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The Puzzling Resilience of Multiple Realization

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Abstract

According to the multiple realization argument, mental states or processes can be realized in diverse and heterogeneous physical systems; and that fact implies that mental state or process kinds cannot be identified with particular kinds of physical states or processes. More specifically, mental processes cannot be identified with brain processes. Moreover, the argument provides a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. The multiple realization argument is widely influential, but over the last thirty years it has also faced serious objections. Despite those objections, most philosophers regard the fact of multiple realization and the cogency of the multiple realization argument as plainly correct. Why is that? What is it about the multiple realization argument that makes it so resilient? One reason is that the multiple realization argument is deeply intertwined with a view that minds are, in some sense, computational. But we argue that the sense in which minds are computational does not support the conclusion that they are ipso facto multiply realized. We argue that the sense in which brains compute does not imply that brains implement multiply realizable computational processes, and it does not provide a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences.

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Notes

  1. Such claims are difficult to adjudicate, of course. But it is telling that even critics of multiple realization tend to comment on its widespread acceptance. Ned Block (1997) writes, “For nearly thirty years, there has been a consensus (at least in English-speaking countries) that reductionism is a mistake and that there are autonomous special sciences. This consensus has been based on an argument from multiple realizability” (1997: 107). Jaegwon Kim, in his Philosophy of Mind textbook writes, “by the mid-1970s most philosophers had abandoned reductionist physicalism, not only as a view about psychology but as a doctrine about the special sciences… All this stemmed from a single idea: the multiple realizability of mental properties” (2011: 129, italics removed.) And John Bickle, in his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Multiple Realizability, remarks on “the still-too-prominent view in the philosophy of mind that multiple realization spells doom for reductive materialism and mind-brain identity theory once and for all” (2020). It is telling that of the 79 essays in the second edition of David Chalmers’ Philosophy of Mind anthology (2022), fewer than a half dozen seriously consider views according to which multiple realization is false, and they were all originally published over 40 years ago.

  2. A referee suggested sociological reasons for philosophers’ ready acceptance of multiple realization – a tendency to jump on the bandwagon, especially when its drivers are charismatic figures like Putnam and Fodor. We do not wish to dismiss this possibility, but we choose to focus on philosophical justifications for the continuing popularity of the thesis. Why is the idea of multiple realization so easy to sell? Surely, if pressed, advocates of multiple realization would sooner appeal to philosophical justifications than to sociological ones, even if (as the referee suggests) the sociological reasons might be an important tacit cause. Our question is whether such philosophical justifications are cogent, apart from whether they are the “real” motivators.

  3. We don’t deny that there may be other possible sources; we only propose that this is an important one. Some candidates for accounts of multiple realization that do not overly appeal to considerations of computational abstraction, e.g., the subset view (Wilson, 1999, 2011) or the dimensioned view (Aizawa & Gillett, 2009a, b, 2011). But notice that both of those views are broadly reductive, and therefore do not purport to provide an account of the “autonomy” of the special sciences in the manner that Fodor requires.

  4. Though we cannot pursue the question here, we have doubts about whether motivations for functionalism are ever fully independent of considerations of multiple realizability.

  5. The “only game in town” idea was assailed as early as Dennett (1983) and Kosslyn and Hatfield (1984); and then more vigorously with the advent of connectionist alternatives (Hatfield, 1991).

  6. For surveys, see Aizawa (2010); Miłkowski (2013a; Piccinini (2015).

  7. In contrast, Lewis (1972) coins the term “multiple realization” by way of expressing the concern that if the descriptions do not have unique realizers then they are “improper” descriptions that “do not (in any normal way) name anything here in our actual world” (1972: 252).

  8. If, as is common in recent literature, the realization relation is itself understood in terms of causal inheritance, as in the subset view (Wilson, 1999, 2011) or dimensioned view (Gillett, 2002), then abstract computational states are not even candidates for realization. Whether this is a defect in those accounts is a matter of dispute.

  9. This is closely related to what Lawrence Shapiro (2004) calls the Mental Constraint Thesis.

  10. And that should be no surprise because Piccinini explicitly aims to assimilate computational explanation to mechanistic explanation (2015, 2020; see also Piccinini & Craver 2011).

  11. Piccinini is aware of this issue (Piccinini & Boone, 2016).

  12. Notice that the economic example also has the feature emphasized by Chirimuuta (2021): what counts as a “monetary exchange” or “financial transaction” is dependent on human beings and our interests. The fact that anything could be used as a currency is just the fact that anything can be used as a conventional or arbitrary representation — that is, used by us to represent, given the right circumstances.

  13. Compare the debate over whether the Principle of Natural Selection is an empirical law or a trivial theorem of probability theory (e.g., Brandon 1990).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous referees for comments that substantially improved this article.

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  1. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Thomas W. Polger

  2. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Lawrence A. Shapiro

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Polger, T.W., Shapiro, L.A. The Puzzling Resilience of Multiple Realization. Minds & Machines 33, 321–345 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-023-09635-z

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