The paper argues in favour of a causal-functional theory of all properties including the physical ones and a conception of properties as tropes or modes in the sense of particular ways that objects are. It shows how these premises open up a version of functionalism according to which the properties on which the special sciences focus are identical with configurations of physical properties and thereby causally efficacious without there being any threat of eliminativism.

Recently the functional model of reduction has become something like the standard model of reduction in philosophy of mind. In this paper, I argue that the functional model fails as an account of reduction due to problems related to three key concepts: functionalization, realization and causation. I further argue that if we try to revise the model in order to make it more coherent and scientifically plausible, the result is merely a simplified version of what in philosophy of science is (...) known as mechanistic explanation. Hence, instead of analyzing reduction in philosophy of mind in terms of functional reduction, it should be analyzed in terms of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

In ‘Ramseyan Humility’ Lewis presents the Permutation Argument for quidditism. As he presents it the argument is simple enough, but once one digs beneath its surface, and attempts to understand it in strictly Lewisian terms, difficulties arise. The fundamental difficulty is that, as he presents it, the argument only seems to be sound if one rejects views that Lewis explicitly holds. One aim of this paper is to clarify the argument to show that one can make sense of it in (...) strictly Lewisian terms. In so doing I clarify Lewis’s view, clearly lay out the commitments that Lewis has, and define quidditism in strictly Lewisian terms. However, I also have a secondary aim. Lewis accepts that quidditism entails a form of scepticism, that he calls ‘Humility’. However, by an extension of the permutation argument I show that quidditism entails a form of scepticism, that I call ‘Diffidence’, that is far more wide-reaching than Humility. (shrink)

This thesis proposes that key, competing theories of dispositions mistake and conflate how we identify, designate and talk about dispositions and dispositional terms for the nature of dispositions and the meaning of dispositional terms when they argue that: a) dispositions are extrinsic properties of their bearers (Boyle 1666) b) all properties are purely dispositional (Bird 2007) c) all properties are purely categorical (there are no dispositional properties) (Armstrong in AMP 1996) d) dispositional and categorical properties are separate and distinct properties (...) (Prior, Pargetter and Jackson 1982). In so doing these theories make unwarranted and unsupported ontological conclusions about dispositions. The thesis traces the principal source of this confusion and conflation to a reliance on the counterfactual analysis of dispositions that wrongly encourages the conflation of a disposition (say fragility) with its manifestation (shattering). There is good reason to hold that the counterfactual analysis of dispositions is false — the truth of a counterfactual statement (such as “if x were dropped x would break”) is neither necessary nor sufficient for the truth of a dispositional ascription (such as “x is fragile”). (shrink)