Description
We find “vertical” relations in many different realms, whether between atoms and molecules, words and sentences, neurons and brains, or individuals and societies. This book is the first to bring together, and comparatively assess, the exciting array of philosophical approaches to vertical relations that have independently sprung up in analytic metaphysics, the metaphysics of mind, and the philosophy of science. Analytic metaphysicians have recently focused on a relation of ‘Ground’ that is claimed to be found in aesthetics, ethics, logic, mathematics, science, and semantics. Metaphysicians of mind have focussed on a vertical relation of ‘realization’ between properties, whilst philosophers of science associated with the rise of the ‘New Mechanism’ have renewed interest in vertical relations of scientific composition found in so-called “mechanistic explanations”. This volume analyses the inter-relations between these different approaches to spark a range of new debates, including whether the various frameworks for vertical relations are independent, complementary or in even competition.
Table of Contents
Part I – Scientific Composition and the New Mechanism.- 1. Laura Franklin-Hall: New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints.- 2. Kenneth Aizawa: Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground.- 3. Jens Harbecke: Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution?.- 4. Derk Pereboom: Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental.- Part II – Grounding, Science, and Verticality in Nature.- 5. Jonathan Schaffer: Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson.- 6. Jessica Wilson: The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding.- 7. Carl Gillett: The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement.- 8. Andrew Melnyk: Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism.- 9. Alyssa Ney: Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense.
