John F. Post argues that physicalistic materialism is compatible with a number of views often deemed incompatible with it, such as the objectivity of values, the irreducibility of subjective experience, the power of the metaphor, the normativity of meaning, and even theism.

After some preliminary clarifications, arguments for the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination, such as they are, are shown to be unsound. An argument against the supposed asymmetry is then constructed and defended against objections. This is followed by explanations of why the intuition of asymmetry is nonetheless so entrenched, and of how the asymmetric ontological priority of the physical over the non-physical can be understood without the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination.

After some preliminary clarifications, arguments for the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination, such as they are, are shown to be unsound. An argument against the supposed asymmetry is then constructed and defended against objections. This is followed by explanations of why the intuition of asymmetry is nonetheless so entrenched, and of how the asymmetric ontological priority of the physical over the non-physical can be understood without the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination.

David Papineau's model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation's being “for” this or that (say the eye's being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti‐naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cogni‐tivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn't.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non‐cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non‐cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

Outlines a conceptual argument against the Principle of Sufficient reason. The argument is presented in detail in earlier work, and is based on deductive inferences from PSR's own concept of explanation. The argument shows that not everything can have an explanation of the sort claimed by PSR. So far from being a presupposition of reason itself, as some think, PSR can be refuted by reason, arguing only from PSR's own concept of explanation. Hence PSR cannot be used to argue that (...) there must be some explanation or reason for existence, invisible at least to science, or that because we do not or cannot know the explanation, there must be irreducible mystery about why there is anything at all rather than nothing, including why there was a Big Bang in the first place. (shrink)

David Papineau’s model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation’s being “for” this or that (say the eye’s being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti-naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cognitivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn’t.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non-cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non-cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

New-wave psychoneural reduction, a la Bickle and Churchland, conflicts with the way certain adaptation properties are individuated according to evolutionary biology. Such properties cannot be reduced to physical properties of the token items that have the adaptation properties. The New Wave may entail a form of individualism inconsistent with evolutionary biology. All of this causes serious trouble as well for Jaegwon Kim's thesis of the Causal Individuation of Kinds, his Weak Supervenience thesis, Alexander's Dictum, his synchronicity thesis that all psychological (...) kinds supervene on the contemporaneous physical states of the organism, Correlation Thesis, and indeed his Restricted Correlation Thesis. All these theses are strongly individualist, in the sense of entailing that ALL a thing's properties are determined by its own physical properties and relations, contrary to many properties in biology and psychology. (shrink)

Argues for an objective protomoral normativity in terms of what an adaptation is for, without falling victim to Hume's Law, open-question arguments, queerness arguments, and internalism/externalism debates. Also provides a general strategy for naturalizing objective moral normativity which is likewise proof against the usual-suspect objections.

The method in question is conceptual analysis. The madness comes of its privileging received usage over theories that would revise our concepts so as to conform to the phenomena, not the other way around. The alternatives to capture-the-concept include revisionary theory-construction as practiced not only in the sciences but in some philosophies. I present a revisionary theory of an important kind of normativity -- the normativity involved in a biological adaptation's being for this or that -- which theory, I argue, (...) undermines the received objections to there being any such normativity objectively in the world. So too for other kinds of normativity, including the moral, insofar as the objections to their objectivity have the same form and presuppositions. (shrink)

Adhering to the traditional concept of omniscience lands Gale in the incoherence Grim’s Cantorian arguments reveal in talk of “all propositions.” By constructing variants and extensions of Grim’s arguments, I explain why various ways out of the incoherence are unacceptable, why theists would do better to adopt a certain revisionary concept of omniscience, and why the Cantorian troubles are so deep as to be troubles as well for Gale’s Weak PSR. I conclude with some brief reflections on method, suggesting that (...) we pursue the full implications of Gale’s own revisionary remarks and replace his method of analytic argumentation with non-analytic revisionary theory-construction. (shrink)

Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss raise a number of excellent questions in their separate responses to my comments on Gale’s book, On the Nature and Existence of God. They focus on aspects of my discussion that need at least to be clarified, if not retracted, in ways I explain in this reply.

Alleged counter-examples based on conceptual thought experiments, including those involving sense or content, have no force against physicalist supervenience theses properly construed. This is largely because of their epistemological status and their modal status. Still, there are empirical examples that do contradict Kim-style theses, due to the latter’s individualism. By contrast, non-individualist supervenience, such as “global” supervenience, remains unscathed, a possibility overlooked by Lynne Baker, as is dear from a physicalist account of sense in the case of non-human biological adaptations (...) that are for producing things about affairs in the world. (shrink)

The foundationalism in irrealism is structural foundationalism, according to which reason giving must terminate with some affair beyond the reach of noncircular inferential justification or critique. Even relativist irrealists are structural foundationalists. But structural foundationalism is only as good as the regress argument for it, which presupposes that the relevant forms of inferential justification are all transitive. Since they are not, structural foundationalism fails. So too does the “God’s-eye-view” or look-see argument against realism, to the effect that when it comes (...) to correspondence and universals or samenesses found not made, realists have no noncircular argumentative recourse, hence must gaze on reality bare, looking to see that the categories of our language or thought conform to something in reality. Furthermore, realists can justify their view via nontransitive forms of inferential justífication, without recourse either to look-see or to morally problematic notions of sameness and difference made rather than lovingly found. (shrink)

The foundationalism in irrealism is structural foundationalism, according to which reason giving must terminate with some affair beyond the reach of noncircular inferential justification or critique. Even relativist irrealists are structural foundationalists. But structural foundationalism is only as good as the regress argument for it, which presupposes that the relevant forms of inferential justification are all transitive. Since they are not, structural foundationalism fails. So too does the “God’s-eye-view” or look-see argument against realism, to the effect that when it comes (...) to correspondence and universals or samenesses found not made, realists have no noncircular argumentative recourse, hence must gaze on reality bare, looking to see that the categories of our language or thought conform to something in reality. Furthermore, realists can justify their view via nontransitive forms of inferential justífication, without recourse either to look-see or to morally problematic notions of sameness and difference made rather than lovingly found. (shrink)

John F. Henry is an eminent economist who has made important contributions to heterodox economics drawing on Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and John Maynard Keynes. His historical approach offers radical insights into the evolution of ideas (ideologies and theories) giving rise to and/or induced by the changes in capitalist society. Essays collected in this festschrift not only evaluate John Henry's contributions in connection to Marx's and Veblen's theories, but also apply them to the socio-economic issues (...) in the 21st century. In Part I leading heterodox economists in the traditions of Marxism, Post Keynesianism, and Institutionalism critically examine Marx's and Veblen's theoretical frameworks (and their connections to each other) that have become the foundations of heterodox economics. Chapters in Part II showcase alternative theoretical explanations inspired by Marx, Veblen, and Henry. Topics in this Part include financial crisis, financialization, capital accumulation, economics teaching, and the historical relationship between money and class society. Part III is devoted to John Henry's heterodox economics encapsulated in his "farewell" lecture, interview, and bibliography. Essays in this book, individually and collectively, make an important point that the history of economic thought (or historical analysis of economic theory and policy) is an integral part of developing heterodox economics as an alternative theoretical framework. Anyone who is troubled by the recurring failure of capitalism as well as mainstream economics will find this book well worth reading. (shrink)

This book should be required reading for anyone who cares about the realism/antirealism issue, but also, and perhaps above all, for those who have tired of the dispute because they suspect it is meaningless. In response to those who thus turn their backs on the issue, Professor Cortens argues at length, and with great clarity and rigor, that “unless they give up on philosophy altogether” they will likely be unable “to avoid discussing the issues that give life to these labels”. (...) The reason is that for some time philosophy has been characterized by all-encompassing struggles over the nature of thought, language, and their relation to the world. In these struggles, “one party will naturally view the other as repudiating everything all at once,” especially when the dispute is about “whether it is we who... ‘divide the world into objects,’” or about “the reality of reference,” or about “whether meaning and psychological content are objective matters of fact”. We friends of metaphysics run the risk that “we might wake up one day to discover, much to our horror, that our best philosophers of mind and language have robbed us of the ability to say or think anything at all, much less to speculate about the fundamental features of reality that concern the metaphysician.... Small comfort to be told that, once we become fully converted to the strange new conception of thought and language, we may continue to speak as though we believed in a world”. (shrink)