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Physicalism and the burden of parsimony

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Abstract

Parsimony considerations are ubiquitous in the literature concerning the nature of mental states. Other things being equal, physicalist views are preferred over dualist accounts on the grounds of the fact that they do not posit new fundamental properties in addition to the physical ones. This paper calls into question the widespread assumption that parsimony can provide reasons for believing that physicalism is a better candidate than dualism for solving the mind–body problem. After presenting the theoretical core of physicalism and dualism, I make explicit the meta-metaphysical assumptions the physicalist relies on when leveraging parsimony to support her view. In particular, the physicalist takes for granted that parsimony has an epistemic value in metaphysics. This point, however, is rather controversial. I argue that the most promising way to account for the epistemic value of parsimony is to ground it in the epistemic value of modesty, a higher-level theoretical virtue that has to do with the epistemic risk of a theory. Unfortunately for the physicalist, the modesty rationale does not ultimately favour physicalism over dualism.

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Notes

  1. I follow Elpidorou (2018) in taking the “nothing over and above” claim to be sufficiently general to capture a number of physicalist positions. Note that I will always refer to physicalism about the nature of mental states. Broader formulations according to which everything is physical lay outside the scope of this paper.

  2. See Ney (2008a) for a critical review of the definitions that have been provided in the literature, and Witmer (2018) for a recent proposal. For simplicity’s sake, unless explicitly stated otherwise, I will take ‘physical’ to be interchangeable with ‘material’. In particular, I will include states of the nervous system—plus the relevant environmental features—in the category of physical states.

  3. See Chalmers (1996, 2010). Note that this view is not incompatible with substance dualism, although Chalmers tends to be cautious when it comes to introducing non-physical particulars as bearers of mental properties. I will not consider such a possibility, and I will take the sui generis mental properties the dualist posits to be instantiated by the same kind of particulars instantiating physical properties.

  4. To be clear, the explanatory argument provides reasons for believing that physicalism is more likely to be true than dualism, without saying anything conclusive. Abduction is by definition a non-demonstrative kind of inference, and in the application to theory choice it can at best provide a justification for preferring one of the given options. Interestingly, nothing prevents us from thinking that both physicalism and dualism are false, that we have simply failed to conceive better options—this is the problem of the unconceived alternatives, formulated in detail by Stanford (2006). In other words, physicalism could turn out to be nothing but the best false theory we have available.

  5. Addressing the issue would require a long detour, but it is noteworthy that parsimony also seems to play a role in the causal argument for physicalism (see Papineau, 2002). In particular, the rejection of systematic overdetermination in cases of mental causation can be regarded as motivated, at least partially, by parsimony considerations concerning the number of individually sufficient causes.

  6. See also Hill (1991), although he is more cautious in making explicit that the strength of such considerations depends on our “aesthetic intuitions” about parsimony.

  7. A clarification has to be made. As widely acknowledged, Melnyk argues that the physicalist cannot assign a high probability to her own view. On the contrary, he argues that current physicalism is likely to be false. This is due to the fact that he opts for the currentist horn of Hempel’s dilemma (see Ney, 2008a). When it comes to providing reasons in favour of physicalism, however, the physicalist à la Melnyk can consistently argue that physicalism, despite being probably false, is still more likely to be true than dualism.

  8. I interpret the notion of question begging as relativized, in the sense that an argument always begs the question against a particular audience (Beebee, 2001).

  9. See Dummett’s (1978) distinction between suasive and explanatory argument.

  10. It is worth mentioning that physicalism is usually understood as a contingent necessitation thesis. It might have been false at the actual world w, but since it is true at w then mental properties are necessitated by physical properties in all possible worlds. As Francescotti (2014, p. 251) clearly states, “while physical facts actually do necessitate mental facts, this need not have been the case”.

  11. Admittedly, this claim is problematic when it comes to grounding. As a matter of fact, some have argued that grounding does not entail necessitation (Leuenberger 2014; Skiles 2015). However, the received view about grounding—provided that there is such a thing—is that grounding carries necessity (Audi 2012; Dasgupta 2014; Rosen 2010; Trogdon 2013).

  12. The possibility of this view depends on whether one accepts the so-called Hume’s dictum, stating that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences (see Jackson 1993; Stoljar 2010; Wilson 2010).

  13. Since I am focusing on physicalism about the mind, I am narrowing it down to mental states. However, analogous considerations should hold for other domains as well. For example, the physicalist should arguably deny that non-physical fundamental properties are needed to account for chemical and biological phenomena. I cannot afford to go into greater detail, but an interesting question is whether the negative commitment of the physicalist could take the form of a long, potentially open-ended, conjunction of negative claims; on this point, see Wilson (2006).

  14. The “no fundamental mentality” constraint has been defended by Wilson (2006); see also Montero & Brown (2018).

  15. Note that I take strong emergentists about mental properties to be committed to (Dii); see Chalmers (2006).

  16. Among theoretical virtues, empirical accuracy is often taken to have a special status. As a matter of fact, it turns out to be the “first requirement” any given theory or hypothesis has to satisfy (McMullin, 2014; see also Kuhn, 1977).

  17. Sober (2015) provides a valuable overview of the debate on simplicity principles.

  18. I am admittedly oversimplifying. On the one hand, rigorously speaking, there is little point in arguing that a given theory is simple unless we are implicitly suggesting that it is simpler than other theories. There is no threshold value for calculating simplicity. Simplicity considerations apply on a comparative basis, when two or more theories are contrasted. On the other hand, defining a metric for measuring theories’ simplicity is far from being an easy task; see Scorzato (2013).

  19. Interestingly, Schaffer (2015) argues in favour of a restricted version of Occam’s razor, according to which fundamental entities should not be multiplied without necessity.

  20. Suppose T1 and T2 are equally successful in accounting for the available evidence and allow for the same predictions. Assume that T1 is simpler than T2. In that case, according to van Fraassen, we are justified in preferring T1 in our explanatory practices and when attempting at making predictions, but we have no reason for thinking that T1 is more likely to be true than T2.

  21. I largely follow Schindler (2018) in discussing them.

  22. See Baker (2016), considering the widely discussed case of Einstein’s Special Relativity.

  23. Interestingly, this point is discussed by Sober (2015, pp. 253–260). However, he is skeptical about the dualist’s actual commitment to a model that makes the same prediction as the physicalist’s one.

  24. See Sober (1990), arguing that the rationality of parsimony reduces to ___domain-specific considerations.

  25. Interestingly, an analogous point can be found in the final remarks of Russell (1918/1956).

  26. One may argue that there is a sense in which T1 is not more modest than T2. As a matter of fact, we could fail to discern an intrinsic complexity of the world, and our conviction to be able to explain the relevant phenomena by positing fewer entities (laws, relations, etc.) could be associated with a form of epistemic hybris. In general, I am sympathetic towards this perspective. However, there seems to be no way to determine how complex the investigated phenomena are. Taking for granted that they are intrinsically complex is as immodest as assuming that they are intrinsically simple. Given our ignorance, postulating the existence of fewer entities seems to expose less to error.

  27. See Brenner (2017), arguing that there are no reasons to think that scientific theories cannot be committed to negative existential claims such as those Kriegel has in mind.

  28. Note that, in many cases, it is difficult to assess theories’ overall modesty. Since theories are complex objects, it is perfectly conceivable that, given two theories T1 and T2, T1 is more modest than T2 concerning the postulation of entities but less modest with respect to, say, the causal relations it assumes. At a closer look, however, this should come as no surprise. Simplicity, as we have seen, has at least three different dimensions—qualitative and quantitative parsimony, and elegance. This “makes it impossible to compare theories without first specifying the form of interest” (Schindler, 2018, p. 15; see also McAllister, 1997). I hold that the same applies to modesty considerations, but I agree with Schindler that this does not make such theoretical virtues arbitrary or useless in theory choice.

  29. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  30. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for raising them.

  31. See also Wilson (2006) and Elpidorou & Dove (2018, Ch. 3).

  32. See Keas (2018) and Schindler (2018, Ch. 5) for a discussion of ad-hocness.

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Acknowledgements

For comments and feedback on various drafts of this work, I am grateful to Alfredo Tomasetta, David Papineau, Michele Di Francesco, Francesca Bellazzi, and Marco Facchin. Early versions of this paper were presented at the IUSS WIP webinars in Philosophy (July 2020) and at the MetaScience WIP webinars (University of Bristol, July 2020). I would like to thank the audience for their questions and suggestions. Finally, I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for providing extensive and helpful comments.

Funding

This work has been funded by the PRIN Project “The Mark of Mental” (MOM), 2017P9E9N, financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, active from 29/12/2019 to 28/12/2022.

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  1. University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, Palazzo del Broletto, Piazza della Vittoria 15, Pavia, 27100, Italy

    Giacomo Zanotti

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Zanotti, G. Physicalism and the burden of parsimony. Synthese 199, 11109–11132 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03281-7

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