The Nonreductivist’s Trouble with Explanation

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter concerns the question of how the existence and features of non-physical entities—like our thoughts and feelings or the rate of interest on U.S. treasury bonds—can be determined by the physical facts without themselves being among the physical facts. This initially appealing idea encounters a problem, which is dubbed the connection problem. Briefly, the problem is that a plausible constraint on grounding explanation appears to require that there be features of any non-fundamental process like metabolism among the grounds for any fact involving that process. In the absence of reduction, this then appears to imply that we cannot ground the existence and features of metabolism in entirely metabolism-free terms. The chapter explores some ways of dealing with the problem, but concludes that none of those proposals is satisfactory. Another idea is needed if the standard sort of nonreductivism under discussion is to be plausible.