Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy: Re-examining the Multi-level Structure of Reality (Jerusalem Studies in Philosophy and History of Science)

This book offers a unique perspective on one of the deepest questions about the world we live in: is reality multi-leveled, or can everything be reduced to some fundamental ‘flat’ level? This deep philosophical issue has widespread implications in philosophy, since it is fundamental to how we understand the world and the basic entities in it. Both the notion of ‘levels’ within science and their ontological implications are issues that are underexplored in the philosophical literature. The volume reconsiders the view that reality contains many levels and opens new ways to understand the ontological status of the special sciences. The book focuses on major open questions that arise at the foundations of cognitive science, cognitive psychology, brain science and other special sciences, in particular with respect to the physical foundations of these sciences. For example: Is the mental computational? Do brains compute? How can the special sciences be autonomous from physics, grounded in, or based on, physics and at the same time irreducible to physics? The book is an important read for scientists and philosophers alike. It is of interest to philosophers of science, philosophers of mind and biology interested in the notion of levels, but also to psychologists, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists investigating such issues as the precise relation of the mental to the underlying neural structures and the appropriate approach to study it. Contents Contributors 1 Introduction 1.1 Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy 1.2 Epistemological vs. Ontological Levels 1.2.1 Ontological Levels: The Layered Model and Its Alternatives 1.2.2 Epistemological Levels: Pluralism and Skepticism 1.3 Non-reductive Physicalism as a Multi-level View References 2 Levels of Reality and Levels of Description 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Laws, Reduction and Nonreductive Physicalism 2.3 Reducibility and Multiple Realization in Statistical Mechanics 2.4 Meeting Kim's Objections to Nonreductive Physicalism 2.5 Concluding Remarks References 3 The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes 3.1 Introduction 3.2 What Is Being Claimed 3.3 Effective Field Theory 3.4 The Core Theory 3.5 New Particles and Forces 3.6 Discussion References 4 Against Levels of Reality: The Method of Metaphysics and the Argument for Dualism 4.1 Against Levels of Reality: The Canberra Plan 4.2 The Methodology of the Canberra Plan Beyond the Natural Sciences 4.3 Normative Functionalism and the Ontology of the Mind References 5 Can the Flat Physicalist Tell Us What a Physical Entity Is? 5.1 Introduction 5.2 A Brief Survey of Some Proposed Solutions to Hempel's Dilemma 5.3 An Extended Current-Physics Reply 5.4 Some Problems for ECPR 5.5 Concluding Remarks References 6 How Context Can Determine the Identity of PhysicalComputation 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Computational Individuation at Narrow Physical and Functional Levels of Analysis 6.2.1 Dewhurst's Individuative Strategy: Losing Computational Equivalence 6.2.2 Coelho Mollo's Individuative Strategy: Moving to a Functional Level 6.3 Computational Individuation at a Semantic Level of Analysis 6.4 Computational Individuation Along Multiple Levels of Analysis 6.5 Long-Arm Functional Individuation of Computation 6.5.1 Wide, Short-Arm Individuation of Computation 6.5.2 A Functional Long-Arm Individuative Strategy 6.5.3 A Midway Between the Wide Short-Arm and Mechanistic Strategies 6.6 A Pluralistic Approach to Computational Explanation 6.7 Conclusion References 7 Levelling the Universe 7.1 Prelude 7.2 Parts and Wholes 7.3 Reduction and Identity 7.4 Functionalism 7.5 Appearance and Reality 7.6 Emergence and Downward Causation 7.7 Quantum Holism 7.8 Abandoning Reduction 7.9 Horrible Histories 7.10 Causal Relevance 7.11 Anomalous Monism 7.12 Dénouement References 8 Why Functionalism Is a Form of `Token-Dualism' 8.1 The State of Art Concerning Reductive Type-Identity Physicalism 8.2 The Tasks of Flat Physicalism 8.2.1 Task I: Constructing the Flat Physicalism Theory of Reductive Type-Identity Physicalism 8.2.2 Task II: Provide a Flat Physicalist Account of the (Alleged) Appearance of Multiple Realization 8.2.3 Task III: Show That If Flat Physicalism Obtains, Then There Are No Levels of Reality 8.2.4 Task IV: Show That Flat Physicalism Allows for an Autonomy of the Special Sciences and Is Compatible with all Forms of Special Sciences Laws, Including Probabilistic Ones and Even with Cases of Special Sciences Anomaly 8.3 Constructing Flat Physicalism: A Novel Theory of Reductive Type-Identity Physicalism 8.4 Special Sciences' Kinds in Flat Physicalism 8.5 Why “Non-reductive Physicalism” Is a Form of Token-Dualism 8.6 Functionalism as Token-Dualism About Token-Sequences 8.7 The Autonomy of the Special Sciences 8.8 Levels of Reality 8.9 Conclusion: Functionalism as a form of Dualism, and Some Consequences References 9 Levels and Mechanisms: Reconsidering Multi-level Mechanistic Explanation 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Levels of Composition in Biology 9.3 Craver and Bechtel on Levels of Mechanisms 9.4 Mechanisms as Causal Pathways 9.5 Multi-level Mechanistic Explanation: an Alternative View 9.6 Some Examples of Multi-level Mechanisms 9.7 Multi-level Mechanisms and Interlevel Causation References 10 The Naturalistic Case for Free Will 10.1 Introduction 10.2 The Challenge 10.3 Free Will as a Higher-Level Phenomenon 10.4 Why Are Intentional Agency, Alternative Possibilities, and Mental Causation Explanatorily Indispensable? 10.5 What Follows from This? 10.6 Indeterminism as an Emergent Phenomenon 10.7 Some Objections 10.7.1 Isn't the Emergence of Indeterminism at a Higher Level Merely Epistemic? 10.7.2 Isn't Agential Indeterminism Yet Another form of Randomness? 10.7.3 Are Our Best Theories of Human Agency Committed to Real Alternative Possibilities or Just to Imagined Ones? 10.7.4 Isn't My Account of Free Will Vulnerable to the Problem of Present Luck? 10.7.5 Doesn't Physicalism Entail Some Form of Reducibility of Mental Properties to Physical Ones? 10.8 Concluding Remarks References 11 Physicalism: Flat and Egalitarian 11.1 Physicalism: Flat or Egalitarian? 11.2 Microstates 11.3 Reductionism 11.4 Levels 11.5 Multiple Realizability 11.6 Conclusion: Flat, Egalitarian Physicalism References 12 Rethinking the Unity of Science Hypothesis: Levels, Mechanisms, and Realization 12.1 General Remarks on the Unity of Science 12.2 Unity of Science and Levels 12.3 Troubles with Levels 12.4 Levels in Mechanisms 12.5 Decomposition by Realization 12.6 Realization and the Unity of Science References 13 Parsimony Arguments in Science and Metaphysics, and Their Connection with Unification, Fundamentality, and Epistemological Holism 13.1 Three Parsimony Paradigms 13.1.1 Paradigm #1 – Parsimony and the Probabilities of Hypotheses 13.1.2 Paradigm #2 – Parsimony and the Likelihoods of Hypotheses 13.1.3 Paradigm #3: Parsimony and the Predictive Accuracies of Models 13.2 How Philosophical Parsimony Arguments Measure Up – Three Examples 13.2.1 Is Observation the Elephant in the Room? 13.2.2 Two Pretty Successful Parsimony Arguments in Philosophy 13.2.3 A Failed Parsimony Argument Concerning Mental Causation 13.3 Parsimony and Fundamentality 13.4 Empirically Equivalent Theories and Identifiability 13.5 Unification in Science and Metaphysics 13.6 Quinean Epistemological Holism 13.7 Conclusion References 14 Levels, Kinds and Multiple Realizability: The Importance of What Does Not Matter 14.1 Introduction 14.2 Two Notions of Level and Their Relations 14.3 Conditional Independence Characterized: The Role of Variables 14.4 Causal Generalizations and Their Realization 14.5 Conditional Independence, Levels and Multiple Realizability 14.6 Kinds: Natural and Otherwise 14.7 Realization and Disjunctive Kinds and Properties 14.8 Kim and Polger and Shapiro on Multiple Realizability 14.9 Autonomy and the Explanatory Status of Upper-Level Generalizations References