CAUSE, MIND, AND REALITY PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES Editors: Wll...FRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh KEITH LEHRER, University ofA rizona Board of Consulting Editors: JONATHAN BENNETI, Syracuse University ALLAN GIBBARD, University of Michigan ROBERT STALNAKER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University VOLUME47 CAUSE, MIND, AND REALITY Essays Honoring C.B. Martin Edited by JOHN HElL Department of Philosophy. Da~·idson College, Dal'idson. U.S.A. SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cause, Mind, and reality : essays honoring C.B. Martin I ed1ted by John Hail. p. CM, --<Philosophical studies series ; v. 47l Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-94-011-9736-6 ISBN 978-94-011-9734-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-9734-2 1. Philosophy. 2. Martin, C. B. (Charles Burtonl I. Mart 1 n. C. B. (Charles Burton) II. Heil, John. III. Series. B29.C337 1989 100--dc20 89-20000 ISBN 978-94-011-9736-6 Printed on acid-ji"ee paper All Rights Reserved © 1989 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. But Truth, like Gold, is not the less so, for being newly brought out of the Mine. 'Tis Trial and Examination must give it price, and not any antick Fashion: And though it be not yet current by the publick stamp; yet it may, for all that, be as old as Nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Locke CONTENTS Preface ix Contributors xi C. B. Martin, A Biographical Sketch, ]. ]. C. Smart 1 CAUSE C. B. Martin, Counterfactuals, Causality, and Conditionals, D. M. Armstrong 7 Freedom and Indeterminism, Daniel Shaw 17 MIND Intention, David Charles 33 Remembering 'Remembering', Max Deutscher 53 The Revival of 'Fido' -Fido, Michael Devitt 73 Locke's Ideas, Abstraction, and Substance, Ian Hinckfuss 95 Why Perception is not Singular Reference, Brian P. McLaughlin 111 Low Oaim Assertions, Ullin T. Place 121 On Formulating Materialism and Dualism, P. F. Snowdon 137 REALITY Tense and Existence, ]ames Cargile 161 Propositions and Philosophical Ideas, ]. M. Hinton 173 A Puzzle About Ontological Commitment, Frank Jackson 191 Objectivity and Ideology in the Physical and Social Sciences, Brian Medlin 201 Motion and Change of Distance, Graham Nerlich 221 On Being Ontologically Unserious, Kai Nielsen 235 CONTENI'S Verificationism, J. J. C. Smart 261 C. B. Martin, Publications 1952-1987 271 Bibliography 273 Index 285 PREFACE I T is said that there is no progress in philosophy. The illusion of standing still, however, arises only when we lose sight of our history and so fail to notice the distance we have travelled. Philosophers nowadays find obvious ideas and themes that, as it happens, emerged slowly and painfully and largely in reaction to prevailing sensibilities. The essays here honour a man to whom present-day philosophy owes much: Charles Burton Martin. In reflecting on my own on-going and somewhat chaotic philosophical education, I find considerable evidence of Charlie Martin's influence. After departing graduate school, one of the first papers I succeeded in publishing consisted of an attack on Martin and Deutscher's 'Remembering'.' After that, Charlie more or less vanished from my conscious awareness until the winter of 1985, when we appeared together in a colloquium at the Eastern Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association. Although Charlie was nominally a commentator on a paper I was delivering, his 'comments' contained more philosophy and went considerably beyond the tentative and highly circumscribed thesis I had elected to defend. Whereas my focus had been on a tiny feature of Hilary Putnam's argument against realism, Charlie went straight for the jugular, addressing matters that immediately took us into deep water. When he sat down, as I recall, there was barely time for a single brief question-a development for which I was, at the time, profoundly grateful; listening to Charlie, I had begun to swoon at the prospect of fielding questions concerned with his intricate conception of the territory.2 Quite unexpectedly we were thrown together again in the fall of 1986 when we both visited at the University of Rochester. After stormy sessions on early versions of Charlie's (1987) paper on 'proto-language', we settled down to an on-going dialogue on a variety of topics. (Perhaps 'dialogue' is not precisely the word for what occurs in discussions with Charlie. There was always, however, considerable give and take.) I came to appreciate his depth, power, and disdain for philosophical fashion, and to appreciate, as well, the extent to which Charlie had played a significant part in the evolution of themes I had assimilated without an inkling of their origins. The inspiration for a volume honouring Charlie Martin came from my wife, Harrison. At her insistence, and with enthusiastic encouragement from Jack Smart, I put the idea to philosophers whom I knew, or discovered, had 'Martin and Deutscher 1966; see Heil1978. My very first publication found fault with J. J. C. Smart's 'Sensations and Brain Processes', a papl!f arising. as r was then vaguely aware, from the same Australian milieu; see Smart 1959, Heil lWO, and the essay by U. T. Place in this volume. 2My contribution eventually appeared as Hell 1987; the line defended by Charlie is articulated in Martin 1984a and 19Mb, and Putnam's argument is set out in his 1981, Cbs. 1 and 3.