Some independent characterization of evidence is needed, one that would explain why we should believe that one's evidence
supervenes upon one's mental states and depends upon nothing further ('Mentalism') and the further claim that one's ultimate evidence consists of experiences ('Experientialism').
No, says Merricks, because it is incredible that whether the atoms-minus compose a conscious being
supervenes on whether those atoms are located next to atoms arranged left-index-fingerwise.
being conscious not only
supervenes on microphysical doings,
But if sortal properties
supervene on microphysical properties and relations, then it seems that anything having the same microphysical structure as Socrates must be a human being as well.
Other cases, for Instance those in which the chances are identified with counterfactual relative frequencies of one or another sort, will suffer the same fate so long as the truth values of the counterfactuals describing those relative frequencies themselves
supervene on w's history.
The Humean severely limits the range of permissible tools which can be brought to bear on the metaphysical problem of chances: chances must
supervene entirely on local matters of particular fact.
By contrast, Richard Swinburne maintains that telling the history of the world requires us to include mental events, which are neither identical to nor
supervene on physical events.
This definition, which makes use of a claim about the intrinsic features of parts in its definiens, is circular.(3) More importantly for our purposes, if "depends on" means "
supervenes on", this definition renders the first thesis of MS trivial, making it amount to no more than the vacuous claim that an object's properties that
supervene on its atoms (because they
supervene on its parts),
supervene on its atoms.
Belot identifies three attractive features in an account of geometrical possibility: An account is grounded if it implies that geometric possibility
supervenes on the actual material configuration; it is ambitious if it recognizes all the qualitatively distinct possibilities substantivalism does (for example, it recognizes many worlds containing only a single motionless particle, differing on the structure of the surrounding empty space); it is metric if it says that the geometrical features of material objects are exhausted by their distance relations.
Does that mean morally aesthetic properties
supervene on a base of supervenient properties?
One way that matters of chance might
supervene on matters of non-chance is through Humean supervenience, the view that all
supervenes on local matters of particular fact.
12) renders scientific naturalism an extreme form of physicalism on which Quine himself fails to be a scientific naturalist (owing to his endorsement of mathematicalia which do not
supervene on the physical).
