Abstract
In this paper, I investigate how different views about the vertical and
horizontal structure of reality affect the debate between reductive and
nonreductive physicalism. This debate is commonly assumed to hinge on
whether there are high-level, special-science properties that are distinct from
low-level physical properties and whether the alleged multiple realizability
of high-level properties establishes this. I defend a metaphysical interpretation
of nonreductive physicalismin the absence of both of these assumptions.
Adopting an independently motivated, discipline-relative account of natural
properties and appealing to a phenomenon I call “multiple determinativity,”
in which a single physical property simultaneously realizes different kinds
of special-science properties, is sufficient to show that some special-science
properties are irreducible to physical properties and that nonreductive
physicalism is not merely a terminological variant of reductive physicalism.