physical World (Kim, 1998), the Causal Exclusion Argument. The issue is whether it is a consequence of the Causal Exclusion Argument that all macro level causation (that is, causation above the level of fundamental physics) is an illusion, with all of the apparent causal powers of mental and other macro properties draining into the bottom level of physics. I will argue that such (...) a consequence would give us reason to reject the Causal Exclusion Argument. But there is also a stronger challenge, the charge that, if there is no bottom level of physics, the Causal Exclusion Argument has the consequence that “causal powers would drain away into a bottomless pit and there wouldn’t be any causation anywhere.” (81--page numbers that are not attributed to other works are to Kim, 1998). (shrink)
The Exclusion Problem (EP) for mental causation suggests that there is a tension between the claim that the mental causes physical effects, and the claim that the mental does not overdetermine its physical effects. In response, Karen Bennett (2008, 2003) puts forward an extra necessary condition for overdetermination: if one candidate cause were to occur but the other were not to occur, the effect would still occur. She thus denies one of the assumptions of EP, the assumption that if (...) an effect has two sufficient causes, it is overdetermined. If sound, her argument does two things: it solves EP, and it shows how to use counterfactuals in order to make the notion of overdetermination precise. However, the argument is not sound. (shrink)
Jaegwon Kim has argued that unless mental events are reducible to subvening physical events, they are at best overdeterminers of their effects. Recently, nonreductive physicalists have endorsed this consequence claiming that the relationship between mental events and their physical bases is tight enough to render any such overdetermination nonredundant, and hence benign. I focus on instances of this strategy that appeal to the notion of constitution. Ultimately, I argue that there is no way to understand the relationship between irreducible mental (...) events and their physical bases such as to both eliminate causal redundancy and preserve the efficacy of mental events. (shrink)
The primary purpose of this paper is to argue that biologists should stop citing Karl Popper on what a genuinely scientific theory is. Various ways in which biologists cite Popper on this matter are surveyed, including the use of Popper to settle debates on methodology in phylogenetic systematics. It is then argued that the received view on Popper—namely, that a genuinely scientific theory is an empirically falsifiable one—is seriously mistaken, that Popper’s real view was that genuinely scientific theories have the (...) form of statements of laws of nature. It is then argued that biology arguably has no genuine laws of its own. In place of Popperian falsifiability, it is suggested that a cluster class epistemic values approach (which subsumes empirical falsifiability) is the best solution to the demarcation problem between genuine science and pseudo- or non-science. (shrink)
