Multiple Realization, Computation and the Taxonomy of Psychological States (original) (raw)
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Realization and Multiple Realization, Chicken and Egg
A common view is that the truth of multiple realization, e.g., about psychological states, entails the truth of functionalism. This is supposed to follow because what is multiply realized is eo ipso realized. I argue that view is mistaken by demonstrating how it misrepresents arguments from multiple realization. In particular, it undermines the empirical component of the arguments, and renders the multiplicity of the realization irrelevant. I suggest an alternative reading of multiple realizability arguments, particularly in philosophy of psychology. And I explain the proper way to understand the relation between realization and multiple realization.
Functionalism, computationalism, and mental states
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2004
Some philosophers have conflated functionalism and computationalism. I reconstruct how this came about and uncover two assumptions that made the conflation possible. They are the assumptions that (i) psychological functional analyses are computational descriptions and (ii) everything may be described as performing computations. I argue that, if we want to improve our understanding of both the metaphysics of mental states and the functional relations between them, we should reject these assumptions. #
Multiple Realization: A Thesis with Identity Issues
It is commonly held that the multiple realizability of the mental rules out a potential strict identity relation between the physical and the psychological. In recent years, important new work has been done on the subject of the relation between multiple realization and identity theory. Nevertheless, what remains overlooked by these newer accounts is that the argument from multiple realization against identity is founded on an ambiguity. At the heart of the multiple realization argument lies an entanglement of two very different notions of identity, notions which need to be understood in light of two distinct ways of identifying objects. As I will hope to show, properly evaluating the argument from multiple realization against strict identity requires first of all untangling these two notions of identity. The disentanglement leaves the argument from multiple realization facing a dilemma: either be a deductively valid argument, but give up on empirical aspirations; or be an empirically substantiated argument, but accept compatibility with a strict identity thesis.
Multiple Realization, Reduction, and Mental Properties
The paper tries to remove some obstacles standing in the way of considering mental properties as both genuine natural kinds and causally efficacious rather than epiphenomena. As the case of temperature shows, it isn't justified to conclude from a property's being multiply realizable to its being irreducible. Yet argument to the effect that if a property is multiply realizable with a heterogeneous reduction base then it can't be a natural kind and possesses only derivative "epiphenomenal" causal efficacy isn't conclusive either. The fact that temperature is, but jade is not, a natural kind cannot be established by comparing the heterogeneity of their respective reduction bases, but rather by the fact that the former is and the latter isn't embedded in laws of nature.
Mind-brain Identity to the rescue of Multiple Realization
To counter the thesis of the identity of Types, Putnam raised the famous argument of the multiple realization of the mental. Having inserted into functionalist thesis, argument is weakened (i) by the reductionism of Kim and Armstrong / Lewis, and (ii) by option of disjunction of properties. To make the relation of realization and multiple realization more coherent, Shoemaker offers an alternative thesis. In a recent article , incorporating Yablo's thesis on determinable properties, he constructs an original account on realized properties that on one side avoids reductionism and on the other gives way to multiple realization. However, as this article aims to show, the use of Yablo's thesis, mainly qualifying relation between the mental and physical as a relation of determinable to determinate, added to the individuation of properties according to their causal profile, somehow reintroduces the Type identity thesis.
Realization Relations in Metaphysics (Minds and Machines, 2015)
2015
“Realization” is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties. It is said that mental properties are realized by physical properties; functional and computational properties are realized by first-order properties that occupy certain causal/functional roles; dispositional properties are realized by categorical properties; so on and so forth. Given this wide usage of the term “realization”, it would be right to think that there might be different dependence relations that this term denotes in different cases. Any relation that is aptly picked out by this term can be taken to be a realization relation. The aim of this state-of-the-field article is to introduce the central questions about the concept of realization, and provide formulations of a number of realization relations. In doing so, I identify some theoretical roles realization relations should play, and discuss some theories of realization in relation to these theoretical roles.
Multiple Realization and Multiple " Ways " of Realization: A Progress Report
In a number of individual and collaborative papers, Carl Gillett and I have championed a theory of realization that we take to characterize a many-one ontological determination relation between property instances found in the natural sciences. In addition, we have defended the view that multiple realization occurs, in essence, when two (or more) non-identical sets of property instances, {F1-Fn} and {F*1-F*m}, at the same level determine another property instance G at a higher level. Moreover, we have provided numerous clear scientific illustrations of this. Among these is that the property of having normal human color vision is multiply realized by individuals who differ only in the absorption spectra of their red cone opsins. Faced with this account, many philosophers react that the account of multiple realization is overly permissive. It is not enough that the sets of realizer property instances {F1-Fn} and {F*1-F*m} be non-identical; {F1-Fn} and {F*1-F*m} must also constitute distinct “ways” of realizing G. This paper makes the case that the Aizawa-Gillett approach to multiple realization is making better progress than is the alternative approach of multiple "ways" of realization.
The notion of realization made its first appearance in the late sixties in the philosophy of mind, where it was proposed that mental state-types, though not themselves physical state-types, are still functional state-types that are in fact always realized by physical state-types, though not necessarily the same physical state-types on different occasions. The notion of realization has since been invoked more generally, in the hope of providing a metaphysically transparent characterization of all cases where phenomena of one kind are type-distinct from simultaneous phenomena of a second kind, and yet dependent on them in some more than causal way. For example, the characteristic behavior of a cardiac cell might be said to be realized by the molecules that make it up; and a comprehensive thesis of physicalism might be formulated as the view that all phenomena are ultimately realized by fundamental physical phenomena. The rise in popularity of the notion of realization has coincided, not accidentally, with the decline in popularity of the notion of supervenience. Some recent naturalistic philosophers of science (e.g., Larry Shapiro) have inquired how far mental phenomena are in actual fact multiply—as opposed to uniformly—realized. I applaud this line of inquiry. I hope to contribute to it in a small way by proposing an account of what multiple realization—actual multiple realization—amounts to; this account has an advantage over the only other developed account of actual multiple realization known to me, that given in (Shapiro 2004).