PAUL AUDI
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ABSTRACTS OF WORK IN PROGRESS:
If you would like to read a draft of one of these papers, feel free to contact me.
"Property Identity and Non-Causal Determination."
"Freedom, Backtracking, and the Fixity of the Past."
"Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation."
"New Resources for Antireductionism."
"How Do Properties Account for Causal Powers?"
"What the Consequence Arguments Does Not Show."
"Dispositions and Laws According to the Four-Category Ontology."
"How to Rule Out Disjunctive Properties."
"Property Identity and Non-Causal Determination."
Questions about the identity and difference of properties crop up in nearly every branch of philosophy. Is being red being disposed to reflect certain wavelengths of light? Is being good maximizing pleasure? Is being in pain being in a certain neural state? Here I argue against two influential accounts of property identity: the necessary coextension account and the causal account. Their failure calls for an alternative account, and I propose a criterion that succeeds where they fail. My account seeks to make precise the idea that the metaphysical raison d’être of properties is to play a certain kind of role in determining what facts obtain. I sketch an account of the relevant kind of determination, grounding, which I take to be the relation expressed by the phrase 'in virtue of' in certain prominent uses. Grounding is a non-causal relation of determination, and corresponds to a unique sort of explanation. I argue that properties are individuated on the basis of their roles in grounding. I close with a brief discussion of the distinctive merits of this understanding of properties.
"Freedom, Backtracking, and the Fixity of the Past."
How should the intuition that the past is “fixed” be cashed out? In particular, does the fixity of the past entail that there are no true backtracking counterfactuals? These issues bear importantly on the question of whether freedom and determinism are compatible. If the fixity of the past can be reconciled with the truth of certain backtracking counterfactuals, then there is a way to resist some of the strongest arguments for incompatibilism, notably Peter van Inwagen's consequence argument. Here I argue that the most plausible construals of the fixity of the past are compatible with the truth of the relevant backtrackers. Compatibilism, for that reason, has a promising line of response to particularly troublesome incompatibilist objections. The response depends on, among other things, David Lewis's distinction between weak and strong senses of rendering false. Lewis applies that distinction to the laws, arguing that we are able to render false (in the weak sense) propositions stating laws of nature. I apply the distinction to the past, arguing that we are able to render false (in the weak sense) propositions stating facts about the past. After showing how this can be reconciled to the fixity of the past, I answer objections to my appeal to backtracking counterfactuals.
"Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation."
What do we express when we use the phrase 'in virtue of'? I argue that we express a unique relation of determination, grounding, that is closely tied to the natures of properties. Here I attempt to shed light on the relation of grounding by illustrating an approach to metaphysics in which grounding is fundamental. This approach is intended as an alternative to causal-structuralism, the Eleatic principle, and Lewis's Humean Supervenience. Some of what I say presupposes that these views leave something out. My point is not to show that they are false, but only to show how some of their consequences may be avoided. After explaining why we should recognize grounding, I articulate logical principles of grounding and discuss their metaphysical consequences. I distinguish grounding from causation and supervenience and show how my theory of grounding sheds new light on three important philosophical issues: property identity, the mind-body problem, and moral generalism.
"New Resources for Antireductionism."
This paper outlines a new approach to the ontology of mental properties. The backbone of this approach is a fine-grained conception of properties, opposed to the view that the essence of a property is exhausted by its causal role. On my view, properties are individuated by their roles in grounding, a non-causal relation of determination to be explicated. I use this account of property identity to argue that mental properties are not identical to physical or functional properties. I appeal to the idea that a person’s mental properties play a role in grounding facts about what reasons that person has that no physical or functional fact could play. I defend that claim briefly, distinguish three kinds of antireductionism that take account of it, and show how each inherits certain advantages from my hyperintensional conception of properties and grounding.
In this paper, I argue that we must recognize a noncausal relation of determination. Such a relation is needed to underwrite the correctness of certain explanations that cannot be plausibly understood as causal explanations. I argue that we need recognize only one such relation, grounding. I discuss the nature of determination in general, and then grounding in particular. Grounding, on my view, is tied intimately to the natures of properties. I show why the idea of grounding comes apart from the idea of reality as divided into ontological levels. I then show how grounding can be used to formulate a fine-grained criterion of identity for properties, and illustrate the resulting hyperintensional ontology with a discussion of the mind-body problem.
"How Do Properties Account for Causal Powers?"
Properties account at least in part for the causal relations in which particular stand. But precisely how do they do so? In this paper, I discuss four ways of understanding how properties account for causal powers. First, I discuss the view, sometimes called causal structuralism, that properties are pure powers. Against this view, I will propose a version of the objection that pure powers lack any intrinsic nature, and so cannot be what properties are. The objection may not be decisive, but it gives us reason to prefer the view that even if properties are powers, they are not pure powers. On this view, powers have a dual nature, powerful and qualitative, and qualities are identical with powers. I introduce this view, the identity theory, and show how it depends on a particular account of power individuation. Then I argue that the identity theory fails. I go on to consider the view that properties account for powers by being truthmakers for power ascriptions. I show how this idea is compatible with a variety of views about the relation between properties and powers, and argue that properties cannot be taken to account for powers merely by being truthmakers for power ascriptions. Finally, I consider the view that qualities ground causal powers. I discuss what would be required of the relevant notion of grounding, and conclude this view provides the best answer to the question of how properties account for causal powers. I sketch an account of properties according to which qualities grounds powers. In particular, I defend the idea that properties are quiddities that are individuated by their roles in the network of grounding relations.
"What the Consequence Arguments Does Not Show."
Peter van Inwagen's consequence argument presents a powerful argument for incompatibilism. I assume, for present purposes, that the consequence argument proves that a unique future (and each of our actions in that future) is unavoidable, but that this is something compatibilists can concede. For it is consistent with the inevitability of a given event that someone (indeed, an inhabitant of a deterministic world) contribute to determining that the event will occur. Thus, the consequence argument does not show that we do not contribute to determining our actions, and hence to determining what the future will be. This gives the compatibilist some traction on the question of what grounds our freedom and responsibility. While our actions and their consequences may be inevitable, there remains a perfectly good sense in which we may contribute to bringing them about.
"Dispositions and Laws According to the Four-Category Ontology."
E. J. Lowe's four-category ontology presents a fascinating and innovative strategy for understanding dispositions and laws of nature. The strategy depends especially on the category of a substantial universal or natural kind, of which substantial particulars are instances. Laws, on Lowe's view, are relationships between natural kinds and non-substantial universals (properties). Dispositions, too, are understood by means of this relationship. For a particular thing to be disposed to be F is for it to belong to a natural kind characterized by the non-substantial universal of F-ness (whether or not it has an F-ness trope, the having of which would make it occurrently F). Here I grant Lowe the four categories but raise questions concerning his understanding of the relations between them, and in particular, whether these relations can provide an adequate understanding of natural laws and dispositions. I close by drawing out the lessons for the metaphysics of dispositions and laws that we learn by examining Lowe’s view.
"How to Rule Out Disjunctive Properties."
Many of us are persuaded that that are no disjunctive properties, or at least that there is not a property corresponding to every arbitrary disjunction of properties. Redness is a property and roundness is a property, yet there is no property of being red-or-round. One intuitive reason to deny that there is such a property is that it would fail to mark off a genuine dimension of similarity among things. That is, a property ought to guarantee that its instances are similar to one another, and indeed, are similar in respect of that property. Can this intuition be made into a precise necessary condition of being a property that rules out disjunctive properties? Can it be made so without at the same time ruling out determinable properties and functional properties? (Even many who reject those would agree that they fail on different grounds from arbitrary disjunctions of properties.) Here I offer a strategy for ruling out disjunctive properties in a way that leaves open the possibility of determinable and functional properties.