Let me just repeat my claim now that you see that the definition is accurate:

I think this direction of entailment is necessary but not sufficient for supervenience. This is because A can entail B without "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties." — Leontiskos

Let me just repeat my claim now that you see that the definition is accurate: — Leontiskos

Well, not to quibble, but because you left the IFF off of the beginning of the sentence, your quote from the SEP didn't make any sense.

But I think the reason "entail" isn't exactly equivalent to "supervene" is because the latter is proprietary wording and the former isn't.

This is because A can entail B without "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties." — Leontiskos

Well, not to quibble, but because you left the IFF off of the beginning of the sentence, your quote from the SEP didn't make any sense. — frank

It would only fail to make sense if someone did not understand that we are considering the possibility of A supervening on B, but this should be apparent both because it is the standard usage which was present even in your OP, and because A and B were introduced explicitly via the entailment relation that you put forward.

But I think the reason "entail" isn't exactly equivalent to "supervene" is because the latter is proprietary wording and the former isn't. — frank

Hmm. Both terms have technical and non-technical senses. I don't think any mixture of those senses would support your idea that, "You could also say the music entails these actions." The SEP article covers the difference between supervenience and entailment in some detail.

It would only fail to make sense if someone did not understand that we are considering the possibility of A supervening on B, but this should be apparent both because it is the standard usage which was present even in your OP, and because A and B were introduced explicitly via the entailment relation that you put forward. — Leontiskos

No, it fails to make sense because you left out an important part of the sentence, namely the leading IFF.

Hmm. Both terms have technical and non-technical senses. I don't think any mixture of those senses would support your idea that, "You could also say the music entails these actions." The SEP article covers the difference between supervenience and entailment in some detail. — Leontiskos

Entailment and supervenience aren't identical, but supervenience can overlap entailment, causality, and dependence.

It might be amusing at this stage to mention Ascombe's shopping list.

Anscombe has a piece of paper on which she has written a list of items to be purchased. Unbeknownst to her, as she collects the items, a spy writes a list of the things she collects.

It would not be too difficult to arrange the thought experiment so that the two lists were physically identical.

Yet the lists differ markedly in the attitude taken to them.

That attitude, our intent towards each list, supervenes on the list.

We have two lists that are physically identical, so their molecules are arranged exactly the same?

But the lists were created under different circumstances.

Do our attitudes supervene in the actual lists? Or on the ways they were created?

Well, if that is too much for you, there's a chap moving his arms around...

...note that a single action can be described in various ways. Is he moving his arm up and down? Pumping water? Doing his job? Clicking out a steady rhythm? Making a funny shadow on the rock behind him? Well, it could be that all of these descriptions are true. — SEP: Anscombe

I did not receive a notification that you mentioned me, — Leontiskos

It happens sometimes, it’s a sporadic bug. You'll still generally see them on your Mentions page.

My take is that the term ‘supervenience’ has been used to preserve the credibility of naturalist and physicalist accounts of the mind and intentionality - not that physicalism is explicit in its formulation, but because it's the presumed consensus of the peer group for whom all of this material is written, namely, other academics. Notice in the intro to the SEP entry, 'For example, it has been claimed that aesthetic, moral, and mental properties supervene upon physical properties.'

I attempted to leap in with a sweeping argument based on the impossibility of reducing rational propositions to brain-states. But I'm learning that, by the rules of this particular language-game, the arguments are very carefully circumscribed, and are anything but sweeping, so I will refrain from flailing about henceforth.

That attitude, our intent towards each list, supervenes on the list. — Banno

However, that seems to conflict with the leading quotation which says that 'supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be two events alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respect, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respect without altering in some physical respect'.

That's why I presented it.

Subtle, ain't it?

https://divinecuration.github.io/assets/pdf/davidson-mental-events.pdf . p. 141

So the upshot seems to be that Anscombe and Davidson are approaching different issues, and so that they do not, despite appearances, contradict each other.

So the upshot seems to be that Anscombe and Davidson are approaching different issues, and so that they do not, despite appearances, contradict each other. — Banno

Great. Problem solved.

NUh. There's still the detail.

You should stay away from details. That's where the devil is.

More philosophical jargon:

The Nomological Net: The nomological net is the background of general knowledge, laws, and regularities that provide the necessary context for interpreting and understanding specific linguistic expressions and mental states. It encompasses our understanding of the physical world, the principles of causation, and the norms of rationality that govern human thought and communication. — Davidson, Mental Events, op cit

(Rather surprised, reading that paper, to note mention of Noosa Heads as an hypothetical example of a place name. Did Donald Davidson visit or holiday in Australia?)

But God lives there, too.

:smile:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

Hmmm indeed - what did take place as Noosa Heads? What was "X"? I haven't been there for forty years.

The Nomological Net is not unlike Searle's background, and seems related to Wittgenstein's hinges. But consider this against the recent Kripke's skeptical challenge thread - Kripke's argument against being able to tell someone is following a rule.

No, it fails to make sense because you left out an important part of the sentence, namely the leading IFF. — frank

Well, I left off the merely definitional part because we were already talking about the supervenience of A on B, "A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if..." But in fact you knew exactly what I meant, and you responded by claiming that the "quoted words do not describe supervenience."

Entailment and supervenience aren't identical, but supervenience can overlap entailment, causality, and dependence. — frank

Okay, I can agree with that.

But in fact you knew exactly what I meant, and you responded by claiming that the "quoted words do not describe supervenience." — Leontiskos

I didn't know what you meant. You're right that I would have understood you if I'd been more familiar with standard definitions of supervenience. But I'm just a poor coal miner trying to think through some stuff. Hope you can overlook it.

Fair enough, . :up:

Subtle, ain't it? — Banno

Wouldn't someone like Davidson just say that it is precisely through the different physical events and characteristics that we know the different [final causes] of the two lists?

(You'll find here a critique of Davidson's anomalous monism from a A-T perspective by Edward Feser. He puts the kind of criticism I had in mind like this:

'In understanding a physical system qua physical, we do not and need not attribute to it beliefs, desires, or any other sort of intentionality, and we do not expect it to abide by norms of rationality. Such systems are governed instead (at least on the modern “mechanistic” conception of the natural world) by patterns of brute, purposeless efficient causation. This should already make us suspicious of the very idea of a one-to-one match-up between mental state types and physical state types. The notion seems to rest on a category mistake, a failure to understand that the network of rationally-cum-semantically interrelated mental states is no more susceptible of a smooth correlation with a particular network of causally interrelated physical states than the content of a book can be smoothly correlated with a certain kind of physical format (a modern printed book, say, as opposed to a scroll, wax tablet, or electronic book). As Wilfrid Sellars might put it, the “space of reasons” and the “space of causes” are simply incommensurable.')

Thank you, I read the whole thing and it was helpful. I am not familiar enough with Davidson's thought to confidently interpret short quotations, so Feser is a good mediator.

What's interesting to me is the Aristotelian-Thomistic maxim that, "Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses," and the way it parallels the thesis that the mental supervenes on the physical. I don't think Aristotelians can ultimately hold to such supervenience, but it is an interesting parallel.

I searched Feser's blog posts for 'supervenience' and this is the first thing that came up:

In his book Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim puts forward the following characterization of the materialist supervenience thesis:

I take supervenience as an ontological thesis involving the idea of dependence – a sense of dependence that justifies saying that a mental property is instantiated in a given organism at a time because, or in virtue of the fact that, one of its physical “base” properties is instantiated by the organism at that time. Supervenience, therefore, is not a mere claim of covariation between mental and physical properties; it includes a claim of existential dependence of the mental on the physical. (p. 34) — Edward Feser | Supervenience on the hands of an angry God

This is almost exactly what you were worried about, no?

I have not followed these debates in philosophy of mind, and therefore my exposure to the term 'supervenience' is more quotidian. I think this helps me in some ways but harms me in others, given that there are such bitter debates in philosophy of mind that hang on the precise meaning of supervenience.

The notion seems to rest on a category mistake, a failure to understand that the network of rationally-cum-semantically interrelated mental states is no more susceptible of a smooth correlation with a particular network of causally interrelated physical states than the content of a book can be smoothly correlated with a certain kind of physical format — Edward Feser

That seems exactly right to me.

The second part starting with "equivalently," is saying that the only way to have an exact duplicate of a musical production would be to exactly duplicate the actions of the orchestra playing it. That's a convoluted way to get the idea across, but it's true. That does describe the kind of relation we're specifying with supervenience. It's definitely an IFF kind of relation. — frank

Surely it must be acknowledged that there could not be two performances of a musical piece that were exactly the same, because not only the actions of the orchestra would need to be exactly the same, but the temperature, the humidity, the weight of every musician, the building, the state of the building, the exact location of all the players, exactly the same audience and their locations, and so on.

So, what could it mean to say that in order for a mental state (or better, process or event) to be the same, the neural state would have to be the same, when this would also entail the entire bodily and environmental states being the same, which would by extension entail the entire world and the solar system (at least) being the same?

Also, you didn't answer my previous question which was that if we accept that mental events could not be the same without neural events also being the same, does this not entail that neural events could not be the same without mental events being the same, leaving the question as to what direction we should understand the supervenience to follow?

I take supervenience as an ontological thesis involving the idea of dependence – a sense of dependence that justifies saying that a mental property is instantiated in a given organism at a time because, or in virtue of the fact that, one of its physical “base” properties is instantiated by the organism at that time. Supervenience, therefore, is not a mere claim of covariation between mental and physical properties; it includes a claim of existential dependence of the mental on the physical. — Edward Feser | Supervenience on the hands of an angry God

This is kinda what I'm getting at; it seems we must think that there is a causal direction at work, unless we want to claim that the mental and physical are codependent, or that mental phenomena are really epiphenomena, or that we have just one neutral thing under the two descriptions: mental and physical, and all of these conceptual scenarios would seem to render the very idea of supervenience moot.

This is almost exactly what you were worried about, no? — Leontiskos

That's pretty well it. I'm not specifically aligned with Thomism, but, on the other hand, I think the case can be made that Aristotelian Thomism is a Western form of perennialism, and my sympathies lie nearer to that, than to the current mainstream. On the other hand, I do recognise that space needs to be given for discussion of the modern mainstream, so having expressed my objection, I'll butt out. (BTW that last quote attributed to me is from Ed Feser, although I'm in furious agreement with the thrust of it.)

The notion seems to rest on a category mistake, a failure to understand that the network of rationally-cum-semantically interrelated mental states is no more susceptible of a smooth correlation with a particular network of causally interrelated physical states than the content of a book can be smoothly correlated with a certain kind of physical format (a modern printed book, say, as opposed to a scroll, wax tablet, or electronic book). As Wilfrid Sellars might put it, the “space of reasons” and the “space of causes” are simply incommensurable.') — Wayfarer

I'm not sure Wilfred Sellars thought they were incommensurable tout court; I think his project was at least partly concerned with attempting to find some way in which what seems incommensurable could be co-measured. I could be wrong about that, as I am only superficially familiar with Sellar's work.

The other point here is that even if we cannot find a "smooth correlation", which can be coherently understood, between particular causally interrelated states and particular rationally interrelated mental states, that does not entail that there are not strict correlations between the two but could be down to the limitations of our understanding.

That's pretty well it. — Wayfarer

And thus I come to understand the basis of your worries. The colloquial and etymological sense of 'supervenience' lends itself to epiphenomenalism, so it should come as no surprise that recasting it as a "philosophical term of art" failed to fully insulate it from that broader semantic context. Much of what I have said in this thread presupposes SEP's claim that it is merely a technical term of art. Now I'm not so sure if this can be granted.

...I think the case can be made that Aristotelian Thomism is a Western form of perennialism... — Wayfarer

I think so too.

On the other hand, I do recognise that space needs to be given for discussion of the modern mainstream... — Wayfarer

I agree again.

(BTW that last quote attributed to me is from Ed Feser, although I'm in furious agreement with the thrust of it.) — Wayfarer

Fixed. :wink:

The point I have not found in the discussion of 'mental states' or 'mental events' is the status of reason. Quiz anyone about almost anything they are doing in a methodical way and they will give reasons for why they're doing it. Let alone actually doing mathematics or chip design or other highly intellectual activities that are formal and structured according to axioms, rules and inferences - the application of reason, you might say. 'Why did you set the apparatus up that way?' 'To allow for (x)' (some factor known to the scientist). Are such acts covered by the catch-all of being 'mental events' or 'mental states'? I suspect not, although perhaps it's expected that, should mental acts or events be defined satisfactorily, then they might be included under those terms.

But Davidson says there are no psycho-physical laws, which I take to mean that there are no laws which detemine mental acts analogous to the laws which govern physical events (presumably those are the laws of physics - he says 'Physical theory promises to provide a comprehensive closed system guaranteed to yield a standardized, unique description of every physical event couched in a vocabulary amenable to law.')

But this is where I'm asking, what about the logical laws? Rules of valid inference? If you know that x is the case, then you can infer that y must be the case. If that is a mental act, then it's appealing to the 'law of reason', isn't it? And we have to presume such laws hold if we are to make any kind of argument. They're embedded in every act of reason. But then, maybe I'm talking at cross-purposes to Davidson, I've only just read this one paper (and intend to read it a second time, it's said to be one of his seminal papers.)

But this is where I'm asking, what about the logical laws? Rules of valid inference? If you know that x is the case, then you can infer that y must be the case — Wayfarer

Can you give an example of such an inference which is not merely a matter of definition?

But Davidson says there are no psycho-physical laws, which I take to mean that there are no laws which detemine mental acts analogous to the laws which govern physical events... — Wayfarer

In the post of Feser's that you referenced above this seems to be related to, "3. There are no strict laws on the basis of which we can predict and explain mental phenomena." If I read Feser correctly, then it is more the idea that there are no laws that connect the psychic and the physical realms in a strict way (and this is based on the "Principle of the Anomalism of the Mental").

Davidson says:

There can be no "psychophysical law" in the form of a biconditional, ' (x) (x is true-in-L if and only if x is Φ) ' where, ' Φ ' is replaced by a "physical" predicate (a predicate of L). Similarly, we can pick out each mental event using the physical vocabulary alone, but no purely physical predicate, no matter how complex, has, as a matter of law, the same extension as a mental predicate. — Davidson, Mental Events, p. 141

It seems that he is saying that the "mental" truth predicate, 'true-in-L', is not reducible to the "physical" Φ. This seems right to me, because universals have greater extension than particulars.