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This chapter consolidates the constraints on metaphysics as a unification of science by requiring that a metaphysical hypothesis respect the constraint of the principle of naturalistic closure (PNC). Floridi criticizes what he calls the “eliminativist” interpretation of OSR, the view that self-subsistent individuals do not exist, on the grounds that it lets the tail of the quantum-theoretic problems over entanglement wag the dog of our general world-view. However, the Primacy of Physics Constraint (PPC), according to which failure of an interpretation of special-science generalizations to respect negative implications of physical theory is grounds for rejecting such generalizations, is endorsed in this chapter. Thus, Floridi's modus tollens may be considered a modus ponens: if the best current interpretation of fundamental physics says there are no self-subsistent individuals, then special sciences had better admit, for the sake of unification, of an ontological interpretation that is compatible with a non-atomistic metaphysics. The PNC is invoked again independently.

This chapter argues that the idea of causation has similar status to ideas of cohesion, forces, and things. Appreciating the role of causation in a notional world is crucial to understanding the nature of the special sciences, and the general ways in which they differ from fundamental physics. Causation, unlike cohesion, is both a notional-world concept and a folk concept. Moreover, causation, unlike cohesion, is a basic category of traditional metaphysics, including metaphysics that purports to be naturalistic but falls short of this ambition. This chapter also argues that causation, just like cohesion, is a representational real pattern that is necessary for an adequately comprehensive science. It begins with an account that eliminates causation altogether on naturalistic grounds, and then shows, using principle of naturalistic closure (PNC)-mandated motivations, why this outright eliminativism is too strong. The eliminativist argument to be discussed is due to Bertrand Russell, whose view has some important contemporary adherents among philosophers of physics.

This conclusion criticizes Daniel Dennett for dividing reality into first-class illata and second-class abstracta, and argues that fundamental physics directly studies extra-representational real patterns, while special sciences study real patterns located by means of the notional-world concepts of cohesion and causation. Dennett's abstracta are approximate descriptions of the illata, where the approximations in question usefully serve human purposes. By contrast, special-science real patterns are not approximations of (fundamental) physical real patterns. The primacy of physics constraint (PPC) is the only physicalist principle motivated by actual science, and it is too weak to support any form of reduction of special-science real patterns to physical real patterns. The special sciences often successfully track real patterns, an assertion based on the no-miracles argument rather than on any claim about how the special sciences inherit ontological seriousness from their relationship to physics.

The viability of non‐reductive physicalism has been extensively discussed over the last half‐century. Most of the debate has focused on whether there are any non‐reduced causes. However, there has been far less discussion of whether there are any non‐reduced laws. This chapter argues that there are fewer of these than is generally supposed, and that those that do obtain are relatively insubstantial. These points turn out to cast some useful light on the question of non‐reduced causes.

This chapter seeks to develop Papineau's argument further in the direction of a reductive but conservative physicalism that sets out to vindicate the scientific quality of the special sciences by linking them systematically to physics. Such a link can be established by constructing fine‐grained functional sub‐kinds in the vocabulary of the special sciences that are nomologically coextensive with physical kinds. A further advantage of this strategy is that the problem of the causal efficacy of objects insofar as they come under kinds of the special sciences does not arise.

“Why There Are No Laws in the Special Sciences: Three Arguments” offers three arguments explaining why there are no laws, or “strict” laws, in the special sciences. The first of the arguments begins with a consideration of Donald Davidson's argument for his anomalism of the mental, the thesis that there are no laws about intentional mental phenomena. The second argument builds on some of J.J.C. Smart's observations concerning biology and its relationship to the fundamental science of physics. His claim is that, unlike physics, biology does not aim at the discovery of laws, and that engineering, not physics, is the correct model for understanding the status of biology. The argument yields a simple metaphysical argument for Davidson's anomalism of the mental. The last of the three arguments is based on the author's earlier work on multiply realizable properties and their projectibility. It argues that most special‐science properties are multiply realizable, and that multiply realizable properties, on account of their causal/nomological heterogeneity, are not inductively projectible and hence are not fit for laws.

This chapter first discusses a tension in Fodor's treatment of special sciences. It argues that, on Fodor's account, special science counterfactuals are necessitated by fundamental physical laws and facts. So, if there are metaphysically independent special science laws then they can only overdetermine counterfactuals, which is puzzling. Next the lawfulness of special science regularities is considered. After examining Boltzmann's reconciliation of laws of thermodynamics with fundamental dynamical laws, the chapter proposes that the lawfulness of such regularities is grounded in the dynamical laws plus a probabilistic constraint on the initial conditions of the universe. It shows that physics misses no nomological/explanatory structure that the special sciences supply. This reductionist account denies the existence of metaphysically independent special science laws, but it does not entail that special science properties are identical to properties of fundamental physics and it allows for the multiple realisability of special science laws.

The systems studied in the special sciences are often said to be causally autonomous, in the sense that their higher‐level properties have causal powers that are independent of those of their more basic physical properties. This chapter aims to clarify what is implied by the doctrine of the causal autonomy of special‐science properties and to defend the doctrine using an interventionist theory of causation. In terms of this theory, it shows that a special‐science property can make a difference to some effect while the physical property that realizes it does not. Moreover, the theory permits identification of necessary and sufficient conditions for the causal autonomy of a higher‐level property, and to show that these are satisfied when causal claims about higher‐level properties have a special feature we call realization‐insensitivity. This feature consists in the fact that the relevant claims are true regardless of the way the higher‐level properties they describe are physically realized. The findings here are consistent with those of other philosophers, for example Alan Garfinkel, who have noted the realization‐insensitivity of higher‐level causal relations as a distinctive feature of the special sciences and have suggested that this feature ensures their independence from lower‐level causal relations.

The concept of reduction is discussed in the context of a discussion of the origins of ‘non-reductive physicalism’. Reduction is identified as a relation among terms, or predicates, or theories, not a relation among properties. Three influential anti-reductive arguments — Davidson’s advocacy of anomalous monism, Fodor’s defense of the autonomy of the special sciences, and Boyd’s discussion of special science kinds — are discussed and shown to be best understood as pertaining to predicates, not properties. The result is a depiction of the universe as answering to autonomous taxonomies definitive of the special sciences. Considerations are advanced suggesting that this picture is compatible with the idea that the deep truth about truthmakers for truths of the special sciences is provided by fundamental physics. Kinds and essences are discussed and explicated in a manner inspired by Descartes and Locke.

This chapter is a summary of conclusions reached in preceding chapters. The fundamental things, or perhaps arrangements of the fundamental things, serve as truthmakers for all the truths that have truthmakers. Although fundamental physics is in the business of providing accounts of the fundamental things, physics has no monopoly on the truths. Everyday truths and truths of the special sciences are neither reducible to nor replaceable by truths of physics. Reduction is not on the cards. This does not imply an ontology of levels of being or levels of reality, each level corresponding to an autonomous science. The mistake is to imagine that there is a direct route from taxonomy to ontology. An ontology of substances and properties, where properties are modes, powerful qualities, provides both a framework in which physical theory can be developed empirically, and truthmaking resources for truths of the manifest image.

This chapter identifies and criticizes assumptions about reductive explanation that are common in philosophy of mind. It argues that there is a serious disconnect between the picture of reduction that philosophers of mind tend to employ, and actual practice in the parts of science that are most relevant to their problems (psychology, biology, neuroscience). Ideas from the ‘new mechanist’ movement and from work on model-based science are used to develop a better picture. This picture is applied to some problems in mainstream functionalism.

This chapter unfolds a central philosophical problem of statistical mechanics. This problem lies in a clash between the Static Probabilities offered by statistical mechanics and the Dynamic Probabilities provided by classical or quantum mechanics. The chapter looks at the Boltzmann and Gibbs approaches in statistical mechanics and construes some of the great controversies in the field — for instance the Reversibility Paradox — as instances of this conflict. It furthermore argues that a response to this conflict is a critical choice that shapes one's understanding of statistical mechanics itself, namely, whether it is to be conceived as a special or fundamental science. The chapter details some of the pitfalls of the latter ‘globalist’ position and seeks defensible ground for a kind of ‘localist’ alternative.

This introductory chapter discusses recent logical inquiries and their psychological bearings. These logical inquiries refer to two decidedly distinct classes of researches, both of which are receiving much attention today. The first of these two classes include researches directly bearing upon the psychology of the thinking process, and upon the natural history of logical phenomena in general. Such inquiries may be called “logical,” since they are sometimes undertaken by logicians for the sake of their own science, and in any case are suggested by the problems of logic. However, studies of this class are also contributions to psychology. Meanwhile, the second class of recent logical inquiries consists of studies in the comparative logic of the various sciences and of examinations of the first principles of certain special sciences.

This chapter examines the confusion regarding the “unity of science.” What has traditionally been called “the unity of science” is a much stronger, and much less plausible, thesis than the generality of physics. Reductionism may be an empirical doctrine, but it is intended to play a regulative role in scientific practice. Philosophers who accept reductivism do so because they wish to endorse the generality of physics in relation to the special sciences. They share the view that all events which fall under the laws of any science are physical events and, hence, fall under the laws of physics. For such philosophers, saying that physics is basic science and saying that theories in the special sciences must reduce to physical theories have seemed to be two ways of saying the same thing.

This chapter examines the special sciences found in the texts of a tradition known as “British Emergentism,” which is still evident in the works of current authors, including those of noted neurophysiologist Roger Sperry. British Emergentism’s roots can be found in the middle of the nineteenth century, where it flourished in the century’s first quarter. It can be seen in John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic (1843), where it began, and through works such as Alexander Bain’s Logic (1870), George Henry Lewes’s Problems of Life and Mind (1875), Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity (1920), Lloyd Morgan’s Emergent Evolution (1923), and C. D. Broad’s The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925). The chapter also discusses British Emergentism’s doctrine of “emergent laws,” and the rise and fall of British Emergentism as a doctrine.

This sets out my positive account of causal explanation. According to this account, successful explanations must answer what-if-things-had-been-different questions: they must cite conditions such that changes in those conditions (produced by interventions) are associated with changes in the phenomenon being explained. It follows from this account that nomothetic models of explanation according to which laws are required for sucessful explanation are mistaken. This is a highly desirable result since explanations that do not cite laws are common in the special sciences. Explanation has to do with the exhibition of relations of dependency, not with nomic subsumption.

This chapter steps back to survey the broader implications of earlier discussions. It’s argued that phenomenological notions are crucial evidence for semantic and pragmatic theories, and for theories of the cognitive processing of language. A discussion of two cases from physics, weight/mass, and friction, are used to show the kinds of role “appearances” should play in the evidence for theories. An important distinction is drawn between top-down autonomous special-science theories and bottom-sensitive autonomous special-science theories, and it’s argued that the kinds of theoretical virtues that are brought to bear on demarcation debates between semantics and pragmatics shows that such theories are top-down autonomous special-science theories. It’s also argued that it’s extremely important for questions of how Gricean theories are to be confirmed whether they are taken to be descriptive or normative.