Two versions of global supervenience have recently been distinguished from each other. I introduce a third version, which is more likely what people had in mind all along. However, I argue that one of the three versions is equivalent to strong supervenience in every sense that matters, and that neither of the other two versions counts as a genuine determination relation. I conclude that global supervenience has little metaphysically distinctive value.

THIS PAPER ARGUES THAT GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE IS NOT\nEQUIVALENT TO KIM'S STRONG SUPERVENIENCE (AS HE HAS ARGUED\nIT IS) AND THAT IT DOES NOT ENTAIL THE TYPE OR TOKEN\nREDUCIBILITY OF THE SUPERVENIENT PROPERTIES TO THE\nPROPERTIES UPON WHICH THEY SUPERVENE (AS STRONG\nSUPERVENIENCE DOES). IT THEN TURNS TO AN EXAMINATION OF THE\nARGUMENT THAT GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE IS EQUIVALENT TO\nIMPLICIT DEFINABILITY WHICH ACCORDING TO BETH'S THEOREM\nENTAILS EXPLICIT DEFINABILITY. THE AUTHOR HOPES TO SHOW\nTHAT GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE IS A DISTINCT AND ESPECIALLY\nINTERESTING (...) RELATION WHICH CAPTURES ASPECTS OF THE\nRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AND THOSE\nPROPERTIES WHICH ARE DETERMINED BY THEM THAT OTHER\nRELATIONS DO NOT DO JUSTICE TO. (shrink)

The existence and importance of supervenience principles for identity across times and worlds have been noted, but insufficient attention has been paid to their precise nature. Such attention is repaid with philosophical dividends. The issues in the formulation of the supervenience principles are two. The first involves the relevant variety of supervenience: that variety is global, but there are in fact two versions of global supervenience that must be distinguished. The second involves the subject (...) matter: the names “identity over time” and “identity across worlds” are misnomers, for in neither case is identity at issue. The philosophical dividends then follow. Nathan Salmon’s argument that identity over time needs no “grounds” in matters of qualitative fact can be answered, as can an argument offered by many, that coincident objects would require objectionably ungrounded differences in identities across times and worlds. (shrink)

Theodore Sider distinguishes two notions of global supervenience: strong global supervenience and weak global supervenience. He then discusses some applications to general metaphysical questions. Most interestingly, Sider employs the weak notion in order to undermine a familiar argument against coincident distinct entities. In what follows, I reexamine the two notions and distinguish them from a third, intermediate, notion (intermediate global supervenience). I argue that (a) weak global supervenience is not an (...) adequate notion of dependence; (b) weak global supervenience does not capture certain assumptions about coincidence relations; (c) these assumptions are better accommodated by the stronger notion of intermediate global supervenience; (d) intermediate global supervenience, however, is also not an adequate notion of dependence; and (e) strong global supervenience is an adequate notion of dependence. It also fits in with anti-individualism about the mental. It does not, however, serve to rebut arguments against coincident entities. (shrink)

Global supervenience of beliefs about physical states of affairs on such states has strongly counter-intuitive consequences about what beliefs we can nomologically hold. Tfcs is an argument against a global supervenience of all mental properties on physical 0 n es, and, since that is implied by strong supervenience, also against that as the preferred materialist thesis.

It is generally assumed that everything that can be said about dependence with the notion of strong global supervenience can also be said with the notion of strong supervenience. It is argued here, however, that strong global supervenience has a metaphysically distinctive role to play. It is shown that when the relevant sets include relations , strong global supervenience and strong supervenience are distinct. It is then concluded that there are claims about (...) dependence of relations that can be made with the global notion of strong supervenience but not with the “local” (individual) one. (shrink)

Does the global supervenience of one class on another entail reductionism, in the sense that any property in the former class is definable from properties in the latter class? This question appears to be at the same time formally tractable and philosophically significant. It seems formally tractable because the concepts involved are susceptible to rigorous definition. It is philosophically significant because in a number of debates about inter-level relationships, there are prima facie plausible positions that presuppose that there (...) is no such entailment: standard versions of non-reductive physicalism and of normative non-naturalism accept global supervenience while rejecting reductionism. I identify a gap in an influential argument for the entailment, due to Frank Jackson and Robert Stalnaker, and draw on the model theory of infinitary languages to argue that some globally supervening properties are not reducible. (shrink)

Global supervenience of beliefs about physical states of affairs on such states has strongly counter-intuitive consequences about what beliefs we can nomologically hold. This is an argument against a global supervenience of all mental properties on physical ones, and, since that is implied by strong supervenience, also against that as the preferred materialist thesis.

What does it mean that certain properties globally supervene on others? The paper criticises the now standard way of spelling out the notion in terms of 1–1 correlations between world-domains and proposes a modification that escapes the difficulties. The new definition can secure the additional benefit of resisting an argument to the effect that global supervenience is theoretically dispensable.

Nonreductive materialism is the dominant position in the philosophy of mind. The global supervenience of the mental on the physical has been thought by some to capture the central idea of nonreductive materialism: that mental properties are ultimately dependent on, but irreducible to, physical properties. But Jaegwon Kim has argued that global psychophysical supervenience does not provide the materialist with the desired dependence of the mental on the physical, and in general that global supervenience (...) is too weak to be an interesting dependence relation. We argue that these arguments are unsound. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between global and strong supervenience, and show clearly what sort of dependence global supervenience provides. (shrink)

The relation of global supervenience is widely appealed to in philosophy. In slogan form, it is explained as follows: a class of properties A supervenes on a class of properties B if no two worlds differ in the distribution of A-properties without differing in the distribution of B-properties. It turns out, though, that there are several ways to cash out that slogan. Three different proposals have been discussed in the literature. In this paper, I argue that none of (...) them is adequate. Furthermore, I present a puzzle that reveals a tension in our concept of global supervenience. (shrink)

THIS PAPER CORRECTS AN ERROR IN MY EARLIER PAPER, "CONCEPTS OF SUPERVENIENCE" ("PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH", VOLUME 45, 1984), AND PRESENTS FURTHER MATERIAL ON SUPERVENIENCE. THE ERROR IS THE CLAIM THAT "GLOBAL" SUPERVENIENCE ENTAILS "STRONG" SUPERVENIENCE. HOWEVER, IT IS ARGUED THAT THIS FAILURE OF ENTAILMENT ONLY GOES TO SHOW THE INADEQUACY OF GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE AS AN EXPLICATION OF "DEPENDENCY" OR "DETERMINATION" RELATION, AND, IN PARTICULAR, THAT MATERIALISM FORMULATED IN TERMS OF GLOBAL (...) class='Hi'>SUPERVENIENCE APPEARS TOO WEAK. (IT IS POINTED OUT, AMONG OTHER THINGS, THAT GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE DOES NOT ENTAIL "WEAK" SUPERVENIENCE). A STRONGER FORM OF GLOBAL SUPERVENIENCE, BASED ON "SIMILARITY" RATHER THAN "INDISCERNIBILITY" BETWEEN WORLDS, IS FORMULATED AND BRIEFLY DISCUSSED. (shrink)

Kim argues that weak and global supervenience are too weak to guarantee any sort of dependency. Of the three original forms of supervenience, strong, weak, and global, each commonly wielded across all branches of philosophy, two are thus cast aside as uninteresting or useless. His arguments, however, fail to appreciate the strength of weak and global supervenience. I investigate what weak and global supervenience relations are functionally and how they relate to strong (...) supervenience. For a large class of properties, weak and global supervenience are equivalent to strong supervenience. I then offer a series of arguments showing that it is precisely because of their strength, not their weakness, that both weak and global supervenience are useless in characterizing any dependencies of interest to philosophers. (shrink)

Nonreductive materialism is the dominant position in the philosophy of mind. The global supervenience of the mental on the physical has been thought by some to capture the central idea of nonreductive materialism: that mental properties are ultimately dependent on, but irreducible to, physical properties. But Jaegwon Kim has argued that global psychophysical supervenience does not provide the materialist with the desired dependence of the mental on the physical, and in general that global supervenience (...) is too weak to be an interesting dependence relation. We argue that these arguments are unsound. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between global and strong supervenience, and show clearly what sort of dependence global supervenience provides. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim contends that global supervenience is consistent with non-materialistic cases. Paull and Sider, Horgan, as well as Kim, attempt to defend it from these charges. It is shown here that their defense is only partially successful. Their defense meets one challenge to global supervenience---the hydrogen-atom case---but fails to meet other, ‘local’, cases. It is suggested that the other challenges can be met if global supervenience is combined with weak supervenience. The combination of (...) global and weak supervenience constitutes a viable picture of psychophysical relations, and is especially attractive to nonreductive materialists who are also anti-individualists. (shrink)

This paper examines a nonreductive supervenience relation central to a philosophically popular version of nonreductive physicalism inspired by Donald Davidson. The paper argues that this global supervenience relation faces a serious epistemological problem that blocks its being superior to weaker, less general supervenience relations.

Weak and global supervenience are equivalent to strong supervenience for intrinsic properties. Moreover, weak and global supervenience relations are always mere parts of a more general underlying strong supervenience relation. Most appeals to global supervenience, though, involve spatio-temporally relational properties; but here too, global and strong supervenience are equivalent. _Functionally_ we can characterize merely weak and global supervenience as follows: for A to supervene on B requires that at (...) all worlds an individual’s A properties be a function of its B properties, where this function varies from world to world. But what are the. (shrink)

Could a classical theist be a physicalist? Although a negative answer to this question may seem obvious, it turns out that a case can be made for the consistency of a variant of classical theism and global supervenience physicalism. Although intriguing, the case ultimately fails due to the weakness of global supervenience as an account of the dependence of mental on physical properties.

In this paper I pour a little cold water on claims of global supervenience, not by arguing that they are false, and not by arguing that they possess no philosophical utility whatsoever, but by building a case for the following conditional conclusion: if you expect claims of global supervenience to play a certain role in a certain metaphysical project, then you will be disappointed, since they cannot play such a role. The metaphysical project is to give (...) an illuminating and suitably physicalist account of the relations between properties instantiated at different levels of reality. The paper makes a prima facie case for holding that claims of global supervenience can provide no illumination in such an account, a case that emerges when the metaphysics of global supervenience is probed a little more deeply than is customary. (shrink)

I present two short arguments concerning the views named in the title. First, I argue that the Doctrine of Propositions, according to which the contents of our psychological attitudes are always propositions, is incompatible with Internalism, understood as a doctrine endorsing the intrinsic character of mental content. Second, I try to show that the Doctrine of Propositions is also incompatible with the claim that psychological properties supervene globally on physical properties (i.e., that there can be no mental difference without some (...) physical difference). The upshot is that the Doctrine of Propositions is inconsistent with each of two important supervenience principles. (shrink)

Supervenience physicalism attempts to combine non-reductionism about properties with a physical determination thesis in such a way as to ensure physicalism. I argue that this attempt is unsuccessful: the specific supervenience relation in question is either strong enough to ensure reductionism, as in the case of strong supervenience, or too weak to yield physical determination, as in the case of global supervenience. The argument develops in three stages. First, I propose a distinction between two types (...) of reductionism, definitional and scientific, a distinction thanks to which we can reply to a standard objection against the ontological reductionism of strong supervenience. Second, I claim that because of "the problem of random distribution," global supervenience needs strengthening to be an adequate relation to capture our physicalistic intuitions; and I show, in accordance with Stalnaker's relevant proof, why a natural strengthening of global supervenience renders it equivalent to strong supervenience. Finally, I argue against Stalnaker about the possibility of a non-reductionist global supervenience. The upshot is that despite appearances, supervenience physicalism is a form of reductive physicalism. (shrink)

When it comes to evaluating reductive hypotheses in metaphysics, supervenience arguments are the tools of the trade. Jaegwon Kim and Frank Jackson have argued, respectively, that strong and global supervenience are sufficient for reduction, and others have argued that supervenience theses stand in need of the kind of explanation that reductive hypotheses are particularly suited to provide. Simon Blackburn's arguments about what he claims are the specifically problematic features of the supervenience of the moral on (...) the natural have also been influential. But most discussions of these arguments have proceeded under the strong and restrictive assumptions of the S5 modal logic. In this paper we aim to remedy that defect, by illustrating in an accessible way what happens to these arguments under relaxed assumptions and why. The occasion is recent work by Ralph Wedgwood, who seeks to defend non-reductive accounts of moral and mental properties together with strong supervenience, but to evade both the arguments of Kim and Jackson and the explanatory challenge by accepting only the weaker, B, modal logic. In addition to drawing general lessons about what happens to supervenience arguments under relaxed assumptions, our goal is therefore to shed some light on both the virtues and costs of Wedgwood's proposal. (shrink)

The paper is divided into two parts, each with subsections. In the first part, I shall discuss some matters that have been extensively examined by Kim, namely what the basic types of supervenience are and how they are pairwise logically related; in the course of this discussion, I shall distinguish a weak from a strong notion of global supervenience. In the second part, I shall examine supervenience in a context in which Kim has not: I shall (...) attempt to solve a puzzle that arises when we consider supervenience relations involving vague properties and/or predicates. This is, of course, not a special case of property/predicate supervenience, but the typical one: for virtually all properties/predicates are vague. The two parts of the paper stand independently of each other. Of the discussion in the first part, essentially all that is presupposed in the second is the notion of “world strong supervenience” defined in section 1 of part I. (shrink)

The paper is divided into two parts, each with subsections. In the first part, I shall discuss some matters that have been extensively examined by Kim, namely what the basic types of supervenience are and how they are pairwise logically related; in the course of this discussion, I shall distinguish a weak from a strong notion of global supervenience. In the second part, I shall examine supervenience in a context in which Kim has not: I shall (...) attempt to solve a puzzle that arises when we consider supervenience relations involving vague properties and/or predicates. This is, of course, not a special case of property/predicate super- venience, but the typical one: for virtually all properties/predicates are vague. The two parts of the paper stand independently of each other. Of the discussion in the first part, essentially all that is presupposed in the second is the notion of “world strong supervenience” defined in section 1 of part I. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim and others have claimed that (strong) psychophysical supervenience entails the reducibility of mental properties to physical properties. I argue that this claim is unwarranted with respect to epistemic (explanatory) reducibility (either of a global or of a local sort), as well as with respect to ontological reducibility. I then attempt to show that a robust version of nonreductive materialism (which I call supervenient token-physicalism) can be defended against the charge that nonreductive materialism leads to epiphenomenalism in (...) failing to account for the causal or explanatory relevance of mental properties. (shrink)

The modal primitivist who takes a sentential possibility operator as her only modal resource can provide adequate representations of the familiar concepts of weak, strong and global supervenience. The primitivist representations of these concepts can be applied to provide adequate interpretations of speciflc supervenience theses which will be considered. Moreover the modal primitivist is no better and no worse placed than the genuine modal realist to present supervenience as a simple and unifled notion. Therefore, Lewis is (...) unjustified in claiming that a genuine modal realist approach to the analysis of the concept of supervenience is superior to a modal primitivist approach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to define a notion of supervenience which can adequately describe the systematic dependence of extrinsic as well as of intrinsic higher-level properties on base-level features. We argue that none of the standard notions of supervenience—the concepts of weak, strong and global supervenience—fulfil this function. The concept of regional supervenience, which is purported to improve on the standard conceptions, turns out to be problematic as well. As a new approach, we (...) develop the notion of property-dependent supervenience. This notion is founded on a criterion of relevance adapting the supervenience base to the considered higher-level properties in a specific way, such that only features which are relevant to the instantiation of the higher-level properties under consideration are taken into account. (shrink)

Humeans hold that the nomological features of our world, including causal facts, are determined by the global distribution of fundamental properties. Since persistence presupposes causation, it follows that facts about personal identity are also globally determined. I argue that this is unacceptable for a number of reasons, and that the doctrine of Humean supervenience should therefore be rejected.

We provide a formulation of physicalism, and show that this is to be favoured over alternative formulations. Much of the literature on physicalism assumes without argument that there is a fundamental level to reality, and we show that a consideration of the levels problem and its implications for physicalism tells in favour of the form of physicalism proposed here. Its hey elements are, fast, that the empirical and substantive part of physicalism amounts to a prediction that physics will not posit (...) new entities solely for the purpose of accounting for mental phenomena, nor new entities with essentially mental characteristics such as propositioned attitudes or intentions; secondly, that physicalism can safely make do with no more than a weak global formulation of supervenience. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that, for Leibniz, temporal facts globally supervene on causal facts, with the result that worlds differing with respect to their causal facts can be indiscernible with respect to their temporal facts. Such an interpretation is at variance with more traditional readings of Leibniz’s causal theory of time, which hold that Leibniz reduces temporal facts to causal facts. In this article, I argue against the global supervenience construal of Leibniz’s philosophy of time. On the (...) view of Leibniz defended here, he adopts a non-modal reduction of time to events, a form of reductionism that entails a strong covariation between a world’s temporal facts and its causal facts. Consequently, worlds discernible with respect to their temporal facts must be discernible with respect to their causal facts, and worlds discernible with respect to their causal facts must be discernible with respect to their temporal facts. This position strongly favors the standard identificatory reduction of time to causation often imputed to Leibniz. (shrink)

This paper extends the definition of strong supervenience to cover classes of relations of any adicity, including transworld relations. It motivates that project by showing that not all interesting supervenience claims involving relations are global supervenience claims. The proposed definition has five welcome features: it reduces to the familiar definition in the special case where the classes contain only monadic properties; it equips supervenience with the expected formal properties, such as transitivity and monotonicity; it entails (...) that a relation supervenes on its converse; it classifies certain paradigms correctly; it makes distinctions even in the realm of the non-contingent, as witnessed by the fact that identity does not supervene on any class of relations. Finally, the paper applies the defined concept, and the related concept of orthogonality, to the study of internal and external relations. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that, for Leibniz, temporal facts globally supervene on causal facts, with the result that worlds differing with respect to their causal facts can be indiscernible with respect to their temporal facts. Such an interpretation is at variance with more traditional readings of Leibniz's causal theory of time, which hold that Leibniz reduces temporal facts to causal facts. In this article, I argue against the global supervenience construal of Leibniz's philosophy of time. On the (...) view of Leibniz defended here, he adopts a non-modal reduction of time to events, a form of reductionism that entails a strong covariation between a world's temporal facts and its causal facts. Consequently, worlds discernible with respect to their temporal facts must be discernible with respect to their causal facts, and worlds discernible with respect to their causal facts must be discernible with respect to their temporal facts. This position strongly favors the standard identificatory reduction of time to causation often imputed to Leibniz. (shrink)

Over the last 3 decades a vast literature has been dedicated to supervenience. Much of it has focused on the analysis of different concepts of supervenience and their philosophical consequences. This paper has two objectives. One is to provide a short, up-do-date, guide to the formal relations between the different concepts of supervenience. The other is to reassess the extent to which these concepts can establish metaphysical theses, especially about dependence. The conclusion is that strong global (...) supervenience is the most advantageous notion of supervenience that we have. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a number of different relationships between two kinds of obligation: those which have individuals as their subject, and those which have groups of individuals as their subject. I use the name collective obligations to refer to obligations of the second sort. I argue that there are collective obligations, in this sense; that such obligations can give rise to and explain obligations which fall on individuals; that because of these facts collective obligations are not simply reducible (...) to individual obligations; and that collective obligations supervene on individual obligations, without being reducible to them. The sort of supervenience I have in mind here is what is sometimes called ‘global supervenience’. In other words, there cannot be two worlds which differ in respect of the collective obligations which exist in them without also differing in respect of the individual obligations which exist in them. (shrink)

In this article, I contest Brian Epstein’s argument (2014) against the applicability of global supervenience to relate micro and macroeconomic properties. Epstein rejects supervenience via a causal-chain relation inside the macroeconomic set in his criticism. Accordingly, the rise of the macro set is fixed by a weather event without any mediation from the realm of microeconomics. As it stands, this idea would demonstrate the autonomy of macroeconomics from microeconomics. However, as I intend to argue, in Epstein’s weather-cases (...) scenarios, the corresponding macroeconomic sets are fixed by their micro bases that codify weather events and thereby fix the macro. This is so because the microeconomic base must include institutional facts; they are as much necessary as the facts about people’s conditions. In so doing, we re-establish bottom–top determination from the micro to the macro, rescuing the applicability of global supervenience. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn has developed an interesting challenge to moral realism based on its alleged inability to account for supervenience relations between the moral and nonmoral. If supervenience holds, then any base property once giving rise to a supervening one must always do so. The realist accepts supervenience, but also (according to Blackburn) accepts the claim that nonmoral base properties do not necessitate the moral ones that supervene on them. This combination is thought deadly, because it leaves the (...) realist without an explanation of why ethical supervenience should be true. I offer three responses on behalf of the moral realist. The first rejects the need for explanation, arguing that supervenience should be understood as closely analogous to Leibniz's law, which, I argue, needs no defense. I next argue that ethical naturalism may be right, and if so, would provide an adequate response to Blackburn. Lastly, I show that the success of Blackburn's arguments implies a global antirealism, and so does not, as he claims, amount to a special problem for realism in ethics. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the nature of physicalism as well as to the possibility of formulating physicalism as a supervenience thesis. First, I review the motivation for finding a supervenience thesis that characterizes physicalism. Second, I briefly survey the types of supervenience theses that have been proposed as necessary (or, in some cases, as necessary and sufficient) for physicalism. Third, I analyze the recent supervenience thesis proposed by Frank Jackson and expounded upon by Gene (...) Witmer. Jackson claims the supervenience thesis is both necessary and sufficient for physicalism; Witmer has proposed a different interpretation of one of the Jackson’s key notions and has suggested an amended supervenience thesis that is, if not sufficient, at least necessary for physicalism. However, I will argue that neither Jackson’s nor Witmer’s supervenience theses as stated are necessary for physicalism. (shrink)

It has been widely noted that Humean supervenience , according to which everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them, is at odds with the nonlocal character of quantum mechanics, according to which not everything supervenes on intrinsic properties of point-sized things and the spatiotemporal relations between them. In particular, a standard view is that the parts of a composite quantum system instantiate further relations which are not accounted for in Lewis's Humean mosaic. (...) But that suggests a simple solution: Why couldn't Lewis simply add these new relations to the supervenience basis? The aim of this article is to use Humean supervenience as a foil to spell out a feature of entanglement of general metaphysical interest: The way in which the metaphysical lessons drawn for two-party systems ramify when systems of many parties are considered. The main conclusion is that the proposed simple fix in fact results in a supervenience thesis different in kind from Lewis's, by making the relations in the supervenience basis global in a certain sense. (shrink)

Alleged counter-examples based on conceptual thought experiments, including those involving sense or content, have no force against physicalist supervenience theses properly construed. This is largely because of their epistemological status and their modal status. Still, there are empirical examples that do contradict Kim-style theses, due to the latter’s individualism. By contrast, non-individualist supervenience, such as “global” supervenience, remains unscathed, a possibility overlooked by Lynne Baker, as is dear from a physicalist account of sense in the case (...) of non-human biological adaptations that are for producing things about affairs in the world. (shrink)

Supervenience was first used by Donald Davidson to describe the dependent and independent relationships between the mental and the physical. Jaegwon Kim presented a more precise definition, distinguishing between three types of supervenience: weak, strong and global. Kim further proved that strong and global supervenience are equivalent. However, three years later, Kim argued that strong supervenience is stronger than global supervenience, while weak supervenience and global supervenience are independent of (...) each other. This paper demonstrates that Kim’s conclusion that weak supervenience and global supervenience are independent of each other is wrong. The strength of strong, weak and global supervenience decreases in turn with the latter entailed by the former. This paper also corrects some defects in Kim’s argument and his formulation of strong and weak supervenience, and then further explores the relationship between the three types of supervenience and their philosophical significance. It also classifies other terms of supervenience such as layered supervenience, macro-micro supervenience, and mereological superveniece as relationships of the strong, weak and global. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Broome criticizes reasons-responsiveness conceptions of rationality by arguing that while rationality supervenes on non-factive mental states, reasons-responsiveness in the relevant sense does not. I give a limited defence of reasons-responsiveness conceptions of rationality against Broome’s criticisms. I argue that Broome fails to show that reasons-responsiveness conceptions of rationality are barred from regarding non-factive mental duplicates as equally rational in the sorts of ‘New Evil Demon’ scenarios that tend to motivate the intuition that rationality supervenes on non-factive mental states. Still, (...) while reasons-responsiveness conceptions may be able to save our intuitions in such global deception scenarios, I also argue that reasons-responsiveness conceptions have to make surprisingly large concessions in cases of more local deception. Indeed, supervenience failures in local deception cases look rampant. Nonetheless, it is not clear why reasons-responsiveness conceptions should be concerned about this. This is because it is not clear why the idea that rationality supervenes on non-factive mental states should be the kind of non-negotiable starting point for theorizing about rationality that Broome thinks it is. For example, Errol Lord, a recent proponent of a reasons-responsiveness conception of rationality, self-consciously rejects a perfectly general supervenience thesis, regarding it as more important that our conception of rationality satisfies different desiderata: namely, that rationality is normatively significant, and that evaluations of rationality or irrationality imply person-level praise or criticism. Interestingly, Broome regards these latter desiderata as less important, and they are also desiderata that his own conception of rationality has more trouble satisfying. Ultimately, then, disputes between different conceptions of rationality turn in part on disputes concerning which desiderata for a conception of rationality are most important and why. (shrink)

The doctrine of Microphysical Supervenience (MS) states that: Necessarily, if atoms A1 through An compose an object that exemplified intrinsic qualitative properties Q1 through Qn, then atoms like A1 through An (in all their respective intrinsic qualitative properties), related to one another by all the same restricted atom-to-atom relations as A1 through An, compose an object that exemplifies Q1 through Qn. I show that MS entails a contradiction and so must be rejected. And my argument against MS provides the (...) resources to show that Global Microphysical Supervenience (GMS) is false. GMS states that possible worlds qualitatively exactly alike at the microphysical level are qualitatively exactly alike at the macrophysical level. (shrink)

Some argue, following Bertrand Russell, that because general truths are not entailed by particular truths, general facts must be posited to exist in addition to particular facts. I argue on the contrary that because general truths (globally) supervene on particular truths, general facts are not needed in addition to particular facts; indeed, if one accepts the Humean denial of necessary connections between distinct existents, one can further conclude that there are no general facts. When entailment and supervenience do not (...) coincide it is only failure of supervenience, not failure of entailment, that carries ontological import. (shrink)

Jeff Wisdom has recently defended the proposition that any view of moral supervenience worth its salt must incorporate a diachronic view of base property exemplification. Let us call the proposition defended by Wisdom p. In this paper, I try to show that Wisdom has offered no good reasons for accepting p. My argumentative strategy proceeds along two separate tracks. First, I try to show that the thought experiment Wisdom employs in order to underwrite p does not offer the intended (...) support for the proposition. Secondly, I try to show that even if the problems with the thought experiment in question are ignored, there is at least one other reason for thinking that Wisdom has not offered a convincing argument in favor of p. (shrink)