People attribute purposes in both mundane and profound ways—such as when thinking about the purpose of a knife and the purpose of a life. In three studies (total N = 13,720 observations from N = 3,430 participants), we tested whether these seemingly very different forms of purpose attributions might actually involve the same cognitive processes. We examined the impacts of four factors on purpose attributions in six domains (artifacts, social institutions, animals, body parts, sacred objects, and human lives). Study 1 manipulated what items in each domain were originally created for (original design) and how people currently use them (present practice). Study 2 manipulated whether items are good at achieving a goal (effectiveness) and whether the goal itself is good (morality). We found effects of each factor in every domain. However, whereas morality and effectiveness had remarkably similar effects across domains, the effects of original design and present practice differed substantially. Finally, Study 3 revealed that, within domains, the effects of original design and present practice depend on which entities design and use items. These results reveal striking similarities in purpose attributions across domains and suggest that certain entities are treated as authorities over the purposes of particular items.

Natural language semantics is heir to two formalisms. There is the extensional machinery of explicit variables traditionally used to model reference to individuals, and the intensional machinery of implicit index parameters traditionally used to model reference to worlds and times. I propose instead a simple and unified extensional formalism - explicit semantics - on which all sentences include explicit individual, world and time variables. No implicit index parameters are needed.

Can there be a materialist explanation for conscious experience? According to ground functionalism, there is a mind making principle such that Huma’s C-fibers firings ground her pain, and in general states playing the right role in a system ground mental states for that system. I have the bold ambition of reviving the hopeful materialist story, by adding a new chapter—ground functionalism—which integrates functionalist insights about the mind with ground-theoretic insights about explanation. The ground functionalist posits a mind making principle linking material states to mental states via functional role, such that a properly choreographed system dances out a mind. I argue that ground functionalism preserves the insights of functionalist conceptions of the mind, while enabling a materialist explanation for conscious experience. Minds are made by dancing, and even matter can dance.

Is cognitive science relevant to metaphysics? The realist metaphysician aiming to describe the objective structure of reality itself may think that cognitive science is largely irrelevant. But Goldman argues that cognitive science is relevant, insofar as some arguments in metaphysics are premised on intuitions, and cognitive science is relevant to assessing both what people find intuitive, and whether a given intuition should be respected or debunked. This is persuasive. But Goldman’s picture would benefit from two adjustments (or perhaps just elaborations). First, the relevance of cognitive science is not specific to metaphysics, but rather generic to any intellectual inquiry that invokes intuitions. Secondly—and more importantly—metaphysics itself plays a crucial role alongside cognitive science in assessing intuitions. For a crucial part of assessment is determining which intuitions should be respected and which debunked, and that involves determining whether the intuition is tracking reality. So rather than being situated as in danger of being debunked, metaphysics should be situated as a needed partner in the very project of debunking.

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVolume 99, Issue 3 p. 749-767 SYMPOSIUM Anchoring as Grounding: On Epstein's the Ant Trap Jonathan Schaffer, Corresponding Author Jonathan Schaffer jonathan.schaffer@rutgers.edu Rutgers University Correspondence Jonathan Schaffer, Rutgers University. Email: jonathan.schaffer@rutgers.eduSearch for more papers by this author Jonathan Schaffer, Corresponding Author Jonathan Schaffer jonathan.schaffer@rutgers.edu Rutgers University Correspondence Jonathan Schaffer, Rutgers University. Email: jonathan.schaffer@rutgers.eduSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 November 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12645Citations: 10Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume99, Issue3November 2019Pages 749-767 RelatedInformation

In Making Things Up, Bennett defends the intriguing idea that causation should be included among the building (grounding) relations. I critique Bennett's arguments for inclusion, and claim that inclusion distorts her own treatments of causation, relative fundamentality, and absolute fundamentality. Instead, I argue for treating causation and grounding as separate species of generative, explanatory difference-making.

Two separate research programs have revealed two different factors that feature in our judgments of whether some entity persists. One program—inspired by Knobe—has found that normative considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when the changes it undergoes lead to improvements. The other program—inspired by Kelemen—has found that teleological considerations affect persistence judgments. For instance, people are more inclined to view a thing as persisting when it preserves its purpose. Our goal in this paper is to determine what causes persistence judgments. Across four studies, we pit normative considerations against teleological considerations. And using causal modeling procedures, we find a consistent, robust pattern with teleological and not normative considerations directly causing persistence judgments. Our findings put teleology in the driver’s seat, while at the same time shedding further light on our folk notion of an object.

In this paper I will argue that what makes our ordinary judgements about token causation (‘actual causation’) true can be explicated in terms of interferences into quasi-inertial processes. These interferences and quasi-inertial processes can in turn be fully explicated in scientific terms. In this sense the account presented here is reductive. I will furthermore argue that this version of a process-theory of causation can deal with the traditional problems that process theories have to face, such as the problem of misconnection and the problem of disconnection (Dowe 2009) as well as with a problem concerning the misclassification of pre-emption cases (Paul and Hall 2013).

[E]veryone must admit that perception, and everything that depends on it, is inexplicable by mechanical principles, by shapes and motions, that is. Imagine there were a machine which by its structure produced thought, feeling, and perception; we can imagine it as being enlarged while maintaining the same relative proportions, to the point where we could go inside it, as we would go into a mill. But if that were so, when we went in we would find nothing but pieces which push one against another, and never anything to account for a perception. (Leibniz 1998: 270)[N]o matter what functional account of cognition one gives, it seems logically possible that the account could be instantiated without any accompanying consciousness. It may be naturally impossible - consciousness may in fact arise from that functional organization in the actual world - but the important thing is that the notion is logically coherent.. [T] here is an explanatory gap between such accounts and consciousness itself. (Chalmers 1996: 47)

AbstractI argue that, just like causal explanation requires laws of nature, so metaphysical explanation requires laws of metaphysics. I offer a minimal rendition of the argument for laws of metaphysics, assuming nothing about grounding or essences, and little about explanation. And I offer a positive and minimal functional conception of the laws of metaphysics, coupled with an argument that some laws of metaphysics are fundamental.

Must causal models distinguish default from deviant events? Yes, say Menzies (2004, 2007), Hitchcock (2007), Hall (2007), and Halpern (2008), inter alia. No, argues this chapter. It argues that adding defaults into causal models (1) generates complicating and under-constrained unclarities, (2) fails to solve the problems it has been claimed to solve, and (3) fails to fit the most psychologically plausible accounts of how norms influence cognition generally. Instead of adding defaults into causal models, it recommends clarifying the background constraints on what counts as an apt causal model, and attending to background cognitive biases about the availability of alternatives.

Non-Humean accounts of lawhood are said to founder on the Inference Problem, which is the problem of saying how laws that go beyond the regularities can entail the regularities. I argue that the Inference Problem has a simple solution – the Axiomatic Solution – on which the non-Humean only needs to outfit her laws with a law-to-regularity axiom. There is a remaining Epistemic Bulge, as to why one should believe that the posit-so-axiomatized is to be found in nature, but the non-Humean can flatten the bulge. Lawhood serves as a case study of how fundamental posits can do their business.

Quantum mechanics seems to portray nature as nonseparable, in the sense that it allows spatiotemporally separated entities to have states that cannot be fully specified without reference to each other. This is often said to implicate some form of “holism.” We aim to clarify what this means, and why this seems plausible. Our core idea is that the best explanation for nonseparability is a “common ground” explanation (modeled after common cause explanations), which casts nonseparable entities in a holistic light, as scattered reflections of a more unified underlying reality.

Feminist metaphysics is guided by the insight that gender is socially constructed, yet the metaphysics behind social construction remains obscure. Barnes and Mikkola charge that current metaphysical frameworks—including my grounding framework—are hostile to feminist metaphysics. I argue that not only is a grounding framework hospitable to feminist metaphysics, but also that a grounding framework can help shed light on the metaphysics behind social construction. By treating social construction claims as grounding claims, the feminist metaphysician and the social ontologist both gain a way to integrate social construction claims into a general metaphysics, while accounting for the inferential connections between social construction and attendant notions such as dependence and explanation. So I conclude that a grounding framework can be helpful for feminist metaphysics and social ontology.

Grounding is often glossed as metaphysical causation, yet no current theory of grounding looks remotely like a plausible treatment of causation. I propose to take the analogy between grounding and causation seriously, by providing an account of grounding in the image of causation, on the template of structural equation models for causation.

Wilson's "No Work for a Theory of Grounding" (2014) offers an insightful critique of grounding-based approaches to metaphysical inquiry. She argues that the notion of grounding is uninformative, disunified, and in the end unhelpful. I think that Wilson is right to criticize many extant grounding-based approaches for not being sufficiently informative, but reply that the grounding theorist can learn her lesson by using structural equation models, in ways that reveal the unity and informativeness of grounding. (I also argue that Wilson's own alternative approach is open to serious criticisms, including every one of the criticisms she levels at the grounding theorist.)

NoûsVolume 51, Issue 2 p. 238-270 ARTICLE Folk Mereology is Teleological David Rose, David Rose Rutgers UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorJonathan Schaffer, Jonathan Schaffer Rutgers UniversitySearch for more papers by this author David Rose, David Rose Rutgers UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorJonathan Schaffer, Jonathan Schaffer Rutgers UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12123Citations: 30Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume51, Issue2June 2017Pages 238-270 RelatedInformation