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Debunking arguments and metaphysical laws

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Abstract

I argue that one’s views about which “metaphysical laws” obtain—including laws about what is identical with what, about what is reducible to what, and about what grounds what—can be used to deflect or neutralize the threat posed by a debunking explanation. I use a well-known debunking argument in the metaphysics of material objects as a case study. Then, after defending the proposed strategy from the charge of question-begging, I close by showing how the proposed strategy can be used by certain moral realists to resist the evolutionary debunking arguments.

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Notes

  1. Korman (2015) and Merricks (2001, 2016) all emphasize the primacy of our causal-perceptual reasons for believing in ordinary composite objects.

  2. Note that my use of the phrase “object experience” does not commit me to the controversial view that our perceptual experiences literally have high-level kind-membership properties as constituents. For example, when I say that we sometimes have baseball experiences, I am not thereby committing myself to the view that the property of being a baseball is a literal constituent in those experiences. For all I say in this paper, perhaps baseball experiences have only simple, lower-level properties—such as the property of being round, the property of being white with red stitching, the property of being such-and-such a size, etc.—as its constituents. Korman (2015) contains a helpful discussion of how this difficult issue in the philosophy of perception relates to our perceptual evidence for composite material objects.

  3. Merricks (2003) and Korman (2015) Chapter 7 both understand debunking arguments targeting our object beliefs as attempts to give us epistemic defeaters. Moon (2017) and Korman forthcoming understand debunking arguments more generally as attempts to give us defeaters for the beliefs they are targeting.

  4. Plantinga (1993), p. 361.

  5. Specifically, the debunker claims that we gain an “undercutting” defeater for our object beliefs. A belief that p is an undercutting defeater for a belief q just in case the belief that p is a defeater for the belief that q, but your believing that p does not also justify you in believing that q is false. See Plantinga (2011), p. 41.

  6. Strictly speaking, Merricks only argues that our beliefs about which inanimate composite objects exist are fully causally explained by the joint work of microphysical particles appropriately arranged. For, according to Merricks, our beliefs in the existence of human organisms are not ultimately based on causal-perceptual experiences and therefore escape debunking. See Merricks (2001), pp. 85–117.

  7. Notice that this version of the Overdetermination Argument does not use the word “overdetermination.” Formulations of the argument using that term are susceptible to objections based on what is and is not genuine overdetermination. See Thomasson (2007), Sider (2003) and Schaffer (2010a) for versions of this objection. However, as Merricks points out in Merricks (2016) fn. 1, such debates about the nature of overdetermination are not ultimately relevant to the success of the debunking version of the Overdetermination Argument. Korman (2015) Chapter 10 is one of the few discussions of Merricks’s Overdetermination Argument to recognize this point.

  8. Merricks (2003), pp. 22–23.

  9. Korman and Locke forthcoming and Korman forthcoming are two of the only discussions that explicitly distinguish between these two defeaters.

  10. Korman and Locke persuasively argue that the realized “explanatory disconnect” defeater is more fundamental than the realized insensitivity defeater. If this paper’s central thesis is correct, however, both of these putative defeaters can be deflected.

  11. Not to be confused with a “defeater–defeater”. A belief E is a defeater–defeater just in case at some time t I hold belief D and D is a defeater for B at t, and then at some later time t + 1 I hold E and E is a defeater for D. See Plantinga (2011), pp. 259–64 for more on defeater-deflectors and Moon forthcoming for a discussion of the role of defeater-deflectors versus defeater-defeaters in the moral debunking literature.

  12. I shall assume here and throughout the paper that a belief of yours can serve as a defeater-deflector only if you are justified in holding that belief. That is, no irrationally held or unjustified belief can serve as a legitimate defeater-deflector. The justificatory status of defeater-deflectors will re-arise in Sect. 7.

  13. Plantinga (2011), p. 260.

  14. I am focusing on “strong” CAI, on which putative composites are literally identical with their composing parts, rather than so-called “weak” CAI, on which putative composites only bear some composition-like relation to their composing parts. See Lewis (1991) for a defense of weak CAI and Baxter (1988) for a defense of strong CAI.

  15. Perhaps you think—as I do—that it would be objectionably arbitrary for an advocate of CAI to believe in atoms arranged baseballwise but no baseballs. As Ross Cameron has argued, however, the truth of CAI does not strictly entail unrestricted composition. This lack of entailment is all I am assuming here. See Merricks (2005), Sider (2007) and Cameron (2012) for more on whether CAI entails unrestricted composition.

  16. Suppose that, following Markosian (1998), Parsons (2004) and McDaniel (2009), there could have been qualitatively heterogeneous extended simples. Specifically, suppose that, possibly, some baseballs are extended simples. Then it is false that the truth of CAI, all by itself, implies that baseballs are such that, if they exist, they are identical with things arranged baseballwise. Instead, CAI only implies that, if there are baseballs, then they are either identical with things arranged baseballwise or they are identical with simple baseballs. Nevertheless, given the possibility of simple baseballs, CAI at least implies the following: if there are composite baseballs, then composite baseballs are identical with things arranged baseballwise. And, in the present context, the truth of that latter claim is all I need. For I am simply offering a rely to Merricks’ attempt to debunk our initially justified beliefs about the existence of composite material objects, such as composite baseballs. Fans of CAI who also countenance the possibility of simple baseballs are thus invited to read my claims about what baseballs would be like, if they existed, as implicitly restricted to composite baseballs. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising the issue of extended simples.

  17. Here is the plurally quantified analogue of this necessitation principle: for any things, the xs, and any things, the ys, if the xs are identical with the ys then, necessarily, if the ys exist and are collectively located at L then the xs exist and are collectively located at L.

  18. Note that CAI plus this necessitation principle implies that, if the bs compose the baseball, the mere existence of the bs—no matter how they are arranged—suffices for the existence of the baseball. Restricted composition is the thesis that some things compose a further object, while others do not. Most defenders of restricted composition will deny that, if the bs compose the baseball, then the mere existence of the bs suffices for the existence of the baseball. Instead, they will claim, only the existence of the bs together with the bs’ being arranged or structured baseballwise suffices for the existence of the baseball. Thus—short of adopting contingent identity, four-dimensionalism, counterpart theory, or some other controversial metaphysical thesis—defenders of restricted composition cannot make use of the CAI-based deflection strategy. Fortunately, however, the two deflection strategies I outline in Sections IV and V respectively do not have any such untoward modal implications. For an argument that CAI implies mereological essentialism, see Merricks (1999). And for helpful discussion of CAI’s modal implications, see Cameron (2012) and Cameron (2014). I am grateful to Kris McDaniel and an anonymous referee for pressing me on this issue.

  19. Mereological essentialism is the view that, necessarily, if object O exists and is composed of the xs then, necessarily, if O exists then the xs exist and O is composed of the xs. Note that counterfactual conditionals of the form “if the xs had not been here then object O would not have been here,” do not imply mereological essentialism. For the truth of that counterfactual is consistent with there being possible worlds in which O exists and the xs do not. In order for that counterfactual to be true, all that is required is that those worlds are sufficiently distant from the actual world. Thanks to an anonymous referee for discussion.

  20. Suppose that the baseball, if it exists, is identical with the bs. And consider the following claim: the bs exist but the baseball does not. That claim is not just false, it is necessarily false. For the identity facts hold of necessity. As a result, any counterfactual with that claim as its antecedent is a counterpossible. For example, “if the bs had existed and the baseball not existed then I still would have believed that there is a baseball” is a counterpossible conditional. Call that claim The Counterpossible. On the traditional Lewis-Stalnaker semantics, counterpossibles are all trivially true. So, on the traditional semantics, The Counterpossible is trivially true. I deny, however, that conceding the truth of The Counterpossible constitutes a defeater for my belief that there is a baseball. To see this, suppose I am justified in believing that Nick exists. Suppose I am also justified in believing that Mr. Beans is identical with Nick. Given the traditional Lewis-Stalnaker semantics, I can infer that the following counterpossible is true: if Mr. Beans had existed and Nick had not existed, I still would have believed that Nick exists. Call this The Mr. Beans Counterpossible. I accept that counterpossible. But accepting The Mr. Beans Counterpossible, so I say, gives me no defeater for my belief that Nick exists. So, by the same token, conceding the truth of The Counterpossible gives me no defeater for my belief that there is a baseball. Although, for a compelling case against the traditional Lewis-Stalnaker approach to counterpossibles, see Tan forthcoming.

  21. Korman forthcoming points out that defenders of composite objects might be tempted to employ this form of reasoning to deflect away the insensitivity defeater. Ultimately, however, Korman argues that once the defender of composite objects has conceded that there is a complete causal explanation of her object experiences, she is no longer entitled to this necessitation principle. I argue in Section VI below that defenders of composite objects are entitled to CAI. If I am right, defenders of composite objects who accept CAI are indeed entitled to the relevant necessitation principle and can therefore legitimately deflect the insensitivity defeater.

  22. I am assuming that your belief in the truth of CAI is itself justified. After all, as I noted in footnote 12 above, only justified beliefs can serve as defeater-deflectors. See Sect. 6 for discussion of how beliefs like CAI are justified.

  23. If composition is unrestricted, then the xs are “appropriately arranged” just in virtue of their existing. If composition is restricted, on the other hand, then the xs are appropriately arranged in virtue of only certain relations between the xs.

  24. Here is an object-reduction version of WPR: for any xs, if the xs compose an object O, then object O itself is reduced to the xs themselves and how they are arranged. Equivalently, for any xs, if the xs compose object O, then object O just is the xs and their arrangement. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for prompting me to think more carefully about the question of reduction’s relata and that question’s relevance to my arguments in this section.

  25. See Rosen (2015) and Dorr (2017) on real definition.

  26. See Fine (1994) on essence.

  27. Thomasson (2007).

  28. An anonymous referee has pointed out that this principle may need to be restricted to qualitative facts, i.e. facts about the instantiation of qualitative properties by composite object O and facts about the instantiation of qualitative properties by O’s parts, the xs. Readers who find this restricted version of the Property Reduction principle more plausible are invited to make the relevant substitutions.

  29. In Merricks (2001), pp. 67–69, Merricks considers and rejects the claim that what it is for an object to cause an effect just is for its composing parts to jointly cause that effect. For, he argues, this would involve an objectionable form of circularity—one set of causal facts would be analyzed as another set of causal facts. Suppose that what it is for O to be F is for the xs to be F, and that what it is for the xs to be F is for O to be F. And suppose that O and the xs are non-identical. Then, perhaps, there would be objectionable circularity in the reduction of causal facts about O to causal facts about the xs. However, WPR does not imply that causal facts about parts are reduced to causal facts about the wholes they compose. For all WPR says, perhaps what it is for O to be F is for the xs to be F, and yet it is no part of the xs being F that O is F. Indeed, I think the fan of WPR should take Merricks’ circularity concern as a reason to hold that causal facts about wholes are asymmetrically reduced to causal facts about their parts.

  30. Note that this necessitation principle, unlike CAI’s necessitation principle, does not imply that the existence of the baseball supervenes on the mere existence of the bs alone. Instead, WPR is compatible with the more intuitive view that existence of the baseball supervenes on both the bs’ existing and their being appropriately arranged. Perhaps, as some defenders of unrestricted composition think, the bs’ being appropriately arranged just is the bs merely existing. Or perhaps, as many defenders of restricted composition think, there is some uniquely baseball-shaped way of arranging the bs. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helpful discussion on this point.

  31. Defenders of priority pluralism include Cameron (2014), Skiles (2015) and Saenz (2015) among others. Priority pluralism’s main rival is priority monism, defended by Jonathan Schaffer in Schaffer (2009, 2010a, b, 2012).

  32. There is a dispute about whether the grounding relation is itself an explanatory relation or whether, instead, the grounding serves as a metaphysical “backing” relation for explanatory linguistic items like sentences or propositions. None of this paper’s main arguments turn on which of these two views is correct—defenders of the “backing” view are thus invited to substitute, wherever appropriate, their preferred way of phrasing explanatory claims. Fine (2012), Dasgupta (2014) and Litland (2015) defend the view that grounding is itself an explanatory relation, while Audi (2012a, b) and Kim (1994) defend versions of the backing view.

  33. Gideon Rosen in Rosen (2010) defends the Grounding-Reduction Link, according to which any entity x that is reduced to some entity y (or the ys) is also fully grounded in y (or the ys). If grounding is compatible with reduction in this way, then PP may be compatible with WPR. Call the conjunction of PP and WPR “Reductive Priority Pluralism.” If you accept Reductive Priority Pluralism, then Section IV’s strategy of using reduction beliefs as defeater-deflectors is available to you. However, if you, like me, think that composite objects are both fully grounded in their parts but are nevertheless irreducible to them, then you cannot make use of Section IV’s reduction strategy. You can, however, make use of the common explanation strategy outlined and defended here in Section V. See Audi (2012a, b) for doubts about the compatibility of reduction and grounding.

  34. Although Skiles (2015) and Leuenberger 2014 deny that grounding is necessitating. See Trogdon (2013) for discussion.

  35. Contra Korman and Locke forthcoming, who argue that conceding that the fact that p plays no explanatory role in one’s p belief is generally a defeater for one’s belief that p. Whether such an “explanatory concession” is a defeater, so I have been arguing, depends on whether one also thinks the fact that p, if it obtains, is fully grounded in at least some of the facts that causally explain why one believes that p.

  36. See Sider (2011), Dasgupta (2016), Wasserman (2015), Wilsch 2016, Rosen (2017b), Schaffer (2017, and Glazier 2016) for more on the laws of metaphysics.

  37. Those with Humean inclinations will think the laws of metaphysics are mere universal generalizations, in the same way that “all ravens are black” is a universal generalization. Non-Humeans, on the other hand, will think the “it is a law of metaphysics that” operator transforms a universal generalization into a law-like fundamental fact. I shall remain neutral between these two conceptions of the laws of metaphysics. The only thing that matters, for my purposes, is that the metaphysical laws are existentially neutral in the sense to be specified later in this section.

  38. This is a variant of a case originally formulated by Daniel Korman in his comments on an earlier draft of this paper at the Central APA 2017.

  39. Andrew Moon dubs a principle completely prohibiting the use of “threatened” beliefs as defeater-deflectors the “Anti-Circularity Principle.” He offers some interesting and compelling counterexamples to that principle in Moon (2017). See Bergmann (2004) for a related discussion of “benign” versus “malignant” epistemic circularity.

  40. As Korman and Lock forthcoming and Moon (2017) argue, the “third-factor” or “minimalist” responses to the moral debunking arguments seem to rely upon beliefs as defeater-deflectors despite those beliefs’ own justification being threatened with defeat. Third-factor replies are defended by Berker (2014), Clarke-Doane (2015), and Enoch (2010).

  41. For example, see Miller and Norton (2017) for a debunking argument targeting our beliefs about what grounds what.

  42. Suppose I inferred that the baseball is identical with some atoms arranged baseballwise from my belief in CAI together with my belief that there is a baseball. Then my realization about the origins of my baseball experience would threaten my justification for believing that the baseball is identical with some particles arranged baseball-wise. At least arguably, it would therefore be illicit of me to rely on that identity belief as a defeater-deflector. However, this is not the belief I am proposing you use as a defeater-deflector. The belief you are using as is one you can directly infer from CAI: if the particles arranged baseballwise compose a baseball then the baseball is identical with those particles.

  43. See Joyce (2006) and Street (2006) for two important defenses of moral debunking arguments. And see Wielenberg (2010), Enoch (2010), Berker (2014), Clarke-Doane (2015), Moon forthcoming, Korman forthcoming, and Korman and Locke forthcoming for discussion.

  44. There are two reasons I have chosen to focus on the moral realist rather than the moral antirealist. First, I suspect most moral antirealist do not believe there are any general metaphysical laws governing the relationship between moral and natural facts. Second, evolutionary debunking arguments are—at least arguably—a greater threat to the moral realist than the moral antirealist. The moral antirealist can simply concede that the moral facts play no explanatory role in the genesis of our moral beliefs. After all, part of what it is to be an antirealist is to think that our moral beliefs (and moral attitudes, more generally) determine what the moral facts are, and not the other way around. Indeed, this is why moral debunking arguments are sometimes framed as arguments for antirealism. See, most notably, Street (2006).

  45. G.E. Moore’s view that normative properties are fundamental or sui generis properties that nevertheless modally co-vary with certain underlying natural properties is probably an instance of this version of moral realism. See Moore (1903).

  46. See Rosen (2017a) for an exposition of various versions of Priority Naturalism and Berker forthcoming for criticism.

  47. Enoch (2010), Section 5.3.

  48. Thanks to an anonymous referee for helpful discussion here.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Robert Audi, Jeff Brower, Ross Cameron, James Darcy, Dustin Crummett, Torrance Fung, Kirra Hyde, David Mark Kovaks, Derek Lam, Kris McDaniel, Andrew Moon, Sam Murray, Sam Newlands, Fr. Phillip Neri-Reese, Mike Rea, Nick Rimell, Aurora Raske, Noel Saenz, Jeff Snapper, Rebecca Stangl, Adam Tiller, two anonymous referees for this journal, and audiences at the 2016 Virginia Philosophical Association meeting, the APA Central 2017, and Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion paper workshop for helpful discussion. I am especially grateful to Dan Korman, Trenton Merricks, and Peter Tan, all of whom multiple drafts of this paper and provided me with invaluable feedback, advice, and discussion. Dan gave excellent comments on an earlier draft of the paper at the APA and gave me lots of helpful advice before and after our session. The paper’s current framing, and most of the material in Section VI, are a direct result of his comments and advice.

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Barker, J. Debunking arguments and metaphysical laws. Philos Stud 177, 1829–1855 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01287-z

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