Formulating Physicalism || On Ensuring That Physicalism Is Not a Dual Attribute Theory in Sheep's...

On Ensuring That Physicalism Is Not a Dual Attribute Theory in Sheep's ClothingAuthor(s): Frank JacksonSource: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition, Vol. 131, No. 1, Formulating Physicalism (Oct., 2006), pp. 227-249Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25471804 .

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Philosophical Studies (2006) 131:227-249 ? Springer 2006

DOI 10.1007/sl 1098-006-5989-3

FRANK JACKSON

ON ENSURING THAT PHYSICALISM IS NOT A DUAL ATTRIBUTE THEORY IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

ABSTRACT. Physicalists are committed to the determination without re

mainder of the psychological by the physical, but are they committed to this

determination being a priorV. This paper distinguishes this question under

stood de dicto from this question understood de re, argues that understood

de re the answer is yes in a way that leaves open the answer to the question understood de dicto.

1. A central theme in Australian materialism -

the version of

materialism advanced most especially by Jack Smart, David

Armstrong, David Lewis and Brian Medlin in the 1950s and 1960s - is that it is not a dual attribute theory of mind.1 To

put it roughly to start with (we'll be more precise later), spooky properties are rejected along with spooky substances.

The target of the Australian materialists is dualism, be it of a

dual substance or a dual attribute style. In their view, the

arguments against substance dualism apply mutatis mutandis

to attribute dualism; they hold, for example, that progress in neuroscience shows that spooky properties and spooky partic ulars equally would be epiphenomenal and so both idle and

beyond our ken. We will call the properties they thought kosher, physical

properties, and follow their sometime practice of marking the anti-dual attribute nature of their version of materialism by calling it physicalism. For the moment, we can think of physi cal properties as those that appear in the physical sciences

broadly conceived: chemistry, neuroscience, biology and the

like, as well as physics. An interesting issue is whether physi calists should also be physics-alists; that is to say, whether

they should hold that physics is special among the physical



228 FRANK JACKSON

sciences in providing, in some sense, a full account of what our world is like. We will not address this issue here. Our touchstone for being physical will be the physical sciences

broadly conceived. For us, the question on the table is the view that psychological properties are physical in the wider sense of properties that appear in the physical sciences, where

what "appear" comes to is major business on the agenda. We

can now put the Australian materialists' contention as that, in addition to token mental states, events, processes and so on

being identical to physical ones (brain ones in fact), psychological properties are identical to physical properties.

It was the contention about mental properties that brought analysis and the a priori into the debate. Many physicalists held that in order to identify psychological properties with

physical ones, they needed to offer an analysis of some suit able kind of psychological sentences. Smart gave us his topic neutral analyses, Armstrong his central state theory, and Lewis appealed to his Carnap-Ramsey approach to defining psychological terms.2 Today many, maybe most, physicalists hold that they do not need to offer analyses, or anyway not

analyses in the traditional sense of a priori true bicondition

al, with psychological sentences on one side and physical or

topic-neutral or functional ones on the other. Moreover - to

pick up on an issue that has become prominent more recently -

they hold that physicalists are not committed to the weaker claim that there are a priori true conditionals that go from the physical to the psychological.3 They grant that

physicalism is committed to determination, as a matter of

metaphysical necessity, of the psychological by the physical, but argue that it is like the determination of where water is

located by where H20 is located: an a posteriori necessity.

Physicalists of this persuasion sometimes call themselves a

posteriori physicalists, and those of the more traditional per suasion are sometimes called a priori physicalists. But, of

course, the division is not over whether physicalism is a priori true or whether it is a posteriori true. Every (almost) physical ist holds that its truth is an a posteriori matter (and many



PHYSICALISM IS NOT A DUAL ATTRIBUTE THEORY 229

that it is in addition a contingent matter). The division is

over whether physicalists are committed to there being a priori biconditionals linking the physical to the psychologi cal or, in the more recent debate, a priori true conditionals

going from the physical to the psychological. 2. So much by way of historical stage-setting. In this paper

I want to examine the role of the a priori in the physicalism debate from a different perspective: the avowedly metaphysi cal perspective. Physicalism is a doctrine in metaphysics. This

means that it should be possible to identify the issue, or any

way an issue, between a priori and a posteriori physicalism which is an issue in metaphysics per se and not one about the

analysis of psychological terms, or whether or not certain

conditionals are a priori. I start by identifying the relevant notion of a property in

play when we physicalists insist that we are not dual attribute

theorists, that our thesis is inter alia about psychological properties. We then turn to the well-worn issue of how to

identify the physical properties, the properties that physical ists hold include, in some good sense, the psychological prop erties. Here I will argue that there are two parts to that issue

which it is crucial to keep separate. This allows us to identify the key issue in metaphysics

- in the metaphysics of how

aggregations and their parts can be alike and unalike, as we will see ? that divides a priori from a posteriori physicalism considered as doctrines in metaphysics. The thrust of our dis cussion will be sympathetic to a priori physicalism when understood as a doctrine in metaphysics, understood de re if

you like. We will not be discussing further the debate between a priori and a posteriori physicalism understood de

dicto, as a doctrine about psychological and physical

language.4 3. There is an issue in analytic ontology about whether

properties exist, and what sorts of things they are if they do. This debate is no part of physicalism; physicalism is a doctrine in speculative cosmology.5 In discussions of physical ism, we can think of properties (in the sense that includes



230 FRANK JACKSON

relations) as patterns in nature, as likenesses, as kinds in the most inclusive sense. The particulars around us are alike and

differ, one from another, in various ways including relational

ways, and the question of what the minded creatures in our

world are like - the question physicalism takes a stand on by holding that, in some sense, what they are like is entirely physical

- is nothing other than the question of the distribu tion of likenesses and unlikenesses, of the patterns or kinds, among the minded creatures in our world.

In these terms, the key claim of dual attribute theorists is that minded, and especially conscious beings with mental states that display a phenomenology, are alike in ways that outrun anything in the physicalists' conception of how things are and what they are like; that there are more (instantiated) patterns than are dreamed of in the physicalists' metaphysics; that there are kinds -

especially those distinctive of conscious

subjects having mental states with a phenomenology - that

some things, including humans, belong to, which are radically different from any kind contemplated in physical theory. Certain positions in analytic ontology hold that when there is a pattern, a similarity or a kind, there exists, in addition to

the things that resemble one another, a property that each

resembling thing instantiates; other positions hold that all we

need to admit in our ontology is a resemblance class. Posi

tions of the first kind are styles of Platonism; positions of the

second are styles of resemblance nominalism. What matters

for us is that the debate between the two positions in analytic

ontology does not matter for us.

There are two points to emphasise about patterns, similari

ties and kinds, in the sense that concerns us. First, they can

be highly disjunctive. Anything projectable in even the weak

est sense counts. (So 'kind' does not mean natural kind.) Three square things are alike to a fourth square thing in an

obvious, nondisjunctive way -

the way we master when we

master what we are saying about how something is when use

the term square. But even being square-or-heavy counts as a

pattern, similarity or kind, because we are able to say of an




item whether or not it falls under it: we exercise the ability when we say that a feather doesn't, whereas lead and square

pieces of thin paper do. Of course, some patterns are of much more interest than others, and in setting the bar very low for

patternhood, we are not setting the bar very low for patterns of interest. We will be discussing patterns of interest in what

follows, especially those of psychology and how they relate to those of the physical sciences.

Second, our concern as enquirers into the metaphysics of

physicalism is with patterns in nature, not in conception. To use the hoary example, being an equiangular triangle and being an equilateral triangle are one and same pattern, kind or simi

larity in nature. There is a single shape similarity -

there aren't

two different shapes somehow stuck on top of each other - but there are, in some sense, two concepts. It was a discovery that

the equiangular and equilateral triangles are necessarily co

extensive, and making that discovery involved showing that two conceptions picked out the same feature in reality.

4. We said near the beginning that the physical properties are roughly those with a place in the physical sciences broad

ly conceived. If we think of physicalism as more than a

theory of mind alone but as a theory of everything in space time, as many physicalists do, this specification would seem to mean that physicalism should be immediately rejected.

Being elected by a narrow majority is a property of some

governments but it is not a property that appears in the phys ical sciences. The same goes for a host of properties that fig

ure in politics, economics, sociology and so on. The point here is not one about the words for the properties. There are

big differences between the language of politics and the lan

guage of neuroscience, for example, but that does not show

that their terms pick out different properties. The point is that social sciences like politics and economics classify items

together in ways that cut across the classifications in the

physical sciences; the patterns and kinds they traffic in are

not, in the main, the patterns the physical sciences traffic in.6 There are big differences in extension, not merely in words.7



232 FRANK JACKSON

It might seem that this problem arises from giving physical ism the wider remit, so providing us with good reason to

narrow its scope to the mind. There are two problems with this response. The first is that one of the main arguments for

physicalism about the mind can be deployed more widely. We mentioned the argument that progress in neuroscience threat

ens dual attribute theories of mind with epiphenomenalism. But the essentials of the argument can be deployed without mention of neuroscience under the heading of the causal closure of the physical. Under that heading, it makes trouble for the claim that being elected by a narrow margin has causal

consequences in the physical world unless it is a physical prop erty. Surely, being elected by a narrow margin on occasion

causes, for example, the writing of the phrase "was elected by a narrow margin" in newspapers, and that constitutively involves the movement of various molecules (of ink, paper, arms that do the writing etc.). But the causal closure of the

physical tells us that the movement of molecules is caused by the physical alone.

The second problem is that it takes a certain amount of

complexity and size to have a psychology. C-fibres' firing in isolation

- in a test tube, say -

would not make a creature

in pain even were it the case that pain in us is C-fibres' fir

ing. How much complexity and size is controversial and de

pends on issues to do with ideological and externalist theories of content that we will steer clear of. But it is very

much on the cards that the size and complexity required to

make a creature with a psychology is great enough, and idi

osyncratic enough from the perspective of the physical sci

ences, to mean that the properties we might plausibly

identify with psychological properties are not one and all

properties that appear in the physical sciences. (Some will be

of course: position for example.) The cross-classification

point we made in connection with politics, sociology and

economics may well apply to psychology. It may well be

that the relevant similarity between creatures alike in believ

ing that they are likely to receive a tax audit does not




match up with any similarity that figures in neuroscience,

biology, chemistry or physics. It is fortunate for physicalism, therefore, that the quick dis

missal of it rests on conflating two questions that need to be

kept apart: one is what counts as a physical property in the core sense -

physical properties as I will call them; the second is what counts as a physical property in an extended sense to

be discussed shortly. It is the extended sense that physicalists need in stating their view of mind and world, and it is in the extended sense that physicalists can claim, with some plausi bility, that mind and world have purely physical natures.

5. There are two ways of defining physical], the core

notion, depending on whether one is an optimist or a pessi mist about current physical science. Optimists hold that al

though current physical science will need emendation in many places

- both in terms of its laws and in terms of what those laws operate on by way of objects and properties

- current

physical science is far enough along the road to completed physical science for us to have a grasp by extrapolation of what kinds of properties might appear in completed physical science - call them physicalc properties fc' for completed).

There is no presumption that completed physical science will ever be in our possession, only that we can know it will be

roughly like current physical science, or, better, enough like current physical science in all respects that matter for

psychology and the social sciences more generally. Pessimists think this is hopeless. We can have no confi

dence that anything like the properties that appear in current

physical science will appear in the final account. However, we

can sensibly talk of the properties needed to give a complete account of everything there is that lacks a psychology. Qua pessimists, we hold that we have no real idea of what these

properties in their totality might be (although, surely, proper ties at least somewhat like mass, force, position and shape

will appear) but we can sensibly talk of the properties need to handle the non-minded - call them physicaln (n for no mind).



234 FRANK JACKSON

We can accordingly specify physical] properties either as

physical, or as physicaln properties, depending on our degree of pessimism. It would tedious to keep on inserting the 'c' or the n, so I will simply use physical from now on. The argu

mentation to follow is independent of which way is the right way to cash out the core notion of a physical property.8 Al

though some have argued that the delineation of the physical is a major problem, it has always seemed to me that we have a good enough idea of what physicalists have in mind to

make sense of the debate over physicalism.9 But it may be that some of the worries turn on the issue we now turn to, that of finding the needed, extended sense of physical prop

erty. 6. We need, as we saw earlier, an extended sense because

the patterns that economics, architecture, politics and very

arguably psychology, pick out and theorise in terms of, in clude many that do not figure in the physical sciences. The reason is no mystery: it is that aggregation creates new prop

erties (in the sense of new property instances) because aggre

gations fall under patterns, kinds etc. that the items they are

aggregations of do not fall under. A house which is imposing is an aggregation of items that are not; a flat economy is an

aggregation of items that are not flat (in the relevant sense); and so on. Physicalists must allow that the world contains

aggregations that have properties that are not physical prop erties for the same reason, when all is said and done, that

someone who holds, rightly, that a triangle is an aggregation of straight lines must allow that the triangle is not itself a

straight line. Because we know for sure that many aggrega

tions have properties that are not physical properties, the

debate over physicalism must - if it is to be worth pursuing -

turn on whether all the aggregations that there are in our

world have only physical properties in an extended sense. I

will introduce the needed extended sense by reminding of the

kind of exercise that is common in what are called construc

tion problems in geometry.10




We are given a limited stock of basic materials and a lim

ited range of ways of operating with those materials, and are

asked what kinds of things can and cannot be constructed. For example, we know that with a ruler and compass alone,

it is possible to construct a regular polygon of n sides for n =

3, 4, 5 and 6, but not for n = l. We also know, famously, that it is not possible to square the circle. However, to fix our

ideas we will take a very easy example. Given an unlimited

supply of finite straight lines of any length, all lying in a

plane, what closed figures can be constructed simply by mov

ing the lines around in the plane? The answer is that we can construct figures like

but we cannot construct figures like

O (o) ?^

Here we have identified the kinds of figures constructible from our meagre stock of ingredients and methods of combi nation. The properties, patterns, kinds exemplified in the top row are among those instantiated by what we can construct; those exemplified in the second row are among those we

cannot construct. And the kinds we can construct outrun the

kinds that our basic ingredients fall under.11 By putting an

appropriate selection of the basic ingredients together in cer tain ways, we make new kinds. The ability to make new

kinds from a selection of basic ingredients and modes of

composition is, of course, why people buy Lego and Mec cano sets. Notice also that the new kinds include relational

kinds, or they do when we place the constructions into ar

rays. In the top row, we have a figure that has the property of being one of two triangles, that of being a larger triangle than at least one other triangle in the row, and that of being next to a five-sided figure. In geometry we are typically inter



236 FRANK JACKSON

ested in the intrinsic properties of the possible constructions but our concerns here are wider.

Now one well-known way to think of physicalism is as a

composition thesis. Consciousness and temperature and life, while not appearing in the inventory of physical ingredients, are nothing more than what we get if we put the right ingredi ents together aright.12 It is like what one can do with Lego but with a much richer set of ingredients and modes of

composition (and more interesting results). There are no tow

ers in the basic Lego bits but the towers we can make are

nothing more than certain aggregations of the basic Lego bits. We can now introduce the needed, extended sense of

physical property or kind or pattern or similarity. We saw

in our geometrical example that aggregation enlarges the class of kinds, the patterns that are realised. In the same

way, aggregating physical ingredients enlarges the kinds of

things there are. But I should emphasise that aggregation here does not mean the physical act of putting together the

physical i ingredients. What happens when you move atoms

around inside force fields or bring electrons into close prox

imity is not to the point. In this regard, the familiar talk mentioned above of creating by putting together is usefully evocative but potentially misleading. It is aggregation in the

mereological sense that is to the point. We can think of it this way. Our world is a vast four-dimensional entity in

space-time. Physicalism holds that this huge thing is nothing more than an aggregation in the mereological sense of phys

ical i items, where items covers things and properties (where

properties includes interrelations between items) equally. Our

world, according to physicalism, is the fusion of a proton at

point p, located inside a force field of value v, x cm away from three electrons moving in direction d, and so on and

so forth (assuming being a proton, being x cm away, etc.

are physical^. Now consider the various regions, including scattered ones,

in this huge aggregation. They will be alike and unalike in

ways that vastly outrun the physical \, in the same way that




the figures in our geometrical example have likeness and

unlikenesses that outrun those of the base ingredients. The

kinds the regions fall under will be vastly greater than the

physical i kinds. A physical property in the extended sense -

from now on, physical unadorned -

is any property, pattern,

likeness or kind exemplified by one of these regions. And we

can state physicalism as the doctrine that all (instantiated) kinds are physical in this sense. Two obvious consequences of

this definition are that the physical includes the physical i, and

that the physical supervenes on the physical t. 7. We are now in a position to identify the metaphysical

point at issue between a priori and a posteriori physicalism qua doctrines in metaphysics. In our geometrical example, for

any aggregation of line segments arranged in such and such a

way in a plane, it is a priori that that aggregation, so ar

ranged, has the shape it does, and more generally, for any

aggregation of line segments in a plane and for each possibly scattered region of that aggregation, the properties the region has

- shape, relative location, extension, number of gaps, rel

ative size, etc. - are a priori determined by the make up of

the aggregation (a special case of being a priori determined by the aggregation is being a priori determined by a part of it).

Take, for example, the aggregation below, where the dotted lines are not part of the aggregation but merely identify the

regions we will discuss.

O ^7

The fact that the left-hand region contains one triangle, two closed figures and no square is a priori determined by the

aggregation -

by what is aggregated and how it is aggregated. The same goes for similarities and dissimilarities between

regions in general. The aggregation - what is aggregated and

how it is aggregated - a priori determines the similarities that

obtain between the regions. For instance, the fact that the



238 FRANK JACKSON

two regions are alike in containing two closed figures and unlike in how many lines they contain is a priori determined

by the aggregation. Why is this determination a priori!13 Absent an account of

the a priori -

something for a paper (or a book) in itself - we can say this. It is obvious that the determination is logical. The aggregation fixes without remainder the likenesses and unlikenesses between the regions. Moreover, all the informa

tion that might bear on the question is there, available in the nature of the aggregation. It would be misconceived to ask for additional information to settle the question of which similarities are determined. (The situation is quite different from that which obtains when we ask whether or not the

location of H20 fixes the location of water.) This is not, of

course, to say that the similarities are always immediately obvious or transparent. But it is to say that the similarities are in principle accessible without recourse to experience; that is what it means to say that all the information is available; and that is what it is to be a priori.

In general it will be true that aggregations made up of items from geometry will be such that the properties of their

various regions -

including relational ones like similarities

and differences between regions - are a priori determined by

the aggregation. What about aggregations whose elements

(their parts and modes of arrangement equally) are one and

all taken from the physical ! - of which one example is our

world according to physicalism? Considered as doctrines in

metaphysics, a priori physicalism affirms and a posteriori

physicalism denies that what applies in the geometrical case

applies to aggregations in physical i spaces, namely, that the

what and how of the make up of the aggregations a priori determines their properties, including those of their possibly scattered regions. What a priori physicalism affirms is a kind

of closure principle: it limits the kinds under which the

regions in our world fall to those a priori determined by the

make up of the huge aggregation of the physical i that is our




world according to physicalists.14 I will call the principle: 'a

priori kind closure for the physical {. Here is how a priori kind closure impacts on the debate

about consciousness for physicalists. Take all the regions in our world where there is consciousness. They are alike in

being instances of consciousness. Or rather, they are alike

in many ways but what unites them of interest to us is their

being instances of consciousness. (Maybe there is a single uni ter if we consider all the conscious beings in logical space.)

We can think of consciousness, the type, as the relevant unifier of the scattered region of space-time where there is consciousness. There is no presumption that this unifier is

intrinsic. For instance, if certain functionalist views are

correct, we know that it will be highly relational, and if cer

tain teleological views are correct, the unifier will be in part historical. Physicalists of both the a priori and the a posteriori stripe agree that each and every conscious being is nothing

more than a very complex aggregation of the physical] set in a world which is itself a huge aggregation of the physical].15 But if a priori kind closure in general is true, or if a priori kind closure for physical] aggregations in particular is true,

physicalists must in addition allow that the alikeness in ques tion -

being conscious - is a priori determined by the total

physical] aggregation, as a priori physicalists maintain.16

A priori kind closure is a principle in metaphysics. Whether it is true or false is like the issue as to whether it is true or false that it is a priori that to be is to be determinate, or whe ther it is true or false that it is a priori that a circle is the

shape with the highest ratio of area to perimeter among closed

figures in a plane. These two principles are not about words, or analyses, or entailments between sentences. The two exam

ples just given are a priori true in my view (and everyone agrees about the second of course). What about a priori kind closure in general? I find it intuitively appealing, mainly because I cannot imagine what a counter-example would look

like. Putative counter-examples always look to me like exam

ples where there is a new property; an example where we have



240 FRANK JACKSON

something more than a mere aggregation of the core ele

ments.17 To use a David Armstrong way of putting matters,

the a priori is an ontological free lunch. The essential thought behind physicalism is that our world is nothing over and above a huge aggregation of the physical x. To the objection that

aggregations have properties their elements lack, physicalists must agree, but they can negate any dualistic implications of

the concession by holding that the new properties are a priori determined by the aggregation, and in this sense are an onto

logical free lunch. The same line of thinking, applied to the

general case, tells us that if we have something which is noth

ing over and above an aggregation of elements of such and

such kinds, the properties of that aggregation had better be a priori determined by the way the such and such elements are

aggregated and the nature of what is aggregated. But I have no clear idea how to prove a priori kind closure to be true.

The best I can do is to point out that we presuppose a priori kind closure when we seek patterns, and hope that this high

lights the intuitive appeal of a priori kind closure.

8. Consider the challenge of decoding honeybee dances.

Despite their complexity, we know that these dances fall into

various patterns or kinds. This is how the dances are able to

give the bees useful information (at the subpersonal level) about the location of honey.18 When Karl von Frisch (1947) and others set out to decode the dances, they looked for the

properties in the makeup of the dances; they broke the dances

and their environmental settings into arranged components in

their search for the patterns. And they took it for granted that

finding the answers was a matter of finding the properties of

the ways the bits go together that a priori determine the pat terns in question. The idea that we might have a sui generis pat tern that emerges without being a priori determined by the

nature of the aggregated elements was never on the table. Here,

for example, is one account of how the honey bee dance provides information about direction taken from: http://www.cals.ncsu.

edu:8050/entomology/apiculture/Dance_language.html




The orientation of the dancing bee during the straight portion of her

waggle dance indicates the location of the food source relative to the sun.

The angle that the bee adopts, relative to vertical, represents the angle to

the flowers relative to the direction of the sun outside of the hive. In other words, the dancing bee transposes the solar angle into the gravita tional angle.

The important point for us is not whether or not this account is correct but the methodological one that the task is taken to be to find the right properties of the elements,

including the position of the sun in this example. The meth

odological principle that governs the search for patterns in

complex mereological sums is that the kinds they belong to are a priori determined by the properties of their components (where we include the way the components are arranged as

properties of the components), which is our closure principle. Another way of putting a priori kind closure is that by

going more fine-grained one does not lose information -

al

though one may lose transparency of information, as a pat tern that is obvious in an aggregation may be hard to spot

when expressed in terms of features of that which is aggre gated. That is the moral of the old saying about not being able to see the wood (forest) for the trees and of Hilary Put nam's 1973 square peg-round hole example.

9. Some who describe themselves as a posteriori physicalists

may well say that all they want to insist on is the failure of a

priori entailment from sentences framed in physical] terms to

those framed in psychological terms, or the failure of any thing like the analyses that have been offered of the psycho logical in terms of the physical]. They are happy to agree

with an a priori physicalism framed in terms of the metaphys ics of kinds or patterns in mereological wholes. It is the de

dicto version of a priori physicalism they resist. But in any case, some a posteriori physicalists must agree with a priori

physicalism in the de re sense, it seems to me. I have in mind a posteriori physicalists who express their doctrine as the combination of two theses.19 The first is that each psychologi cal property is identical with some physical] property in the sense that identities like



242 FRANK JACKSON

Pain = C-fibres' firing

Belief that snow is white = jB-fibres'firing

are necessarily true -

not those precise examples of course,

but ones akin to them - where they are to be read as type or

property identities. It is this thesis, these physicalists urge, that ensures that they are not dual attribute theorists. For a

dual attribute theorist can consistently allow that each pain token is a token of C-fibres' firing by adding that C-fibres'

firing has, in addition to its neurological properties, a special, maybe epiphenomenal, painy property.20 The a posteriori physicalists I have in mind make it clear that their view is not a dual attribute theory by identifying pain, the type, with C-fibres' firing, the type. Each and every psychological prop erty is identical to some uncontroversially physical property. Secondly, they maintain that what makes them a posteriori physicalists is that, in their view, all identities like these are a posteriori.

Anyone who affirms identities akin to those just listed in

having a psychological state-type name on the LHS and a

neurological state-type name on the RHS is affirming a spe cies of a priori physicalism, as we have specified it qua doc

trine in metaphysics. The physical array a priori determines where there is C-fibres' firing and 5-fibres' firing. Indeed, it is

likely that C and ^-fibres" firing are themselves physical\ properties because it is likely that they appear in final neuro

science. (And if they don't, the right identities for these physi calists to appeal to in order to distance themselves from dual

attribute theories would need to appropriately different. At some point in their account, there must be identities between

psychological properties and indisputably physical ones, and

that means, in dialectical practice, ones a priori determined

by the physicali.) Saying that one or another psychological kind is one or another physical kind, or is one or another

kind that is a priori determined by the physical\, commits one

to the psychological kinds in question being a priori deter

mined by the physical], by Leibnitz's law.




Indeed, there is strong reason to hold that all a posteriori

physicalists in the de dicto sense must affirm a priori physical ism in the de re sense. As we said early on, it is widely agreed that physicalism is committed to a determination thesis - the

physical determines the psychological, albeit the substantial issues about how best to capture this determination. How

ever, there is a good reason to doubt whether a determination thesis is sufficient for the truth of physicalism; arguably, determination of the psychological by the physical is neces

sary but not sufficient for the truth of physicalism. This is be cause a live position for dual attribute theorists is that

psychological properties, while being quite distinct from phys ical properties, are necessitated by them. On this view, the

psychological is necessitated by the physical while being dis tinct from it. The relation is like that affirmed by a posteriori

necessitarians about laws of nature to hold between, for

example, being light and being a first signal: the two proper ties are distinct (in nature as well as conception) but the first a posteriori necessitates the second.21

If we can make good sense of the necessitarian dual attri bute position, we cannot specify physicalism in terms of super venience or determination, and we face the question of how, in that case, physicalists should distinguish their doctrine from

a necessitarian dual attribute view.22 As we said near the

beginning, some early presentations of physicalism took it

more or less for granted that some suitable analysis of the

psychological was needed. These physicalists can distinguish their doctrine from necessitarian dual attribute theories pre cisely on the point about analysis. Also, those physicalists

who doubt the possibility of such analyses but hold that certain conditionals running from the physical to the psycho logical are a priori true can distance themselves from necessi

tarian dual attribute theories precisely on the point about the conditionals being a priori. But for physicalists who eschew both of these approaches, there seems only one way open.

They must hold that, for each psychological property, there is a necessarily true property identity sentence -

which is a



244 FRANK JACKSON

necessary a posteriori truth, not an a priori one, because they are not a priori physicalists in the de dicto sense - of the form

*F = being such and such

where being such and such is transparently physical. What does it mean to be transparently physical? It means what it takes for it to be explicit that the view is not a dual attribute

one, and, as far as I can see, this requires being such and

such to be a priori determined by the physical \. Often this

requirement is met by making being such and such an agreed to-be physical! property, as we saw above in effect. It need

not be the case, of course, that "such and such" comes from

the terms of neuroscience. Take Lewis's approach mentioned

at the beginning. It delivers biconditional of the form

(roughly, I set aside the issue of whether there should be a

uniqueness requirement)

j is in pain iff Ex\ExiExz.. .P[xi,x2,X3,.. \hy is in xz

where P is framed in purely physical i terms and x? occupies the "pain" place. This in turn delivers property identities like

being in pain =

ExxExiExi,... Y*[x\, x2, *3,.. .Jobtains

and having the state in the / ? th place.

According to Lewis, the biconditional and the identity are

a priori true but an a posteriori physicalist on the de dicto

issue might well affirm the identity as a necessary a posteri ori truth. She or he would then be distancing themselves in

the required way from necessitarian dual attribute views, because the RHS of the identity is transparently physical; it

specifies the very arrangement of the physical] that a priori determines it.

I am not saying that there is a need to provide actual

examples of such identities. What is needed is the affirmation

that there exist truths of this form. Without a commitment to

there being such truths, I cannot see how the physicalist who

denies the possibility of analyses of the kind Armstrong, Lewis and Smart offered, and who denies a priori entailments




from physical to psychological language, has a response to

necessitarian dual attribute theorists. Somewhere along the line these physicalists have to distance themselves from dual attribute theories by making claims about what psychological properties are that are unambiguously incompatible with the view of psychological properties held by dualists. But if there are such truths, it follows that psychological properties are a

priori determined by physical] properties. 10. I will finish by considering two objections that come up

in discussion. The first objection concerns the alleged opacity of a property's being a priori determined by such and such. It runs as follows. "We all know that it is fallacious to argue on the pattern: a is believed to be F, a =

b, .*., b is believed to be F. In the same way, continues the objection, it is fallacious to

argue: X? = P9 property P is a priori determined by physical]

properties, *P, .*. is a priori determined by physical] proper

ties, but you argued in precisely this way in recruiting to a

priori physicalism those physicalists who draw on identities between psychological properties and transparently physical ones as a way of distancing themselves from dual attribute theories."

My reply is that the pattern: a is believed to be F, a = b, .*.,

b is believed to be F, can be read in two ways. If a is believed to be F and b is believed to be F are read as belief de re attri butions to a and b, respectively, the pattern is not fallacious.

It is an application of Leibnitzs law. The pattern is only falla cious if a is believed to be F and b is believed to be F are de dicto attributions of belief to the propositions that a is F and that b is F, respectively.23 Now when we argue above on the

pattern: .*. = P, property P is a priori determined by physical]

properties, .*., .*. is a priori determined by physical] properties, we are dealing with de re attributions to properties of the

property of being a priori determined by physical] properties. Our argument is an application of Leibnitz's law. We are

arguing in the same way as those who point out that if 9 is

essentially composite, then so is the number of planets (the ac tual number of planets, that is).



246 FRANK JACKSON

Secondly, there is the objection that my failure to imagine a

counter-example to a priori kind closure shows that I forgot about the water-H20 example. It is common ground that

water, the token stuff, is H20, the token stuff: Water = H20 is

a true stuff identity (setting aside possible quibbles about

steam, ionized water and so on). But many add that water, the

kind, is the very same kind as H20: Water = H20 is a true

property identity (as we note in fn. 21). Moreover, water is an

aggregation of items that are not themselves water: hydrogen and oxygen atoms are not water, for example. It follows that

being water is a feature that emerges in aggregation. But

famously it is a posteriori that H20 is water. So if those who hold that water's being H20 is a true property identity are

right, it might seem that we have a counter-example to a priori

kind closure. This would, of course, be a mistake. If water, the kind, is

the same as H20, the kind, it is a priori determined by the

aggregation of elements that make up H20 molecules because

being H20 is a priori determined by the aggregation of those

elements. There remain interesting questions about the nature

of one's knowledge that the term water applies to H20 that are outside our remit, though surely we can say that this

much is reasonably non-controversial: one can understand the

term water without knowing that it applies to H20 in all

possible worlds, and this is part of the account of why the

sentence Water = H20 is a posteriori.

NOTES

1 See, e.g., Smart (1959), Lewis (1971), Mediin (1967), and Armstrong

(1968). 2 Smart (1959), Armstrong (1968), Lewis (1972).

3 See, e.g., Block and Stalnaker (1999), and for responses Chalmers and

Jackson (2001), and Jackson (2003). 4

For a discussion of the connection between the two debates, see Jack

son (2005). 5

For the distinction between, in D. C. Williams's terms, analytic ontol

ogy and speculative cosmology, see, e.g., Campbell (1976, p. 21).




6 'Tn the main" because, of course, the physical and social sciences

have some properties in common - location for very obvious example. 7 Hence the point is also different from the point that physicalists must

allow that being square or God is instantiated in our world because being

square is: being square, and being square-or-God are co-extensive in our

world (according to physicalism). I am indebted here to a discussion with

George Bealer. 8

However, it assists exposition later to presume that the physical]

properties are those of current physical science; more on this anon. 9

See, e.g., Jackson (1998, ch. 1); for the other side see Crane and Mel

lor (1990). For more on the issue, see Block (forthcoming), and the refer

ences therein. 10

Courant and Robbins (1947, ch. 3). 11

Throughout, talk of new kinds, and kinds we can construct, means

kind instances. By putting four straight lines together in the right way, we

make a square but we do not make squareness. 12

We or God, as in the last lecture in Kripke (1980). A possible quibble: life may count as physical ! as it appears in parts of biology. 13

Thanks to John O'Dea for pressing this question, and to Daniel Stol

jar and Janice Dowell for pressing more generally on the role of the a pri ori in this paper. 14

Throughout I write as a believer in unrestricted fusion in mereology; the phrasings could with a little awkwardness be reshaped to avoid the

commitment to unrestricted fusion. 15

Some physicalists think that the sense in which conscious beings are

such aggregations is that they are constituted by them, whereas others

think that the relation can be analysed in terms of temporal parts and

identity. Nothing here turns on which approach is correct. 16

If it is a priori determined by the total physical aggregation, it is very

plausible that it will be a priori determined by something much smaller, but how much smaller depends on issues to do with externalism we can

set aside here. 17

I would say something similar about the view that we can be physical ists without holding that there is any similarity at the physical level be tween subjects that are in one or another mental state; a view some

autonomists about psychology seem to favour. If there is no similarity, psychological kinds are not projectable, which is incredible; if there is a

similarity but not in the physical, we have an extra property doctrine, a covert dual attribute theory. 18

I understand that there is some controversy about whether the dance alone carries the information or whether it is the dance plus odour clues. 19

These are the physicalists Block (forthcoming) is speaking of when he

writes, "Consider a specific phenomenal quality, Q,... The physicalist says, let us suppose, that Q

= cortico-thalamic oscillation of such and such a



248 FRANK JACKSON

kind... This is an a posteriori claim." For a defence of a theory of this

kind, see Hill (1984). 20

As in Campbell (1970, ch. 6). 21

Why don't I use the familiar water-H20 example? Because many hold

that H20 is the same kind as water, and in that case H20, the kind, a pri ori necessitates water, the kind, because every kind a priori necessitates it

self. This is discussed further in ?10. 22

Thanks to the many who have urged this point on me, especially Richard Holton. I am not resiling from the view, in e.g. Jackson (1998), that physicalism is true iff a certain supervenience doctrine is true. I am

conceding that we physicalists need to say something extra in order to dis

tance ourselves from necessitarian dual attribute theories. Although we

physicalists hold necessitarian dual attribute theories to be necessarily

false, we understand them well enough for the something extra by way of

saying to be called for. 23

Assuming, controversially, that the proposition that a is F is distinct

from the proposition that b is F, when a = b. If that is wrong, the counter

example does not get to first base.

REFERENCES

Armstrong, D.M. (1968): A Materialist Theory of the Mind, London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Block, N. and Stalnaker, R. (1999): 'Conceptual Analysis, Dualism, and the

Explanatory Gap', Philosophical Review 108, 1-46.

Block, Ned forthcoming "Max Black"s Objection to Mind-Body Identity", in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, III edn. Dean Zimmerman, Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Campbell, K. (1970): Body and Mind, London: Macmillan.

Campbell, K. (1976): Metaphysics, California: Dickenson: California.

Chalmers, D.J. and Jackson, F. (2001): 'Conceptual Analysis and Reductive

Explanation', Philosophical Review 110, 315-360.

Courant, R. and Robbins, H (1947): What is Mathematics?, 4th ed. New

York: Oxford University Press.

Crane, T. and Mellor, D.H. (1990): 'There is No Question of Physicalism', Mind 99, 185-206.

Hill, C.S. (1984): 'In Defence of Type Materialism', Synthese 59, 295-320.

Jackson, F. (1998): From Metaphysics to Ethics, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Jackson, F. (2003): 'From H20 to Water: The Relevance to A Priori

Passage', in L. Hallvard and G. Roderiguez-Pereyra (eds.), Real Meta

physics London: Routledge (pp. 84-97).

Jackson, F. (2005): 'The Case for A Priori Physicalism', in N. Christian and

A. Beckermann (eds.), Philosophy-Science-Scientific Philosophy. Main




Lectures and Colloquia of GAP.5, Fifth International Congress of the

Society for Analytical Philosophy, 2003 Paderborn: Mentis (pp. 251-265).

Kripke, S. (1980): Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard

University Press.

Lewis, D.K. (1971): "An Argument for the Identity Theory", reprinted in

Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem, David M. Rosenthal (ed.), (pp.

162-171) New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Lewis, D.K. (1972): Tsychophysical and Theoretical Identifications', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50, 249-258.

Medlin, B. (1967): Ryle and the Mechanical Hypothesis', in CF. Presley

(ed.), The Identity Theory of Mind St Lucia: University of Queensland Press (pp. 94-150).

Putnam, H. (1973): fcReductionism and the Nature of Psychology', Cognition 2, 131-146.

Smart, J.J.C. (1959): 'Sensations and Brain Processes', Philosophical Review

68, 141-156. von Frisch, K (1947): The Dances of the Honey Bee', Bulletin of Animal

Behaviour 5, 1-32.

The Australian National University H C Coombs Building 009, ACT 0200 Canberra

Australia

E-mail: [email protected]



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