Brent Westlake
Leibniz Universität Hannover
Multiple realisability has been accepted as standard within Philosophy of Mind since the 1960’s. The idea is that any property kind might be one-for-one replicable by physical systems of a different composition. As pain is evident in animals with very different psychological capacities, we might think that mental states could also be replicable on computer hardware, or other such mediums. The existence of multiple realisability itself has been a point of contention since its inception, with prevalent criticisms citing seeming conceptual errors within the proposed relation. The state of the art gives us two camps, the “flat view” of multiple realisability, which limits the possible instances where multiple realisability can occur to very few instances. The other camp is the “dimensioned view”, which maintains that multiple realisability is far more prevalent than often given credit, and that it can be massively and multiply prevalent within any given mereology. Both kinds of multiple realisability have been used by scientists to communicate their findings. It is unclear to the extent which either camp is prevalent within various scientific disciplines. The goal of my presentation is to make the audience aware of the distinction, so that they may be better informed of the ontological commitments of each position. Neither the flat nor the dimensioned could be considered the historically orthodox view of multiple realisability, as both have picked out specific yet mutually exclusive traits with which to posit metaphysical relationships which were never clearly defined in historical examples. Flat multiple realisability only occurs at one level, and can be considered an artefact of off-screening compositional information. The dimensioned view is much broader, and posits that multiple realisability is transitive, meaning that virtually every object is multiply realised in some aspect.”
Chair: Niklas Parwez
Time: September 11th, 15:30 – 16:00
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 