Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies

Timothy O'Connor (Indiana) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series. Abstract: The correlated terms "emergence" and "reduction" are used in several ways in contemporary discussions ranging from complex systems theory to philosophy of mind, a fact that engenders confusion or talking at cross purposes. I try to bring greater clarity to this discussion by reflecting on John Conway's cellular automaton The Game of Life and simple variations on it. We may think of such variants as toy models of our own world that, owing to their simplicity, enable us to see quite clearly, in general terms, two importantly distinct ways (“weak” and “strong”) in which organized macroscopic phenomena might emerge from underlying microphysical processes. Strong emergence is of greater significance to metaphysics and philosophy of mind; it is also commonly deemed implausible. I close by suggesting that typical reasons for this evidential judgement are unconvincing.

John Dupré (Exeter) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series Abstract: This talk will explore the implications for a metaphysics of powers of the replacement of a substance ontology with a process ontology. I take a process to be an entity that must be active in some way to exist and I argue that processes are more fundamental than things: things are temporary and partial stabilisations in a flux of process. Can the activities that sustain processes be understood as the exercise of powers? Can the interactions between processes be treated similarly as the exercises of powers by processes?

Neil Williams (Buffalo University) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series Abstract; The typical understanding of powers—according to which they have their effects necessarily—has recently come under attack. The threat of imagined counterfactual scenarios (wherein the power is exercised but the characteristic manifestation does not ensue) has led some to question the traditional picture, and prompted others to give it up entirely. But this defection has been too hasty: that exercising powers produce their manifestations necessarily ranks highly among the most attractive features of the powers metaphysic, and should not be discarded lightly. Moreover, the arguments against necessity are founded upon assumptions that the friend of powers is at liberty to reject. I show how the anti-necessitarian arguments can be avoided, and thus how necessity can be restored.

Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (Lund University) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series Abstract: In this talk I will elaborate on the naturalist theory of causation that I first presented in ‘Causal Production as Interaction’ (2002). In the course of presenting the view I will elucidate in what sense the account (i) presents causation as a necessary process of production without appeal to ceteris paribus clauses, (ii) explains the connection between causation and counterfactuals without appeal to a possible worlds ontology, (iii) does not suffer from the problem of action at a temporal distance, (iv) can exclude the possibility of interference and prevention, (v) is compatible with the way the natural sciences describe material reality (within the framework of classical science), and indeed explains why material reality—as described by science—is a causal reality. I will also indicate, more sketchily, how this causal account allows us to think of the persistence of compound entities as being a thoroughly causal affair, and thus provide a causal account of composition and grounding. Finally, I will discuss whether account depicts persistent compounds as both substances and processes.

Stephen French (Leeds) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies series. Abstract: 'Recent defences of dispositionalism and powers based accounts have appealed to the way properties such as charge and spin are treated in physics. However, I shall argue that on closer analysis, modern physics does not supply the level of support that is typically adduced. Adjusting these accounts to bring them more into line with the way physics treats such properties takes them closer to certain structuralist views and I shall explore the - sometimes wafer thin - differences between these alternative approaches to properties. In conclusion I shall suggest that adopting an appropriate stance towards 'reading' theories in physics does away with dispositions and powers as seated in fundamental objects in favour of modally informed structure.'

Alastair Wilson, Birmingham, gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies series Abstract: Jonathan Schaffer has recently defended the doctrine of quidditism against an epistemological challenge, claiming that the challenge amounts to nothing more than ‘external-world scepticism writ small’. I disagree with this assessment. The cases are significantly disanalogous, and quiddistic scepticism is much harder to avoid than external-world scepticism. Ultimately, the epistemological challenge is indecisive: quidditists can live with the sceptical conclusion. But there is a stronger anti-quidditist argument in the vicinity. Following John Hawthorne, I show how the epistemological challenge can be reformulated as an argument from theoretical parsimony. I argue that whether the parsimony argument is decisive depends on wider issues in the metaphysics of modality: different accounts of modality yield different verdicts about parsimony. The upshot is that we cannot expect to make progress in the quidditism debate while remaining neutral on the nature of modality.

Nick Jones, University of Birmingham, gives a talk in which he appeal to an examination of the explanatory role of ordinary macroscopic objects to argue that some of them are metaphysically fundamental.

Henry Mendell (California State) gives a talk for the Power Structualism in Ancient Ontologies series Abstract: Historians in the twentieth century argued about whether Aristotle presents a general theory of dynamics in Physics VII 5 or merely presents examples from ordinary experience, which he then applies abstractly to arguments about the unmoved mover and general issues about the balance of elements in the sublunary realm. Recently the pendulum of opinion has swayed towards taking Aristotle's account more robustly as a general theory of dynamics, but more can be said. I shall argue that one reason why the debate arose was because both sides have seen the examples in the context of Greek style mathematics, where we expect generalized principles and theorems, often couched in a modern, anachronistic representation. I suggest that the dynamics come from an older mathematical tradition, which we associate with Babylon and Egypt and which, I believe, was ordinary Greek mathematical practice even in the fourth century BCE. Mathematicians present their work as problems, given such and such, here is how to calculate such and such. It is also characteristic of a problem and the procedure for its solution that actual numbers are used. We find both in Aristotle's presentation. Aristotle's rules are stated in the form of conditionals with actual numbers. So the rules have the form: if mover A moves moved B in time D over distance G, then one may vary A, B, D, and G in the following ways, e.g. 1/2 B over 2 D. The initial conditions in the antecedent, in effect, implicitly set the parameters for the variations in the consequent, as given by example. In this way, the procedures are general over all dynamic problems set up conditionally. Aristotle proceeds to set boundaries on the consequent. However, the text that we have at this point, regardless of variations in the textual tradition, is mathematically bizarre. Whether this is Aristotle's error or an early error in the transmission of the text, the anomaly contributes to the evidence that Aristotle is actually borrowing his examples from an earlier work on dynamics that was written in the problem tradition.

Don Morison (Rice) gives a talk for the Power Structualism in Ancient Ontology series. Abstract: 'The happiness of the city (the eudaimonia of the polis) is a central concept in Aristotle’s political philosophy. For example, in NE I, 2, Aristotle says that the ultimate end of human action is the good of the city. At the beginning of his discussion of the ideal regime in Politics VII, 1, he says that the happy city is the one that is best and acts nobly”. Chapter 2 of book VII is devoted to the question whether the happiness of the individual and the happiness of the city are the same or different. The aim of this paper will be to argue that Aristotle uses the term “the happiness of the city”, he means it not metaphorically, but literally: he intends to predicate a genuine property, eudaimonia, of a genuine subject, the polis. I will then explore some of the philosophical implications of this concept. The realist view that I will defend agrees that the polis is not a substance. The polis is not animate, in the strict sense that it does not have a soul. However the polis is alive: it has a “life”. (Both bios and zoe). It is an organic being in the sense that it has functional parts. And it has states of character and makes decisions that are not reducible to the characters and decisions of its citizens. Individual citizens have their own intrinsic value, which is largely but not entirely independent of the city in which they live. On the other hand, the city as such has intrinsic value that is not reducible to the value of its individual citizens. The value of citizens to the city is partly instrumental, but also partly intrinsic: the life of the city includes the lives of its citizens. Aristotle’s political philosophy employs two crucial holistic conceptions of value: (1) the good or happiness of the city; and (2) the common good. What is the relationship between these two concepts? I shall argue that the “good of the city” and the “common good” are distinct notions. This is an uncomfortable result.

Thomas Sattig (Tübingen) gives a talk for the Power Structualism in Ancient Ontologies series. Abstract: 'Pluralists about material objects believe that distinct material objects can coincide at a time—that they can exactly occupy the same spatial region and be constituted by the same matter at that time. Pluralism is often accepted for reasons of common sense. It seems obvious, for example, that there could be a piece of paper and a paper airplane made from the latter, such that the piece of paper exists before the paper plane is created or exists after the paper plane is destroyed. The artifacts in this scenario would appear to be distinct objects that coincide at various times. My aim is to argue that folk-inspired pluralism faces a serious problem concerning determinism. The actual world is deterministic just in case there is only one way in which it can evolve that is compatible with the actual laws of nature. If determinism about the actual world fails, we expect it to fail for reasons of physics. Yet certain of the common-sense cases of distinct, coinciding objects accepted by pluralists seem to show that the actual world is indeterministic on mundane, a priori grounds. It should not be that easy to establish indeterminism.'

Mark Sinclair (Manchester Metropolitan) gives a talk for the Power Structualism in Ancient Ontologies series In Getting Causes from Powers, Steven Mumford and Rani Lil Anjum have argued that all dispositions are to be thought as tendencies or inclinations; that such tendencies or inclinations have a sui generis modality, irreducible to traditional ideas of necessity or possibility; and that we have direct experience of such inclinations in our subjective experience of agency. In this paper, I critically assess these arguments in the light of 19th-century French philosophy. I turn to the work of Pierre Maine de Biran and Félix Ravaisson in order to develop the claim that a particular and irreducible modality of dispositions is indeed available to us in subjective experience – but in the particular phenomena of habit rather than within agency in general. Ravaisson’s 1838 De l’habitude provides a phenomenology of habit as inclination and a metaphysics that makes the phenomenological fact of inclination intelligible; and both this phenomenology and this metaphysics, I contend, have much to teach contemporary work in the metaphysics of powers.

Claudine Tiercelin (Collège de France) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies series. Abstract 'I will examine the conditions of possibility and the nature of metaphysical “knowledge”: 1) as compared with other types (mathematical, physical, ethical, philosophical knowledge; 2) from the point of view of its methods (conceptual analysis, thought experiments, empirical intuitions, a posteriori inferences, economy of research); 3) in relation to other traditional models of knowledge itself (justified true beliefs, reliabilism, or various virtue epistemology based strategies). Relying on the views I have defended in Le Doute en Question, Le Ciment des Choses or more recently, in La connaissance métaphysique, I will argue that metaphysical “knowledge” can indeed be achieved, provided 1) it relies on conceptual analysis and on the continuous massaging of our folk intuitions, 2) it trusts the a posteriori results of science without indulging into some kind of naturalized or scientistic metaphysics, and 3) it still aims, within the framework of a basically pragmatist and realistic strategy of knowledge viewed as inquiry, at the fixation of true beliefs and at the determination of the real nature of properties and things. In so doing, we should be able to avoid both excessive boldness and excessive humility.'

Nick Denyer (Cambridge) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series Abstract: Stilpo engaged triumphantly in repartee with the great dialectician Diodorus Cronus, with the celebrated courtesan Glycera, with the king Demetrius Poliorcetes, and even with Poseidon and the Mother of the Gods. He also put his talents to use in devising consolatory arguments, to fortify us in the face of exile, bereavement, and unchaste daughters. In this talk, I will attempt to bring together the different aspects of Stilpo's intellectual activities: the guiding thread will be domination by superiority in argument. Those who wish to read up in advance will find the sources for Stilpo collected in two editions: Klaus Döring, Die Megariker (Amsterdam, 1972) 46-51, and Gabriele Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (Naples, 1990) i.449-468

Christopher Gill (Exeter) gives a talk on Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and asks How Stoic are They? Abstract: In this paper I address the longstanding question whether the Meditations present orthodox Stoic philosophy or a personal or eclectic selection of themes. In approaching this question I stress the importance of taking into account what seems to be Marcus’ core project in the Meditations (namely, promoting his own ethical self-development) and also of taking full note of the themes which recur most commonly in the work before focusing on the more exceptional and puzzling features. I suggest that Marcus’ core project in the work and many specific points made in the Meditations reflect key standard ideas in Stoic ethics, especially the distinctive account of development as oikeiōsis (Marcus, like us, seems especially familiar with Cicero’s presentations of this in de Finibus 3.17-22, 62-8). As in many other Stoic writings, the significance of the interface of ethics with logic/dialectic or physics is stressed by Marcus; standard themes that are evoked repeatedly include the ideal of wisdom as ‘dialectical virtue’ (D.L. 7.46-8 = LS 31 B) and the definition of the goal of life as bringing your daimōn into line with the rational direction of the whole (D.L. 7.88 = LS 63C(3-4)). Within this interface area, certainly, there are some unexpected motifs, including rather Platonic-looking mind-body dualism and (at least in a few cases) seemingly inappropriate use of the ‘providence or atoms’ disjunction. However, the best explanation for these features is, I think, premature or over-hasty moralisation within a fundamentally Stoic framework, rather than philosophical amateurishness or eclecticism.

Steve Makin, (Sheffield) gives a talk for the Power Structualism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series Abstract: Aristotle emphasises the role of habituation in our acquiring moral virtues, as well as other abilities. I discuss an independently engaging problem concerning the acquisition of abilities through practice, formulated in the context of Aristotle’s account of virtue development. The problem consists in a tension between two plausible claims, one [A] concerning what is required for an agent to be acting on a decision, the other [B] concerning the view a novice should have of whether they could ever possible be making the decisions required for moral development. I recommend a solution: the self-blind novice response. That solution implies that self-blindness should be pervasive among Aristotelian moral developers. And that implication is confirmed by the fact that the necessarily rare state of self-aware expertise is an important part of the Aristotelian virtue of magnanimity.

Richard Sorabji gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontolgies podcast series

Stephen Butterfill gives a talk on philosophy and collective agency and other people's minds When friends walk together, they typically exercise collective agency. By contrast, two strangers walking side by side exercise parallel but merely individual agency. This and other contrasts invite the question, What distinguishes collective agency from parallel but merely individual agency? To answer this question, philosophers standardly appeal to a special kind of intention or structure of intention, knowledge or commitment often called ‘collective intention’. The idea is that exercises of collective agency stand to collective intention much as exercises of ordinary, individual agency stand to ordinary, individual intention. In this talk I shall use this parallel between individual and collective intention to argue that some forms of collective agency are grounded in representations and processes more primitive than those associated with collective intention. Collective agency is not always a matter of what we intend: sometimes it constitutively involves certain structures of motor representation. One consequence is concerns a role for collective agency in explaining knowledge of others’ minds. Reflection on what is involved in sharing a smile suggests that there is a route to knowledge of others’ mental states that is neither straightforwardly perceptual nor inferential but hinges on interaction

Mika Perala gives a talk on Aristotle's philosophy Aristotle states in the De Memoria et Reminiscentia that we have memories of individuals such as Koriscus. In line with this, he assumes in many contexts (e.g. logical and ethical) that we can make singular propositions on the basis of such perceptual states. However, commentators have been puzzled about whether singular propositions (and thoughts) can be given an adequate account in Aristotle’s psychological theory. The purpose of this paper is to argue that Aristotle’s account of thought admits of two kinds of singular thought: thought about an individual as an instance of a kind (‘This F is G’) and thought simply about an individual ‘a’, without the sortal concept F (‘a is G’). The difference between the two is that whereas the former requires knowledge of the kind (i.e. F) into which the singular item falls, or at least some sortal grasp of the individual in question such as through experience or the testimony of a knowledgeable person, the latter is simply based on, but cannot be identified with, sense perception, memory, phantasy or some other way of gaining non-sortal information about the individual. The view opposed is the Thomistic line of interpretation that, in Aristotle’s view, singular thought is to be understood as some sort of general thought, indirect or reflexive: general thought applied to a singular item given by a phantasm. The Thomistic view makes singular thought merely accidental and fails to give an adequate account of singular truth-claims.

Louise Fiona Richardson gives a talk on philosophy and perception It is beyond dispute that the senses interact. In this paper I will consider the way in which such interaction constrains thought about the senses, and in particular, thought about how they are distinguished from one another. I will consider two views of what it is to have a sense. On the first view, senses are systems. On the second, they are capacities. I will argue that on each view, the occurrence of different forms of multimodal perception rules out some views of how the senses are distinguished. The occurrence of perception not restricted to one sense does not, however, make it impossible to distinguish between the senses, either as systems or capacities. Neither does it make that distinction otiose. And whilst there is an explanatory penalty to be paid if one seeks to explain perception only one sense at a time, I will argue that given a plausible, defensible view of how to count perceptual experiences at a time, interaction between the senses does not show that it is illegitimate to talk of perceptual experiences belonging to one modality, at least whilst thinking of senses as capacities.

Jerome Dokic gives a talk on common sense and philosophy One of the functions of the common sense in Aristotle’s theory of perception is apparently to monitor the activity of our sensory modalities, and to make us aware that we see, hear, touch, taste, etc. However, the status of the common sense as a “second-order” perception, and its relationship to “first-order” perception (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, etc.) remains to be clarified. On the one hand, numerous examples (involving perceptual certainty and uncertainty, perception of silence, darkness, and more generally absences) show that second order perception cannot be reduced to first-order perception. On the other hand, second-order perception can hardly be conceived as a form of meta-representational awareness, whether perceptual or theory-based. In this presentation, I shall suggest that the monitoring function of the common sense is best understood in relation with contemporary cognitive science research on meta-cognition. Common sense is a meta-perceptual ability which is distinct from both object level sensory perception and meta-representational knowledge about our senses.