Supervenience Principle Research Articles

Separating Einstein's separability

In this paper, I accomplish a conceptual task and a historical task. The conceptual task is to argue that (1) Einstein's Principle of Separability (henceforth “separability”) is not a supervenience principle and that (2) separability and entanglement are compatible. I support (1) by showing that the conclusion of Einstein's incompleteness argument would still follow even if one assumes that the state of a composite system does not supervene on the states of the subsystems, and by showing that what Einstein says in “Quantum Mechanics and Reality” (1948) strongly suggests that separability is not a principle about how subsystem states relate to the state of composite systems. I support (2) by showing that if separability was incompatible with entanglement, then Einstein's argument would be incoherent in a trivial way. Thus, by arguing for (1) and (2) I directly challenge what has been, and still is, a very common reading of separability. The historical task is to offer the first detailed review of the different ways in which separability has been defined by physicists and philosophers in the last 60 years. Among other things, such a review distinguishes three different definitions of the principle, and shows that since the 1990s and up until the present date, it became standard to take separability (as presented by Einstein) to be a supervenience principle.

How Humean is Bohumianism?

An important part of the influential Humean doctrine in philosophy is the supervenience principle (sometimes referred to as the principle of separability). This principle asserts that the complete state of the world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of its most fundamental components and their spatiotemporal relations (the so-called Humean mosaic). There are well-known arguments in the literature purporting to show that in quantum mechanics the Humean supervenience principle is violated, due to the existence of entangled states. Recently, however, arguments have been presented to the effect that the supervenience principle can be defended in Bohmian mechanics. The key element of this strategy lies in the observation that according to Bohmian mechanics the fundamental facts about particles are facts about their spatial locations, and moreover, for any proper subsystem of the world its state may non-trivially depend on the spatial configuration of the rest of the universe. Thus quantum-mechanical states of subsystems do not represent their intrinsic properties but rather characterize their relations with the environment. In this paper we point out the worry that this Bohmian strategy—known as Bohumianism—saves the letter but not the spirit of the Humean doctrine of supervenience, since it prima facie violates another seemingly important Humean principle, which we call Strong Supervenience and whose denial implies the existence of necessary connections among distinct individuals. We argue that the best defense for Bohumians is to question the fundamental existence of complex physical systems and their states by treating any reference to them as a convenient description of the underlying collection of Bohmian particles. We consider several pros and cons of this strategy.

Architecting exogenous software‐intensive systems‐of‐systems on the internet‐of‐vehicles with SosADL

AbstractThe pervasiveness of the communication networks increasingly has made possible to interconnect software‐intensive systems that were independently developed, operated, managed, and evolved, yielding a new kind of complex system, that is, a system that is itself composed of systems, the so‐called System‐of‐Systems (SoS). Nowadays, the Internet‐of‐Things (IoT) enables the engineering of software‐intensive SoS, which are opportunistically constructed for achieving specified missions in specific operational environments. In particular, in the subset of IoT where “things” are predominantly connected vehicles, the so‐called Internet‐of‐Vehicles (IoV), the challenge is to exogenously coordinate different vehicles for performing together, through emergent behavior, traffic‐related missions, especially platooning. In platooning, two or more vehicles are connected together in convoy using wireless connectivity and automated driving support. The corresponding challenge in the architectural design of SoSs on IoV is to conceive concepts and mechanisms for describing how an SoS architecture is able to create, on the fly, and maintain emergent behaviors from elementary connected vehicles, where the actual vehicles are not known at design time. To address this challenge, this paper investigates the principle of supervenience for describing architecture‐driven emergent behavior following an exogenous approach. In particular, it describes the concepts and mechanisms underlying SosADL, a formal SoS Architecture Description Language (ADL), based on the novel π‐Calculus for SoS, to support the architectural description of self‐organizing SoSs, upwardly causing the required SoS emergent behaviors at run time. Especially, it demonstrates how architectural mediators expressed with SosADL in exogenous SoS architectures support vehicle platooning through an excerpt of a real application on the IoV.

No ground for doomsday

ABSTRACTThe ability of providing an adequate supervenience base for tensed truths may seem to be one of the main theoretical advantages of both the growing-block and the moving-spotlight theory of time over presentism. However, in this paper I will argue that some propositions appear to be as problematic for growing-block theorists as past-directed propositions are for presentists, namely propositions stating that nothing will be the case in the future. Furthermore, I will show that the moving-spotlight theory can adequately address all the main supervenience challenges that can be levelled against A-theories of time. I will, thus, conclude that, at least as far as the supervenience principle is concerned, the moving-spotlight theory should be preferred over both presentism and the growing-block theory.

Is Materialism a Consequence of Natural Science

Naturalism is neither a consequence nor a presupposition of natural science in a threefold way: (1) the principle of matter, (2) the principle of supervenience and (3) the principle of the causal closure of the world are metaphysical principles. They are true, if naturalism is true. So, if you are a naturalist, you should find reasons for your worldview which are independent from natural science. But it is hard to see how this could work.

Downward causation and supervenience: the non-reductionist’s extra argument for incompatibilism

Agent-causal theories of free will, which rely on a non-reductionist account of the agent, have traditionally been associated with libertarianism. However, some authors have recently argued in favor of compatibilist agent-causal accounts. In this essay, I will show that such accounts cannot avoid serious problems of implausibility or incoherence. A careful analysis of the implications of non-reductionist views of the agent (event-causal or agent-causal as they may be) reveals that such views necessarily imply either the denial of the principle of supervenience or the assumption of bottom-level indeterminism. I will contend that the former alternative comes at a high cost, while the latter is quite plausible. Therefore, providing that they accept the condition of the truth of indeterminism, non-reductionist accounts of the agent do not have to contradict our scientific worldview. Interestingly, while they should be taken seriously by anyone who is concerned with the passivity of the agent’s role under a reductionist scenario, non-reductivist accounts end up contributing an extra incompatibilist argument to the free will debate.

A linkage of mind and brain: towards translational validity between neurobiology and psychiatry

Aim: There are prominent discrepancies in the general approaches of psychology and psychiatry, many of them due to diverse and incompatible tacit positions on the mind-brain debate (MBD). For this reason we need to enhance the dialogue with neurosciences and other human sciences relevant to the problems of psychopathology. To achieve such goal we can reduce the level of diversity of mind-brain problem project-solutions as implied in different theoretical models and practices. Arguments: I shall trace the MBD to the one of the most relevant for the modern psychopathology areas: the group of neurosciences. We seek the interference of the philosophical assumptions, the evidence of neuroscience and the development of psychopathology. We prove by a post rem analysis that the reduced group of predominant project-solutions of MBD excludes genuine forms of dualism and extreme forms of physicalism (like epiphenomenalism or eliminative materialism). Conclusion: A predominant group of project-solutions is adopted including complementary combination of contemporary forms of physicalism: identity theory of mind applied to mental events and brain processes; supervenience principle applied to other mental phenomena. Biomedical Reviews 2011; 22: 65-76.

A biological relativity view of the relationships between genomes and phenotypes

This article explores the relativistic principle that there is no privileged scale of causality in biology to clarify the relationships between genomes and phenotypes. The idea that genetic causes are primary views the genome as a program. Initially, that view was vindicated by the discovery of mutations and knockouts that have large and specific effects on the phenotype. But we now know that these form the minority of cases. Many changes at the genome level are buffered by robust networks of interactions in cells, tissues and organs. The ‘differential’ view of genetics therefore fails because it is too restrictive. An ‘integral’ view, using reverse engineering from systems biological models to quantify contributions to function, can solve this problem. The article concludes by showing that far from breaking the supervenience principle, downward causation requires that it should be obeyed.

Mentalism is not epistemic ur-internalism

Earl Conee and Richard Feldman claim that mentalism identifies the core of internalist epistemology. This is what I call identifying ur-internalism. Their version of ur-internalism differs from the traditional one – viz., accessibilism – by not imposing requirements stipulating that subjects must have reflective access to facts which justify their beliefs for these beliefs to be justified. Instead, justification simply supervenes on the mental lives of subjects. I argue that mentalism fails to establish itself as ur-internalism by demonstrating that the strong supervenience claim used by Conee and Feldman is consistent with cognitive externalism (often called “the extended mind hypothesis”). Briefly, cognitive externalism claims that the mental states themselves (rather than their contents) constitutively depend on factors outside the bodily individual. Given this possibility, I claim Conee and Feldman's supervenience principle no longer suits the purposes to which they put it.

Presentism and the grounding of truth

Many philosophers believe that truth is grounded: True propositions depend for their truth on the world. Some philosophers believe that truth’s grounding has implications for our ontology of time. If truth is grounded, then truth supervenes on being. But if truth supervenes on being, then presentism is false since, on presentism, e.g., that there were dinosaurs fails to supervene on the whole of being plus the instantiation pattern of properties and relations. Call this the grounding argument against presentism. Many presentists claim that the grounding argument fails because, despite appearances, supervenience is compatible with presentism. In this paper, I claim that the grounding argument fails because, despite appearances, truth’s grounding gives the presentist no compelling reason to adopt the sort of supervenience principle at work in the grounding argument. I begin by giving two precisifications of the grounding principle: truthmaking and supervenience. In Sect. 2, I give the grounding argument against presentism. In Sect. 3, I argue that we should distinguish between eternalist and presentist notions of grounding; once this distinction is in hand, the grounding argument is undercut. In Sect. 4, I show how the presentist’s notion of grounding leads to presentist-friendly truthmaking and supervenience principles. In Sect. 5, I address some potential objections.

Intrinsic value and the supervenience principle

An important constraint on the nature of intrinsic value---the “Supervenience Principle” (SP)---holds that some object, event, or state of affairs ϕ is intrinsically valuable only if the value of ϕ supervenes entirely on ϕ's intrinsic properties. In this paper, I argue that SP should be rejected. SP is inordinately restrictive. In particular, I argue that no SP-respecting conception of intrinsic value can accept the importance of psychological resonance, or the positive endorsement of persons, in explaining value.

Moral Explanation and Moral Objectivity

What is the real issue at stake in discussions of explanation? There isn't one. Not because there is none, but because there are many. We may distinguish two broad kinds of relevance of explanatory questions to morality, one to moral thought and practice, the other external. Internal. Commonsense moral frameworks and prevalent moral theories deploy a number of concepts which integrate normative purport and explanatory ambition. Such notions as moral obligation, moral virtue, and moral responsibility typically embody or presuppose models of action and its causation, often incorporating rather specific notions of cognition, motivation, and deliberation. Notions of intrinsic good and moral rightness are characteristically assumed to have internal connections with what is or could be intrinsically motivating for a judge or an agent. And moral reasoning is governed by a quite general principle of supervenience, which imposes a broad explanatory constraint on moral discourse: nothing can be good, or right, but that something non-moral makes it so. External. In any domain where we claim to discourse meaningfully or possess knowledge we must be able to meet appropriate conditions of semantic and epistemic access. Our best-developed models of such access involve causal-explanatory links between the domain in question and human cognitive activities and linguistic usage. Domains of purported knowledge where such links seem absent or problematic-such as mathematics, modalities, and universals-pose familiar skeptical challenges. And even where access appears less problematic, as in the empirical realm, skeptical questions arise about how we can obtain evidence for our hypotheses since they characteristically logically outstrip our evidential base. A leading approach to this problem is inference to the best explanation, pioneered by Gilbert Harman. But its applicability depends upon the hypotheses' contribution to explanation. Moral claims could not play their role in human action, judgment, and society were they not accessible through experience and intimately connected

Identidad, constitución y superveniencia

This paper is concerned with the notions of constitution and identity. It has a threefold purpose. First, to examine and evaluate the two main positions (CII, CNI) that in recent discussion are supposed to be the answers to the puzzles raised on this topic. I will try to show its commitments with certain views on the modal and temporal character of the identity relation. Second, to show that the classical position (CNI) suggest some criticisms because of its acceptance of an antioccamist coincidence principle that contravenes a reasonable principle of supervenience. Finally, I want to stress the capacity of the rival theory of dealing with those problems.

In Defense of a Different Taxonomy: A Reply to Owens

M /[any philosophers urge that cognitive psychology needs to 6narrow notion of content it uses to individuate mental states since Twin Earth thought experiments demonstrate that content cannot supervene on current physical bodily states. However, in his In Defense of a Different Doppelganger,I Joseph Owens argues that this move to narrow content will not work, since narrow content is not really a species of content at all. His claim rests on a dilemma concerning two ways to taxonomize behavior, neither of which can support a viable narrow content taxonomy. However, in this essay, I will argue that there is a third way to taxonomize behavior that Owens overlooks-one which does promote individuation by narrow yet genuinely contentful content. Owens observes that cognitive psychology is prima facie committed to following requirements: (1) Making essential explanatory appeal to content-individuated states, states akin to belief, desire, and like, and (2) the methodological principle that organisms can differ in psychological explanatory states only if they differ in some internal (nonrelational) physical fashionthe principle of psychophysical supervenience.2 But, as Owens rightly notes, these requirements appear incompatible. Both Hilary Putnam3 and Tyler Burge4 point out that individuation by

A Propensity Interpretation for Quantum Probabilities

interpreted as single-case propensities, rather than as relative frequencies or multi-case propensities (Hacking). I then argue against Popper's, and in favour of a modified version of Mellor's single-case propensity interpretation for the probabilities of QT. This interpretation enables a derivation of the relation between the probabilities of quantum systems and their states, by using a supervenience principle and the symmetry of the space of staterepresentations.

In Defense of a Different Doppelganger

Today's most fashionable brand of psychological theorizing, cognitive psychology, is in deep trouble in that it appears to be constrained by incompatible requirements. Such is the charge leveled by Stephen Stich. Cognitive theory, he claims, is apparently committed (i) to making essential explanatory appeal to contentindividuated states, states akin to belief, desire, and the like, and (ii) to the methodological principle that organisms can differ in psychological explanatory states only if they differ in some internal (nonrelational) physical fashion-the principle of psychophysical supervenience.1 This twin requirement is problematic in that a number of thought experiments clearly suggest that commonsense psychological states do not satisfy the supervenience requirement, and suggest that the psychological states of physical doppelgangers may differ in content. Stich's claim, however, has not gone unchallenged; there have been numerous attempts to undermine the force of the thought experiments, to demonstrate the compatibility of the two requirements.2 In this paper I examine what is currently the most popular