Appeals to dispositionality in explanations of phenomena in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, require that we first agree on what we are talking about. I sketch an account of what dispositionality might be. That account will place me at odds with most current conceptions of dispositionality. My aim is not to establish a weighty ontological thesis, however, but to move the discussion ahead in two respects. First, I want to call attention to the extent to which assumptions philosophers have (...) made about dispositionality are far from innocent. The assumptions incorporate substantive theses that, by constraining the space of acceptable answers to particular philosophical questions, have inhibited the search for answers to those questions. Second, and more positively, I hope to open up the space of possibilities by offering an alternative way of conceiving dispositionality developed by C. B. Martin. (shrink)

Evidence for the contribution of the neocortex to memory is overwhelming. However, the theory proposed by Ruchkin et al. does not only ignore subcortical contributions, but also introduces an unnecessary and empirically unsupported division between the posterior cortex, assumed to represent information, and the prefrontal cortex, assumed to control activation. We argue instead that the representational power of the neocortex is not restricted to its posterior part.

The identity of working-memory and long-term memory representations follows from many lines of evidence. However, the data provided by Ruchkin et al. are hardly compelling, as they make unproved assumptions about hypothetical generators. We cite studies from our lab in which congruent slow-wave topographies were found for short-term and long-term memory tasks, strongly suggesting that both activate identical cell assemblies.

John Heil’s new book is remarkable in many ways. In a concise, lucid and accessible manner, it develops a complete system of ontology with many strikingly original features and then applies that ontology to fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind, with illuminating results. Although Heil acknowledges his intellectual debts to C. B. Martin, he is unduly modest about his own contribution to the development and application of this novel metaphysical system. A full examination of the position (...) that Heil defends would require a book in itself, so I shall limit myself to discussing some of its central themes and to explaining a few doubts that I have concerning some aspects of it. (shrink)

Problem: Visions of technology, future scenarios, guiding visions represent imaginations of future states of affairs that play a functional role in processes of technological research, development and innovation—e.g. as a means to create attention, communication, coordination, or for the strategic exertion of influence. Since a couple of years there is a growing attention for such imaginations of futures in politics, the economy, research and the civil society. This trend concerns technology assessment as an observer of these processes and a consultant (...) on the implications of technology and innovation. TA faces increasing demands to assess imaginations of futures that circulate in the present and to participate in shaping these through scenarios or foresights. More than ever, this raises the question, which propositions can be made based on these imaginations by TA and how this can be used in advisory practices. Imaginations of futures are relevant for TA not as predictions but in their significance and effectiveness in the present, which need to be understood and assessed.Contents: This discussion paper outlines how present significance and effects of imagined futures in technological research and innovation processes can be conceived and analyzed. In this paper, all forms of imaginations of technology futures will be called “socio-technical futures” because within them technological developments and social changes are interwoven and inseparably interrelated. In this paper, we discuss why TA should analyze socio-technical futures, how such analyses can grasp the societal conditions that are expressed in the imagined futures and how these become effective in processes of technology development, communication, decision making etc. We raise the question which self-reflexive positioning or possible realignment of TA is needed as a response to its increased concern with assessing and even co-producing socio-technical futures. The latter is often demanded regarding the growing attention by politics and publics to imaginations of futures with wide temporal and spatial reach.Addressee of this paper is the TA community in a broader sense. The aim is to sensitize colleagues for the topic and its challenges, to consolidate discussions and to provide theoretical and methodical suggestions for research in TA and related advisory practices with respect to socio-technical futures. This paper has been originally initiated during the workshop “The present of technological futures-theoretical and methodical challenges for Technology Assessment”, in which all of the paper’s authors participated. The contents of this discussion paper are preliminary results that shall initiate and guide further discussions. (shrink)

Heidegger was rector of Freiburg University from April 21, 1933, until sometime in March 1934. Soon after becoming rector, he joined the Nazi Party and devoted much energy and personal initiative to the implementation of Nazi programs in his university. A documentary record of this year is collected in Guido Schneeberger's Nachlese zu Heidegger. Of Schneeberger's 217 documents, 41 contain actual texts by Heidegger or reports of things he said. Thus there is room for useful editing. In the present "translation," (...) Runes unsuccessfully undertakes this task. He retains just 17 of the Schneeberger documents; eight of these contain words by Heidegger. Or perhaps one should say words by Runes, for the mutilated translation does even less credit to Heidegger than the brown clichés that pervade the original. No page is free from such mistranslations as "outdated" for "vollendet," "the State" for "die Stätte," "adherence to tradition" for "Wille zum Wesen," "kiss good-bye" for "einbüßen," "old people's home" for "Elternhaus." In eight different places the word "Hitler" has been inserted. On page 22, e.g., Runes has added his own "Heil Hitler" to Heidegger's signature. Thus, though many of the general facts can be gleaned from this book, it is not reliable as far as detail is concerned. And of course it shares with the original Schneeberger documentation the limitation of giving no hint as to Heidegger's Nazi activities, if any, after early 1934.—J. B. B. (shrink)

The rule-following paradox of Kripke's Wittgenstein posits that there is no fact of the matter about an individual that can determine whether he means one thing or another by a term, such as "+". The paradox thus renders the existence of meaning illusory. The objective of this thesis is to examine the paradox and try to offer a version of a dispositional account that can counteract Kripke's skeptics. ;Gaining insights from previous dispositionalist accounts of meaning and rule-following, including those of (...) Dretske, Fodor, Millikan, Martin & Heil, Shogenji, and Yallowitz, my project is to put all those insights together to formulate a functional view of human dispositions to rule-following which will resolve the error, finitude, and first-person epistemic problems that Kripke raises against the dispositionalist approach. Specifically, I argue that rule-following or meaning consists in one's possessing a disposition, realistically construed. A rule-following disposition is real in the sense that it is responsible for, and hence not to be equated with, its manifestations under various conditions. A person acquires a real disposition to rule-following through a learning history which is constrained by biologically innate human endowments of learning and cognition. The error problem then becomes the problem of how to identify the disposition without vacuity or circularity. My claim is that identifying a rule-following disposition is a task of scientific hypothesizing, which is epistemically and methodologically sound. The finitude problem is in my view a form of Humean inductive skepticism. My response to it is to adopt a reliabilist theory of justification and its treatment of the induction problem. A distinctive contribution of mine is to offer a functionalist account of dispositions and introspection in the resolution of the first-person epistemic problem. My aim is to do full justice to the phenomenology and epistemology of meaning and rule-following from the first-person point of view. ;My conclusion is that a satisfactory dispositional account such as the one I offer not only vindicates the reality of rule-following and meaning but also increases our understanding of the nature of meaning and human rule-following phenomenon. (shrink)

The ontology of ‘powerful qualities’ is gaining an increasing amount of attention in the literature on properties. This is the view that the so-called categorical or qualitative properties are identical with ‘dispositional’ properties. The position is associated with C.B. Martin, John Heil, Galen Strawson and Jonathan Jacobs. Robert Schroer ( 2012 ) has recently mounted a number of criticisms against the powerful qualities view as conceived by these main adherents, and has also advanced his own (radically different) version (...) of the view. In this paper I have three main aims: firstly, I shall defend the ontology from his critique, arguing that his criticisms do not damage the position. Secondly, I shall argue that Schroer’s own version of the view is untenable. Thirdly, the paper shall serve to clear up some conceptual confusions that often bedevil the powerful qualities view. (shrink)

Epiphenomenalism is the view that phenomenal properties – which characterize what it is like, or how it feels, for a subject to be in conscious states – have no physical effects. One of the earliest arguments against epiphenomenalism is the evolutionary argument (James 1890/1981; Eccles and Popper 1977; Popper 1978), which starts from the following problem: why is pain correlated with stimuli detrimental to survival and reproduction – such as suffocation, hunger and burning? And why is pleasure correlated with stimuli (...) beneficial to survival and reproduction – such as eating and breathing? According to the argument, the fact that we have these particular correlations and not other ones must have an evolutionary explanation. But given epiphenomenalism, differences in phenomenal properties could not cause differences in fitness, so natural selection would not be expected to favor these correlations over any other ones. Epiphenomenalism thus renders these correlations an inexplicable coincidence, and should therefore be rejected. The evolutionary argument has been widely criticized and few have deemed it cogent (Broad 1925; Jackson 1982; Robinson 2007; Corabi 2014). In this paper, I will consider previous and potential criticisms and conclude some of them are indeed fatal to the argument if it is understood, as it traditionally has been, as an argument for any standard version of non-epiphenomenalism such as physicalism and interactionism. I will then offer a new and improved version of the argument, as an argument for a particular non-epiphenomenalist view, which I will call the phenomenal powers view. This is the view that phenomenal properties produce and thereby (metaphysically) necessitate their effects in virtue of how they feel, or in virtue of their intrinsic, phenomenal character alone – along the lines of C. B. Martin and John Heil’s powerful qualities view (Martin and Heil 1999; Heil 2003). I will argue that the phenomenal powers view explains the correlations given natural selection far better than any other view. It follows that if (and only if) understood as an argument for the phenomenal powers view, the evolutionary argument is far stronger than it is usually thought to be. (shrink)

The ontology of ‘powerful qualities’ is gaining an increasing amount of attention in the literature on properties. This is the view that the so-called categorical or qualitative properties are identical with ‘dispositional’ properties. The position is associated with C.B. Martin, John Heil, Galen Strawson and Jonathan Jacobs. Robert Schroer has recently mounted a number of criticisms against the powerful qualities view as conceived by these main adherents, and has also advanced his own version of the view. In this (...) paper I have three main aims: firstly, I shall defend the ontology from his critique, arguing that his criticisms do not damage the position. Secondly, I shall argue that Schroer’s own version of the view is untenable. Thirdly, the paper shall serve to clear up some conceptual confusions that often bedevil the powerful qualities view. (shrink)

This paper proposes a causal-dispositional account of rule-following as it occurs in reasoning and intentional agency. It defends this view against Kripke’s (1982) objection to dispositional accounts of rule-following, and it proposes a solution to the problem of deviant causal chains. In the first part, I will outline the causal-dispositional approach. In the second part, I will follow Martin and Heil’s (1998) realist response to Kripke’s challenge. I will propose an account that distinguishes between two kinds of rule-conformity (...) and two kinds of rule-following, and I will defend the realist approach against two challenges that have recently been raised by Handfield and Bird (2008). In the third part, I will turn to the problem of deviant causal chains, and I will propose a new solution that is partly based on the realist account of rule-following. (shrink)

Handfield and Bird claim that dispositionalists such as Martin and Heil appeal to antidotes and finks to explain why and how a conditional analysis of dispositions falls to Kripke's criticisms, but fail. The main reason is that some antidotes and finks are unavoidably intrinsic and relatively permanent in an agent, in which case the ascription of a rule-following disposition to the agent is false. In this paper, I contend that the presence of intrinsic and relatively permanent finks or (...) antidotes does not imply the absence of a rule-following disposition; some additional condition is needed for this implication to go through, but remains wanting. I end the paper with a discussion of where the real challenge lies for realist dispositionalism. (shrink)

From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent (...) work in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics (color, intentionality, and the nature of consciousness). (shrink)

What does reality encompass? Is it exclusively physical, or does it include mental and 'abstract' aspects? What are the elements of being, reality's raw materials? John Heil offers stimulating answers to these questions framed in terms of a comprehensive metaphysics of substances and properties inspired by Descartes, Locke, and their successors.

Despite heroic efforts, philosophers have found it increasingly difficult to evade discussion of metaphysical topics. Take the philosophy of mind. Take, in particular, the mind-body problem in its latest guise: the problem of causal relevance. If mental properties are not reducible to physical properties, how can we reconcile the role such properties seem to have in producing bodily motions that constitute actions with the apparent fact that the very same motions are entirely explicable on the basis of purely physical properties (...) of purely physical events in the nervous system? Familiar approaches to the problem include appeals to “supervenient causation,” to “higher-level” laws governing putatively higher-level entities and events, and to “realizing” relations that make room in objects for overlapping properties. (shrink)

This book aims at reconciling the emerging conceptions of mind and their contents that have, in recent years, come to seem irreconcilable. Post-Cartesian philosophers face the challenge of comprehending minds as natural objects possessing apparently non-natural powers of thought. The difficulty is to understand how our mental capacities, no less than our biological or chemical characteristics, might ultimately be products of our fundamental physical constituents, and to do so in a way that preserves the phenomena. Externalists argue that the significance (...) of thought turns on the circumstances of thinkers; reductionists hold that mental characteristics are physical; eliminationists contend that the concept of thought belongs to an outmoded folk theory of behavior. John Heil explores these topics and points the way to a naturalistic synthesis, one that accords the mental a place in the physical world alongside the non-mental. (shrink)

This comprehensive textbook, written by a leading author in the field, provides a survey of mainstream conceptions of the nature of mind accessible to readers with little or no background in philosophy. Included are the dualist, behaviourist, and functionalist accounts of the nature of mind, along with a critical assessment of recent trends in the subject. The problem of consciousness, widely thought to be the chief roadblock to our understanding of the mind, is addressed throughout the book and there is (...) also material to interest those with a professional interest in the topic - philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists - as well as the general reader. Unique features of Philosophy of Mind : * provides a comprehensive survey of basic concepts and major theories * contains many lucid examples to support ideas * cites key literature in annotated suggested reading and a full bibliography * contains a full index including the location of key terms and concepts. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

A categorial dualist, John Heil includes substance and property in his ontology. But in his case for dualism, there are pressures to drop substance or property and endorse monism, as well as pressures to include both. Rather than defend monism or dualism, I introduce a distinction. If a category is a kind of entities, then substance is the only category. If an accounting of categories is to include property, then property must enter not as a kind of entities but (...) a kind of aspects of reality. The distinction is worth deploying for two main reasons. First, it makes plain an important difference between substances and properties, which categorial dualism obscures. Second, the distinction reduces puzzlement about whether and how to include relation in an accounting of categories. (shrink)

In case you hadn’t noticed, metaphysics is mounting a comeback. After decades of attempts to keep the subject at arm’s length, philosophers are discovering that progress on fundamental issues in, say, philosophy of mind, requires delving into metaphysics. Questions about the nature of minds and their contents, like those concerning free action, personal identity, or the existence of God, belong to applied metaphysics. They bear a relation to metaphysics proper analogous to the relation questions about abortion, affirmative action, or pornography (...) bear to ethical theory. Just as we are ill advised to pursue topics in applied ethics independently of background considerations in theoretical ethics, so we are in no position to promote answers to questions in applied metaphysics independently of a grasp of ground-level metaphysical theory. (shrink)

Our suspicion is that philosophers who tie the fate of agency to advances in cognitive science simultaneously underestimate that conception's tenacity and overestimate their ability to divine the course of empirical inquiry. For the present, however, we shall pretend that current ideas about what would be required for the scientific vindication of folk psychology are apt, and ask where this leaves the notion of agency. Our answer will be that it leaves that notion on the whole unaffected.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Inter-godsdienstige verhoudinge was nog altyd problematies. Teologie van godsdiens en teologie van godsdienste is die wyse waarop die Christendom oor die teenwoordigheid en aard van ander godsdienste besin. Die kerkhervormers het ook 'n bepaalde verstaan van die bestaan van en verhouding tussen die Christendom en nie-Christelike godsdienste gehad. Hierdie bydrae probeer aantoon hoe die kerkhervormers verskil het in hulle benadering tot ander godsdienste. Martin Luther en Philipp Melanchthon het die moontlikheid van verhoudinge met ander godsdienste, in besonder Jode en (...) Moslems voorgestaan, al was dit dan ook net n momentele mening van Luther. Daarmee verteenwoordig hulle n kategorie van 'moontlikheid'. Johannes Calvyn was meer afwysend teenoor die gedagte van moontlikheid van heil binne ander godsdienste en behoort daarom tot die kategorie van 'geslotenheid'. Die kerkhervormer Theodore Bibliander was oop vir gesprek en positief oor verhoudinge met Moslems alhoewel hy nie gedink het dat heil en verlossing buite die Christendom moontlik is nie. Vir Bibliander het verhouding met ander begin, met kennis van die ander. Hy verteenwoordig die kategorie van 'openheid'. Die kerkhervormers se verstaan van die verhouding met ander godsdienste lewer n bydrae tot n huidige besinning oor inter-godsdienstige verhoudinge. (shrink)

This Thesis engages with contemporary philosophical controversies about the nature of dispositional properties or powers and the relationship they have to their non-dispositional counterparts. The focus concerns fundamentality. In particular, I seek to answer the question, ‘What fundamental properties suffice to account for the manifest world?’ The answer I defend is that fundamental categorical properties need not be invoked in order to derive a viable explanation for the manifest world. My stance is a field-theoretic view which describes the world as (...) a single system comprised of pure power, and involves the further contention that ‘pure power’ should not be interpreted as ‘purely dispositional’, if dispositionality means potentiality, possibility or otherwise unmanifested power or ability bestowed upon some bearer. The theoretical positions examined include David Armstrong’s Categoricalism, Sydney Shoemaker’s Causal Theory of Properties, Brian Ellis’s New Essentialism, Ullin Place’s Conceptualism, Charles Martin’s and John Heil’s Identity Theory of Properties and Rom Harré’s Theory of Causal Powers. The central concern of this Thesis is to examine reasons for holding a pure-power theory, and to defend such a stance. This involves two tasks. The first requires explaining what plays the substance role in a pure-power world. This Thesis argues that fundamental power, although not categorical, can be considered ontologically-robust and thus able to fulfil the substance role. A second task—answering the challenge put forward by Richard Swinburne and thereafter replicated in various neo-Swinburne arguments—concerns how the manifestly qualitative world can be explained starting from a pure-power base. The Light-like Network Account is put forward in an attempt to show how the manifest world can be derived from fundamental pure power. (shrink)

Metaphysical orthodoxy holds that a privileged minority of properties carve reality at its joints. These are the so-called fundamental properties. This thesis concerns the contemporary philosophical debate about the nature of fundamental properties. In particular, it aims to answer two questions: What is the most adequate conception of fundamental properties? What is the “big picture” world-view that emerges by adopting such a conception? I argue that a satisfactory answer to both questions requires us to embrace a novel conception of powerful (...) qualities, according to which properties are at once dispositional and qualitative. By adopting the proposed conception of powerful qualities, an original theory of fundamental properties comes to light. I call it Dual-Aspect Account. In this thesis, I defend the Dual-Aspect Account and its superiority with respect to rival views of fundamental properties. I illustrate this claim by examining Dispositionalism, the view defended among others by Alexander Bird and Stephen Mumford, Categoricalism, which has been advocated notably by David Lewis and David Armstrong, and the Identity Theory of powerful qualities, primarily championed by C. B. Martin and John Heil. The latter is the standard conception of powerful qualities. However, in the literature, the Identity Theory faces the charge of contradiction. A preliminary task is therefore to show that a conception of powerful qualities is coherent. To accomplish this aim, I introduce the notion of an aspect of a property. On this interpretation, powerful qualities can be thought of as having dispositional and qualitative aspects. I show that such a conception allows us to disambiguate the claim that a property’s dispositionality is identical with its qualitativity, and evade the charge of contradiction. Aspects bring us other theoretical benefits. I illustrate this claim by showing how the Dual-Aspect Account offers us a promising theory of resemblance. I then compare its merits with David Armstrong’s theory of partial identity. The conclusion of this thesis is that the Dual-Aspect Account is better suited to capturing the world as we find it in everyday life and scientific investigation as compared to the theoretical positions examined. (shrink)

This paper examines certain influential contemporary philosophical analyses of the notion of a person and show why they are misguided. Inspired by the Lockean conception of a person, some philosophers claim that personhood must be attributed only to those human beings who can meet certain criteria required for it. Here the views of Tooley, Dennett and Singer will be discussed against the backdrop of the metaphysics of powers ontology as advocated by contemporary philosophers: C. B. Martin, John Heil (...) and others. (shrink)

The first thing to note about the present work is that it is divided into twenty short chapters, all of which contain numbered sections averaging two to three pages in length. This organization adds to the concision and clarity of the book and works well with Heil’s attempt to present ideas in an unpretentious manner. The dust jacket tells us that the book is written in an accessible, nontechnical style that is intended for nonspecialists as well as seasoned metaphysicians. (...) But despite the organization and flow of bite-sized nuggets, I doubt anyone with less than graduate training in analytical philosophy will understand the problems and issues. A brief survey of the contemporary philosophers who get the most discussion should confirm the point. This includes: C. B. Martin, D. M. Armstrong, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, Sidney Shoemaker, E. J. Lowe, Donald Davidson, Saul Kripke, and Hilary Putnam. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Universe As We Find It, John Heil offers an updated account of his two-category ontology. One of his major goals is to avoid including relations in his basic ontology. While there can still be true claims positing relations, such as those of the form “x is taller than y” and “x causes y,” they will be true in virtue of substances and their monadic, non-relational properties. That is, Heil’s two-category ontology is deployed to (...) provide non-relational truthmakers for relational truths. This paper challenges the success of Heil’s project with respect to causation. The arguments here are not entirely negative, however. An option is made available to Heil’s ontology so that it might, at least to some extent, regain non-relational causings. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly clear that the deepest problems currently exercising philosophers of mind arise from an ill-begotten ontology, in particular, a mistaken ontology of properties. After going through some preliminaries, we identify three doctrines at the heart of this mistaken ontology: (P) For each distinct predicate, “F”, there exists one, and only one, property, F, such that, if “F” is applicable to an object a, then “F” is applicable in virtue of a’s being F. (U) Properties are universals, not (...) particulars. (D) Every property is either categorical or dispositional, but not both. We show how these doctrines influence current philosophical thinking about the mind, suggest and defend an alternative conception of properties, and indicate how this conception provides answers to two puzzles besetting contemporary philosophy of mind: the problem of mental causation and the problem of qualia. (shrink)