Realization Relation and the Autonomy of Special Sciences

Abstract

There is a familiar tension between the two main components of non-reductive physicalism, which are physicalism, on the one hand, and the non-reducibility or autonomy of so-called special sciences (i.e., sciences other than physics), on the other. While it is often claimed that this tension can be satisfactorily resolved by adopting the subset account of realization(defended by e.g., Shoemaker (2001) and Wilson (2011)), this paper challenges that popular view, by elaborating some critical comments by Funkhouser (2014). Then, after examining Funkhouser's own position, this paper proposes a new way of resolving the aforementioned tension, which consists in refining the subset account's analysis of realization on the basis of various dependence relations between causal powers.