Realization

Edited by Ronald Endicott (North Carolina State University)
About this topic
Summary

Although formal notions of realization were already used by computer scientists and mathematicians, Hilary Putnam popularized the idiom for philosophers in the 1960s as a way to describe relations implicated by the machine functionalist view of the mind. Specifically, Putnam said that an abstract machine is realized by a physical machine, where this realization relation was not conceived along the lines of a traditional mind-brain identity theory. Philosophers then began to use the idiom in a more general way to designate various types of inter-level relations between different domains, such as the ontology of a higher-level science like psychology compared to a lower-level science like neurochemistry. Moreover, one common theme is that concepts of realization offer a better way to account for inter-level relations than competing ideas about supervenience, emergence, and grounding inasmuch as the realization relations are more explanatory than these competitors. 

Key works One may categorize different concepts of realization in terms of three basic conceptual traditions. First there is a semantic tradition whereby “to be realized” names a semantic relation, e.g., the satisfaction of a predicate by an object (Lewis 1972). Second there is a mathematical tradition whereby “to be realized” names a mapping or correspondence relation, e.g., a one-to-one mapping between the states of an abstract machine and a concrete physical machine (Putnam 1960; Chalmers 1994). Third there is a metaphysical tradition whereby “to be realized” names a relation of determination or inter-level production that is explanatory (LePore & Loewer 1989). Much of the interest in philosophy has been focused upon this latter tradition. The metaphysical tradition divides into several different views. To name the most prominent, there is realization by functional roles and occupation (Lycan 1987; Papineau 1993; Melnyk 1994; Kim 1998), or broader notions of function (Polger 2004). There is realization in terms of parts and wholes or mechanistic systems (Cummins 1983; Gillett 2002, Gillett 2007; Craver 2007; Endicott 2016), and a fusion of part-whole realization with functional role and occupation realization (Endicott 2011, Endicott 2016). There is also realization as determinables and determinates (MacDonald & MacDonald 1986; Yablo 1992; Wilson 2009; Jessica 2017), and realization in terms of sets and subsets of causal powers (Wilson 1999, 2011; Shoemaker 2001, 2007). There is also a distinction between core and total realizations (Shoemaker 1981), realization by contextually sensitive INUS conditions (Endicott 1994), and core realizers within a broader metaphysical contexts (Wilson 2001). Moreover, within this spectrum of views, there are issues about the connection between concepts of realization and subsequent judgments about multiple realizability (Shapiro 2004; Gillett 2003; Aizawa & Gillett 2009; Polger & Shapiro 2016), about whether the relata of realization are particular instances or their properties (Shapiro 2008; Endicott 2010; Gillett 2011), and about whether there are different theoretical roles for different concepts of realization (Gillett 2002; Polger 2007; Endicott 2012). Finally, philosophers have argued that concepts of realization are better at preserving physicalist intuitions over concepts of supervenience (Horgan 1993; Melnyk 1994, 2003; Wilson 1999; Witmer 2001; Morris 2010), and better at explaining inter-level phenomena than some generic grounding relation (Wilson 2014, Wilson 2016).  
Introductions

There are a few general introductions: Ronald Endicott's (2005) encyclopedia article on multiple realizability contains a section dedicated to concepts of realization; and Carl Craver's and Robert Wilson's (2006) article addresses some basic views on realization in both philosophy and the sciences. A paper by Thomas Polger (2007) also covers some broad territory regarding different concepts of realization, and Kevin Morris (Morris 2010) describes some general desiderata that a theory of realization should meet. 

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  1. Removing Realizers: Reply to Rellihan.Thomas Krödel - 2022 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (3):150-156.
    The paper replies to Matthew Rellihan’s recent criticism of Thomas Kroedel’s simple argument for downward causation. Rellihan argues that the simple argument equivocates between two notions of realizers of mental properties, namely total realizers and core realizers. According to Rellihan, one premise of the argument is false on each disambiguation. In response, this paper argues that the version of the argument in terms of total realizers is sound after all if we evaluate counterfactual conditionals about the non-occurrence of total realizers (...)
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  2. (Artificial) Intelligence.Ilexa Yardley - 2023 - Dallas, TX: Intelligent Design Center, Inc..
    Information and, thus, intelligence, is dependent on the Conservation of a Circle, which is, technically, the only dynamic in Nature. Forcing humans, now that it is exposed, to re-think, and, eventually, repurpose, the finance, technology, and psychology, humans use to create the 'personal' (and, often, artificial) experience called 'reality.'.
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  3. Detaching from ‘Everything’.Ilexa Yardley - 2022 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory.
    Attaching to (and benefitting from) what you already know.
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  4. Metafisica dell'emergenza.Erica Onnis - 2021 - Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.
    Negli ultimi anni, il richiamo al concetto di emergenza si è fatto sempre più diffuso in molte aree della filosofia e della scienza. Il termine viene usato per riferirsi alla circostanza in cui un sistema (fisico, chimico, biologico, ma anche sociale) manifesta delle proprietà e dei comportamenti che sembrano nuovi rispetto a quelli delle sue parti più semplici. Questo libro si propone di chiarire questo fenomeno, tenendo conto, da un lato, che le discipline coinvolte nel dibattito sono molte, quindi un (...)
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  5. From an intentionalist perspective.Richard L. Smith - 1974 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 17 (1-4):1 – 22.
    In order to expound and defend the intentionalist thesis that human actions are intentionally determined by persons, selves, or agents themselves I first argue that teleological explanation, even though it is consistent with physicalism and scientifically respectable in the sense of being an attempt to establish the conditions under which things and events occur and to formulate laws that express such dependencies, is not exactly coordinate with and replaceable by mechanistic explanation. Then, I argue that living human beings must be (...)
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  6. On an Alleged Non‐Equivalence Between Dispositions and Disjunctive Properties.Jonathan Cohen - 2002 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (1):77-81.
    This paper shows that grounded dispositions are necessarily coextensive with disjunctive properties. It responds to several objections against this thesis, and then shows how to construct a disjunctive property necessarily coextensive with an arbitrary grounded disposition.
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  7. Searles kritik am funktionalismus — eine untersuchung Des chinesischzimmers.Jürgen Schröder - 1991 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 22 (2):321-336.
    Summary Searle claims that for a machine to have intentional states it is not sufficient that a formal programme be instantiated. Various types of objections to this claim have been brought up by Searle's critics. Searle's replies to some of these objections are analysed. It turns out that it is more to these objections than Searle wants to make us believe. What is crucial, however, is that Searle's „Gedankenexperiment results in a dilemma. At the outset of the dilemma there are (...)
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Realization, Misc
  1. Antireductionism Has Outgrown Levels.Angela Potochnik - forthcoming - In Alastair Wilson & Katie Robertson (eds.), Levels of Explanation. Oxford University Press.
    Positing levels of explanation has played an important role in philosophy of science. This facilitated the advocacy of antireductionism of explanations, which, at its most basic, is the idea that scientific explanations citing large (i.e. non-microphysical) entities will persist. The idea that explanations come in levels captures important features of explanatory practices, and it also does well at helping to define different positions one might take regarding explanatory reductionism or antireductionism. Yet the idea that explanations come in levels has also (...)
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  2. Review of Physicalism Deconstructed: Levels of Reality and the Mind-Body Problem, by Kevin Morris. [REVIEW]Jessica M. Wilson - 2020 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1.
    Morris’s book is a valuable contribution. For the reasons below, I don’t think his case against NRP succeeds, and his version of EP faces a serious difficulty. Even so, this is an admirably clear, subtle, and well-informed brief, and philosophers interested in the structure of natural reality have much to gain from Morris’s insightful discussion and argumentation.
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  3. Comments on Making Things Up.Jessica M. Wilson - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (2):497-506.
    These comments are part of a book symposium on Karen Bennett's book, _Making Things Up_.
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  4. Emergence, Function and Realization.Umut Baysan - 2019 - In Sophie Gibb, Robin Hendry & Tom Lancaster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Emergence. London: Routledge.
    “Realization” and “emergence” are two concepts that are sometimes used to describe same or similar phenomena in philosophy of mind and the special sciences, where such phenomena involve the synchronic dependence of some higher-level states of affairs on the lower-level ones. According to a popular line of thought, higher-level properties that are invoked in the special sciences are realized by, and/or emergent from, lower-level, broadly physical, properties. So, these two concepts are taken to refer to relations between properties from different (...)
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  5. Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism.Andrew Melnyk - 2016 - In Ken Aizawa & Carl Gillett (eds.), Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground. Palgrave. pp. 249-269.
    Grounding is all the rage in analytical metaphysics. But here I give three reasons for not appealing to a primitive relation of grounding in formulating physicalism. (1) It probably can't do the key job it would need to do. (2) We don't need it, since we already have realization. (3) It is probably not even consistent with physicalism.
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  6. In Defense of a Realization Formulation of Physicalism.Andrew Melnyk - 2018 - Topoi 37 (3):483-493.
    In earlier work, I proposed and defended a formulation of physicalism that was distinctive in appealing to a carefully-defined relation of physical realization. Various philosophers (Robert Francescotti, Daniel Stoljar, Carl Gillett, and Susan Schneider) have since presented challenges to this formulation. In the present paper, I aim to show that these challenges can be overcome.
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  7. The Realization of Qualia, Persons, and Artifacts.Ben White - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (S1):182-204.
    This article argues that standard causal and functionalist definitions of realization fail to account for the realization of entities that cannot be individuated in causal or functional terms. By modifying such definitions to require that realizers also logically suffice for any historical properties of the entities they realize, one can provide for the realization of entities whose resistance to causal/functional individuation stems from their possession of individuative historical properties. But if qualia cannot be causally or functionally individuated, then qualia can (...)
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  8. The topological realization.Daniel Kostić - 2018 - Synthese (1).
    In this paper, I argue that the newly developed network approach in neuroscience and biology provides a basis for formulating a unique type of realization, which I call topological realization. Some of its features and its relation to one of the dominant paradigms of realization and explanation in sciences, i.e. the mechanistic one, are already being discussed in the literature. But the detailed features of topological realization, its explanatory power and its relation to another prominent view of realization, namely the (...)
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  9. Demystifying Emergence.David Yates - 2016 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3:809-841.
    Are the special sciences autonomous from physics? Those who say they are need to explain how dependent special science properties could feature in irreducible causal explanations, but that’s no easy task. The demands of a broadly physicalist worldview require that such properties are not only dependent on the physical, but also physically realized. Realized properties are derivative, so it’s natural to suppose that they have derivative causal powers. Correspondingly, philosophical orthodoxy has it that if we want special science properties to (...)
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  10. The Unreality of Realization.Chase Wrenn - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2):305-322.
    This paper argues against the realization principle, which reifies the realization relation between lower-level and higher-level properties. It begins with a review of some principles of naturalistic metaphysics. Then it criticizes some likely reasons for embracing the realization principle, and finally it argues against the principle directly. The most likely reasons for embracing the principle depend on the dubious assumption that special science theories cannot be true unless special science predicates designate properties. The principle itself turns out to be false (...)
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  11. Realization.Giovanna Hendel - 2001 - Critica 33 (98):41-70.
    So far no clear explication of the notion of realization has been offered, in spite of the frequent uses of the notion in the literature to discharge important jobs, such as that of accounting for the causal efficacy of the mental in a physical world, and that of providing a viable characterization of physicalism, and/or psychophysical reduction. I put forward an account of realization as an identity-like relation. I argue that such account has the following advantages: it provides a picture (...)
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  12. Does the Argument from Realization Generalize? Responses to Kim.Carl Gillett & Bradley Rives - 2001 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 39 (1):79-98.
    By quantifying over properties we cannot create new properties any more than by quantifying over individuals we can create new individuals. Someone murdered Jones, and the murderer is either Smith or Jones or Wang. That “someone,” who murdered Jones, is not a person in addition to Smith, Jones, and Wang, and it would be absurd to posit a disjunctive person, Smith‐or‐Jones‐or‐Wang, with whom to identify the murderer. The same goes for second‐order properties and their realizers. (Kim 1997a, 201).
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  13. An Argument for Power Inheritance.Umut Baysan - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly (263):pqv126.
    Abstract: Non-reductive physicalism is commonly understood as the view that mental properties are realized by physical properties. Here, I argue that the realization relation in question is a power inheritance relation: if a property P realizes a property Q, then the causal powers of Q are a subset of the causal powers of P. Whereas others have motivated this claim by appealing to its theoretical benefits, I argue that it is in fact entailed by two theses: (i) realization is a (...)
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  14. The unity and priority arguments for Grounding.Jessica M. Wilson - 2016 - In Ken Aizawa & Carl Gillett (eds.), Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground. Basinstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. pp. 171-204.
    Grounding, understood as a primitive posit operative in contexts where metaphysical dependence is at issue, is not able on its own to do any substantive work in characterizing or illuminating metaphysical dependence---or so I argue in 'No Work for a Theory of Grounding' (Inquiry, 2014). Such illumination rather requires appeal to specific metaphysical relations---type or token identity, functional realization, the determinable-determinate relation, the mereological part-whole relation, and so on---of the sort typically at issue in these contexts. In that case, why (...)
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  15. A Physicalistic Account of Emergentism.Nicholas Schroeder - 2015 - Axiomathes 25 (4):479-494.
    Jaegwon Kim’s argument against non-reductive physicalism is well known. Many philosophers take Kim’s argument to also apply to emergentism. But this does not necessarily follow. In this paper, I will first briefly show why Kim’s argument against non-reductive physicalism need not apply to emergentism. Next, I will present a physicalistic account of emergentism offered by Jason Megill in his paper “A Defense of Emergence.” This will be followed by an examination of some of the limitations of Megill’s account, in particular, (...)
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  16. Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness.Joseph Levine - 2001 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    In this wide-ranging study, Levine explores both sides of the mind-body dilemma, presenting the first book-length treatment of his highly influential ideas on the How does one explain the physical nature of an experience? This puzzle, the "explanatory gap" between mind and body, is the focus of this work by an influential scholar in the field.
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  17. Essence and dependence.Jessica Wilson M. - 2020 - In Mircea Dumitru (ed.), Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine. Oxford University Press. pp. 283-300.
    I first discuss Kit Fine's distinctive 'schema-based' approach to metaphysical theorizing, which aims to identify general principles accommodating any intelligible application of the notion(s), by attention to his accounts of essence and dependence. I then raise some specific concerns about the general principles Fine takes to schematically characterize these notions. In particular, I present various counterexamples to Fine's essence-based account of ontological dependence. The problem, roughly speaking, is that Fine supposes that an object's essence makes reference to just what it (...)
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  18. Pereboom’s Robust Non-reductive Physicalism.Andrew Melnyk - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (5):1191-1207.
    Derk Pereboom has recently elaborated a formulation of non-reductive physicalism in which supervenience does not play the central role and realization plays no role at all; he calls his formulation “robust non-reductive physicalism”. This paper argues that for several reasons robust non-reductive physicalism is inadequate as a formulation of physicalism: it can only rule out fundamental laws of physical-to-mental emergence by stipulating that there are no such laws; it fails to entail the supervenience of the mental on the physical; it (...)
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  19. Realization, determination and mental causation.Agustín Vicente Benito - 2001 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 16 (1):77-94.
    The by now famous exclusion problem for mental causation admits only one possible solution, as far as I can see, namely: that mental and physical properties are linked by a vertical relation. In this paper, starting from what I take to be sensible premises about properties, I will be visiting some general relations between them, in order to see whether, first, it is true that some vertical relationship, other than identity, makes different sorts of causation compatible and second, whether physical (...)
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  20. Realization, explanation and the mind-body relation: Editor’s introduction.Jacqueline A. Sullivan - 2010 - Synthese 177 (2):151-164.
    This volume brings together a number of perspectives on the nature of realization explanation and experimentation in the ‘special’ and biological sciences as well as the related issues of psychoneural reduction and cognitive extension. The first two papers in the volume may be regarded as offering direct responses to the questions: (1) What model of realization is appropriate for understanding the metaphysics of science? and (2) What kind of philosophical work is such a model ultimately supposed to do?
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  21. Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism.Derk Pereboom - 2011 - , US: Oxford University Press.
    In this book, Derk Pereboom explores how physicalism might best be formulated and defended against the best anti-physicalist arguments. Two responses to the knowledge and conceivability arguments are set out and developed. The first exploits the open possibility that introspective representations fail to represent mental properties as they are in themselves; specifically, that introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain characteristic qualitative natures, which these properties might actually lack. The second response draws on the proposal that currently unknown fundamental intrinsic (...)
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  22. Understanding the Dimensions of Realization.Lawrence A. Shapiro - 2008 - Journal of Philosophy 105 (4):213-222.
    Carl Gillett has defended what he calls the “dimensioned” view of the realization relation, which he contrasts with the traditional “flat” view of realization (2003, 2007; see also Gillett 2002). Intuitively, the dimensioned approach characterizes realization in terms of composition whereas the flat approach views realization in terms of occupiers of functional roles. Elsewhere we have argued that the general view of realization and multiple realization that Gillett advances is not able to discharge the theoretical duties of those relations (Shapiro (...)
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  23. Hyper-Extending the Mind?: Setting Boundaries in the Special Sciences.Carl Gillett - 2007 - Philosophical Topics 35 (1-2):161-188.
  24. Mechanisms and explanatory realization relations.Thomas W. Polger - 2010 - Synthese 177 (2):193 - 212.
    My topic is the confluence of two recently active philosophical research programs. One research program concerns the metaphysics of realization. The other research program concerns scientific explanation in terms of mechanisms. In this paper I introduce a distinction between descriptive and explanatory approaches to realization. I then use this distinction to argue that a well-known account of realization, due to Carl Gillett, is incompatible with a well-known account of mechanistic explanation, due to Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver (MDC, (...)
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  25. Realization Reductios, and Category Inclusion.Ronald P. Endicott - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (4):213-219.
    Thomas Polger and Laurence Shapiro argue that Carl Gillett's much publicized dimensioned theory of realization is incoherent, being subject to a reductio. Their argument turns on the fact that Gillett's definition of realization makes property instances the exclusive relata of the realization relation, while his belief in multiple realization implies its denial, namely, that properties are the relata of the realization relation on occasions of multiple realization. Others like Sydney Shoemaker have also expressed their view of realization in terms of (...)
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  26. Realization.Carl F. Craver & Robert A. Wilson - 2006 - In P. Thagard (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science. Elsevier.
    For the greater part of the last 50 years, it has been common for philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists to invoke the notion of realization in discussing the relationship between the mind and the brain. In traditional philosophy of mind, mental states are said to be realized, instantiated, or implemented in brain states. Artificial intelligence is sometimes described as the attempt either to model or to actually construct systems that realize some of the same psychological abilities that we and (...)
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  27. Constructival plasticity.Ronald P. Endicott - 1994 - Philosophical Studies 74 (1):51-75.
    Some scientists and philosophers claimed that there is a converse to multiple realizability. While a given higher-level property can be realized by different lower-level properties (multiple realizability), a given lower-level property can in turn serve to realize different higher-level properties (this converse I dubbed the unfortunately obscure "constructival plasticity" to emphasize the constructive metaphysics involved in this converse to multiple realizability). I began by defining multiple realizabilty in a formal way. (Looking back, one point of interest is that I defined (...)
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  28. Supervenience, emergence, realization, reduction.Jaegwon Kim - 2003 - In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
  29. More on Making Mind Matter.Ernest LePore & Barry Loewer - 1989 - Philosophical Topics 17 (1):175-191.
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  30. Philosophical materialism.Colin McGinn - 1980 - Synthese 44 (2):173-206.
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  31. The metaphysics of irreducibility.Derk Pereboom & Hilary Kornblith - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 63 (August):125-45.
    During the 'sixties and 'seventies, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and Richard Boyd, among others, developed a type of materialism that eschews reductionist claims.1 In this view, explana- tions, natural kinds, and properties in psychology do not reduce to counterparts in more basic sciences, such as neurophysiology or physics. Nevertheless, all token psychological entities-- states, processes, and faculties--are wholly constituted of physical entities, ultimately out of entities over which microphysics quantifies. This view quickly became the standard position in philosophy of mind, (...)
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  32. Epiphenomenalism and cross-realization induction.Marc Slors - 2002 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 65 (1):15-36.
    In the first part of this paper I argue that epiphenomenalism does not pose a threat to nonreductive physicalism, if type-epiphenomenalism does not imply the redundancy of mental (or in general higher-level) typing of events and/or states. Furthermore, if justifiable induction over folk-psychological regularities is possible independently of the ways in which these regularities are realized, type-epiphenomenalism does not imply the redundancy ofmental typing. Inthe second part of this paper I explain how justifiable 'cross-realization induction' can be possible. This explanation (...)
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  33. Realization, determination and mental causation.Agustín Vincente - 2001 - Theoria 16 (40):77-94.
    The by now famous exclusion problem for mental causation admits only one possible solution, as far as I can see, namely: that mental and physical properties are linked by a vertical relation. In this paper, starting from what I take to be sensible premises about properties, I will be visiting some general relations between them, in order to see whether, first, it is true that some vertical relation, other than identity, makes different sorts of causation compatible and second, whether physical (...)
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  34. Determinables, determinates, and causal relevance.Sven Walter - 2007 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2):217-244.
    Mental causation, our mind's ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our ‘manifest image’ of the world. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on Jaegwon Kim's so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, according to which mental events are ‘screened off’ or ‘preempted’ by physical (...)
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  35. Realization: Metaphysics, mind, and science.Robert A. Wilson - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):985-996.
    This paper surveys some recent work on realization in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science.
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  36. Mental causation.Stephen Yablo - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (2):245-280.
Functional Realization
  1. Are Acids Natural Kinds?Pieter Thyssen - forthcoming - Foundations of Chemistry:1-29.
    Are acids natural kinds? Or are they merely relevant kinds? Although acidity has been one of the oldest and most important concepts in chemistry, surprisingly little ink has been spilled on the natural kind question. I approach the question from the perspective of microstructural essentialism. After explaining why both Brønsted acids and Lewis acids are considered functional kinds, I address the challenges of multiple realization and multiple determination. Contra Manafu and Hendry, I argue that the stereotypical properties of acids are (...)
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  2. Functionalism as a Species of Reduction.Jeremy Butterfield & Henrique Gomes - 2023 - In Cristián Soto (ed.), Current Debates in Philosophy of Science: In Honor of Roberto Torretti. Springer Verlag. pp. 123-200.
    This is the first of four papers prompted by a recent literature about a doctrine dubbed spacetime functionalism. This paper gives our general framework for discussing functionalism. Following Lewis, we take it as a species of reduction. We start by expounding reduction in a broadly Nagelian sense. Then we argue that Lewis’ functionalism is an improvement on Nagelian reduction.This paper sets the scene for the other papers, which will apply our framework to theories of space and time. (So those papers (...)
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  3. Agency: Let's Mind What's Fundamental.Robert H. Wallace - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):285–298.
    The standard event-causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event-causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent-mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this (...)
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  4. Analytic Functionalism.Wolfgang Schwarz - 2015 - In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A Companion to David Lewis. Oxford, UK: Wiley. pp. 504–518.
    David Lewis's position, often called analytic functionalism, was inspired by Ryle's analytic behaviorism, which took psychological predicates to express complex sets of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, the author reviews some tenets of Lewis's philosophy of mind and begins with some comments on the methodology Lewis employed in his analysis of psychological terms, which has become standard in functionalist accounts across philosophy. Then, he discusses the difference between what are often called “realizer functionalism” and “role functionalism,” and argues that Lewis (...)
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  5. Are Acids Natural Kinds?Pieter Thyssen - manuscript
    Are acids natural kinds? Or are they merely relevant kinds? Although acidity has been one of the oldest and most important concepts in chemistry, surprisingly little ink has been spilled on the natural kind question. I approach the question from the perspective of microstructural essentialism. After explaining why both Brønsted acids and Lewis acids are considered functional kinds, I address the challenges of multiple realization and multiple determination. Contra Manafu and Hendry, I argue that the stereotypical properties of acids are (...)
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  6. Functionalism, Reductionism, and Levels of Reality.Lorenzo Lorenzetti - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-26.
    I consider a problem for functional reductionism, based on the following tension. Say that b is functionally reduced to a. On the one hand, a and b turn out to be identical, and identity is a symmetric relation. On the other hand, functional reductionism implies that a and b are asymmetrically related: if b is functionally reduced to a, then a is not functionally reduced to b. Thus, we ask: how can a and b be asymmetrically related if they are (...)
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  7. The Multiple Realization Book By Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro. [REVIEW]Umut Baysan - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):anx078.
    _The Multiple Realization Book_By PolgerThomas W. and ShapiroLawrence A.Oxford University Press, 2016. xiv + 258 pp. £71.14 cloth, £18.99 paper.
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