Properties disjunctive

Arguing against the causal efficacy of some disjunctive properties, Sober has held that disjunctive properties will appear to be causally efficacious only to the degree that their disjuncts strike us as subsuming similar sorts of possible causal processes (Sober, 1984, p. 94). Suppose we drop out the qualifications will appear to be and strike us as unsuited to a question about whether disjunctive properties really are causally efficacious as opposed to seeming to us to be causally efficacious. If we adopt this principle, the question at issue becomes one of whether the disjunction of Pi, v P2v... v P,, v... v Pm subsumes similar sorts of causal processes, to which the answer seems to be that the disjunction shares in common the features of having been selected for resulting in the same outcome, i.e. PS-processes. Thus, the disjunctive predicate names a causal property, a natural kind. Antireductionists are hard pressed to deny the truth and the explanatory power of (R). 

Parker, D. R. (1968), A survey of methods for the induction of aberrations in meiotic stages in Drosophila females and for observation of their disjunctional properties in the ensuing meiotic divisions, in "Effects of Radiation on Meiotic Systems, International Atomic Energy, Vienna, 209-218. 

Now, on Kim s view, a property with no distinctive causal powers is no property at all. If one accepts this principle, then the challenge to the reality of mental properties is quite direct no uniquely mental causal powers, no mental properties. But even if one rejects this principle — and there are some reasons for doing so — the crisis is not averted. The problem is not just that there are no distinctively mental causal powers — the problem is incoherence between the claims made for the nomicity of MR properties and the assumption needed to secure their autonomy. The assumption that, for every MR property, its set of realizer properties is wildly disjunctive has been taken to be crucial to the demonstration that MR properties are irreducible. But how can a property that is nomologically - perhaps necessarily - coextensive with a wildly disjunctive property itself be nomic, a fit property for scientific taxonomies ... 

There are, Kim says, two possible responses to the availability problem reduction to a disjunctive property or local reductions. Kim thinks there are reasons for dismissing the disjunctive move. It (or, strictly speaking, a move closely resembling it) is my preferred solution, so I ll defer discussion of Kim s objections until 1 present my own view. 1 want to concentrate at this point on Kim s discussion of local reductions. The idea here, similar to David Lewis s in Mad Pain and Martian Pain, is to eliminate a multiply realizable property in favor of a set of species- or structure-relative properties, each of which can be identified with an appropriate realizer property. Thus, while we can have no reduction of pain, per se, we can reduce pain-for-humans, pain-for-Martians, pain-for-cyborgs, and so forth. 

In earlier work. I ve advocated a radical response to the exclusion argument in the case of multiply realizable properties embrace the disjunctive solution.This is the move that identifies — and thereby economically reduces - the multiply realizable, higher-order property with the disjunctive property formed by taking the alternation of all first-order (total) realizer properties. If I can persuade you that some disjunctive properties are nomic, then I ll have a solution to the incoherence problem. And if I can provide some plausible principles to distinguish objectively nomic from objectively nonnomic disjunctive properties, then I ll have a solution to the conventionality objection as well. 

If we embrace an abundant conception of properties, then there is a substantive question of which properties are such that they are constitutive properties of events. For example, if disjunction is a property-forming operation, and so there are disjunctive properties, it by no means follows that disjunctive properties can be constitutive properties of events. Also, even if complementation is a property-forming operation, and so there are negative properties, it is a nontrivial question whether negative properties can be constitutive properties of events — whether, that is, omissions are events. 1 will recur to these matters later. The point to note for now is that on an abundant conception of properties, no extant property exemplification account of events counts literally every property as such that it can be a constitutive (or essential) property of an event. One might embrace quantification as a property-forming operation but reject it as an eventforming operation and so reject the claim that functional properties can be constitutive properties of events. Whether functional properties can be constitutive properties of events, and so whether there are functional events in the sense in question, is a controversial issue. The issue, moreover, as I see, is inseparable from the issue of whether such entities would be causes. 

Even if there are disjunctive properties, there seems good reason to deny that they are constitutive properties of events. It should be noted that functional properties will be nomologically coextensive with the disjunction of their (actual world) realizing properties. In defending the view that events can have functional properties as constitutive properties yet lack disjunctive properties as constitutive properties, NRP theorists would be committed to the view that two properties can be nomologically coextensive yet the one be a constitutive property of an event and the other not. 

Clapp, Leonard. 2001. Disjunctive properties and multiple realizations. The Journal of Philosophy 98 111-136. 

When trying to characterize such solids that lack translational symmetry, one has to overcome some awkward problems known from the chemistry and physics of glasses. Presumably, their structures correspond to some random covalent network. However, no analytical tools are available that would allow a conclusive and complete determination of structures, which constitute the basis for any deeper understanding of the properties of these materials. Clearly, as a first step the chemical composition has to be determined and, moreover, the homogeneity of the element distribution has to be checked over different length scales. To gain further reliable insights into the structural features, as many different structure sensitive probes as possible have to be employed. The best way to supplement these disjunct pieces of information to obtain a fiiU... 

To define a local subset of Pareto-optimal solutions dose to y the Delaunay triangulation is calculated for the set Z = ZHf u y. The Delaunay triangidation subdivides the convex hull of a set of points into disjunct simplices. Each simplex consists of d + points whereby d denotes the dimension of the data set. A specific property of the Delaunay triangulation is that for each simplex the circumhypersphere constituted by its points is empty which implies that the Delaunay triangulation is unique. Let D denote the set of Delaunay simplices where each simplex Ak is a set of d+1 points, i.e.di,= ... 

Not that such causation is entirely unproblematic. Pe will be a disjunctive shape property, and there... 

Here is a bit of terminology and some abbreviations that are useful. A mental property, M-property, is any property that corresponds to a mental predicate, that is, an intentional, or a qualia predicate is thinking about soup, feels dizzy. An MG-property is a mental property that is a G-property. A P-property is any property that is picked out by a kind predicate of a natural science. The natural sciences include physics, chemistry, biology, and so on, but not intentional/consciousness psychology. Since a disjunction of kind predicates is not necessarily a kind... 

If a functional property is involved in a law, it is a G-property, and if it is involved in a natural science law, it counts as a P-property. The question is whether mental functional properties are also P-properties (i.e., appear in natural science laws), and it seems that they are not. The reason is that the various possible physical realizers of a mental property are heterogeneous. So, if there are mental properties that are functional G-properties, then RP is false. One response to this would be to broaden the conception of Ps to include configurations of G-property instantiations and arbitrary conjunctions and disjunctions of such configurations. But even then, functional properties of psychology may not be identical to any physical properties. The reason is that psychological functional properties may be realized by alien fundamental properties that conform to alien laws. 7 Suppose the fundamental individuals in our world are atoms or strings. It is at least prima facie plausible that there could be a world whose fundamental entities are fields and that at the macroscopic level is pretty much indiscernible from the actual world. In this world there are... 

It should also be mentioned that although Yablo maintains that the physical properties that realize mental properties (a posteriori) metaphysically suffice for the mental properties, he seems to take no stand on whether there is a disjunction of physical properties, all of the possible physical realizers of the mental property, which is metaphysically necessary for possession of the mental property. Suffice it to note that if there is, and if no two properties can have the same extension in every possible world, then his position collapses to Kim s position, for, then, mental properties that are determinables of physical properties will be physical properties - disjunctive physical properties. The issne, then, would be whether exemplifications of such disjunctive physical properties would he events. (See the discussion of disjunctive events later in the text.)... 

Dormitivity — construed as a second-order property — has first-order chemical-realizing properties such as (having the) structure C12H12N2O3 (phenobarbital) that causes sleep. What is the relation between a second-order property and the disjunction of its first-order realizers if not identity By the disjunction I mean the property that consists in being C12H12N2O3 (phenobarbital) or in being Q HijClNjO (diazepam), or...But what... 

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