Course Description for Phil. 780: Vindicating Explanatory Reductions
J.Dowell

Following Frank Jackson, call “serious metaphysics” any attempt to say what the world is like “in terms of a limited number of more or less basic notions”.[1] Call “a general serious metaphysical thesis” (or “a general thesis”, for short) any serious metaphysical thesis that identifies a particular set of notions as the privileged, basic ones.  (Physicalism, the thesis that everything is physical, is one such example.)  Call “a particular serious metaphysical thesis” (or “a particular thesis”, for short) any serious metaphysical thesis that specifies which non-basic truths[2] are made true by which more fundamental ones.  (An example of a particular thesis in the philosophy of mind is the thesis that the pain truths are made true by what makes the C-fiber firing truths true or pain is C-fibers firing.  A metaethical example is the thesis that goodness for x just is the satisfaction of x’s ideal desires.)  Particular theses are important because they are the solutions to the various location problems any general thesis is faced with, that is, the problems of locating the various non-basic truths in the basic ones.  Absent identifying where a putative, non-basic truth is located among the basic ones, a general thesis is forced to eliminate putative truths of that non-basic kind as holding onto such truths, absent their location among the basic ones, falsifies the general thesis.  (An example here is the forced choice of either giving up the existence of pain or rejecting physicalism, if the pain truths cannot be located among the physical ones.)

Recently, a debate has emerged over what is required to defend a particular metaphysical thesis against its rivals.  Two questions must be distinguished here.  The first is the question of what is required to defend a particular metaphysical thesis against its rivals when some general thesis, such as physicalism, is assumed by all parties to the dispute.  In such cases, what is shared by all of the particular theses at issue is the assumption as to which set of notions are the basic ones in terms of which particular theses may be formulated.

This is an interesting and important question, but not the subject of the recent debate of concern in this course.  At issue there will be how to answer the second question, the question of what, if anything, is required to vindicate a particular thesis when there is no general thesis shared by the disputants.  How best to answer this question is precisely what is at issue between, on the one side, Frank Jackson and David Chalmers (and others, such as Brie Gertler) and, on the other, Ned Block, Robert Stalnaker and Joe Levine.  For their part, Jackson, Chalmers, and Gertler[3] all hold that conceptual analysis in a reserved sense is required for the adequate defense of particular metaphysical theses.  This is just what Block, Stalnaker, and Levine[4] all deny.  In denying the need for conceptual analysis, each offers an account of what, in the absence of analysis, would be sufficient to vindicate particular metaphysical theses. I myself am tempted by the view that Block, Stalnaker, and Levine are right to reject the claim that conceptual analysis in the Jackson/Chalmers sense is required to vindicate particular theses.  However, I am also inclined to agree with Jackson, Chalmers, and Gertler, who argue that the Block/Stalnaker/Levine account of what would be sufficient to vindicate particular theses is not in fact sufficient.  One of our topics shall be whether there isn’t a new ‘have our cake and eat it too’ account of what, in the absence of analysis, would be sufficient to vindicate particular metaphysical theses, one that accepts, with Jackson and Chalmers, that vindicating such theses requires saying something about how the world is such that it is ‘epistemically transparent’ why the particular thesis is, in fact, true.[5]

This literature is in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics, yet how this debate is resolved has important implications for almost every subfield in philosophy.  Philosophy is rife with particular theses and debates about their truth.  We want to know in the philosophy of mind whether phenomenal states are just physical states, in metaethics, whether goodness is identical to some natural property, and in epistemology, whether belief justification is nothing more than having a belief that is caused in the right way.  By what method, if any, we might resolve the disputes about the truth of such theses is precisely the concern of this course.

To this end, we’ll focus primarily on the literature in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics on explanatory reductions (as what I’m calling “particular theses” are sometimes also called), their proper formulation, and on the different methods for vindicating them and the comparative merits of those methods.  This literature will include seminal works by two of our April visitors, namely, Frank Jackson and Terry Horgan.  In addition, we’ll consider as a case study, some of the work by each of these authors on explanatory reductions in ethics.