Lexicon of Arguments

 

Chalmers I 88
Supervenience/Horgan/Blackburn/Chalmers: Question: (Blackburn 1985)⁽¹⁾, (Horgan 1993)⁽²⁾: How do we explain the supervenience relation itself?
Primary Intension/Chalmers: for logical supervenience on primary intensions, we simply need to present a conceptual analysis, together with the finding that the reference is preserved over possible worlds (is rigid).
>Rigidity, >Intensions, >Primary Intension.
The supervenience conditional is an a priori conceptual truth.
>Conditional, >a priori.
I 89
Secondary Intension: here, the logical supervenience can be explained by saying that the primary intension of the concept extracts a referent of the actual world, which is projected unchanged to other physically identical worlds (by rigidifying operations).
>Secondary Intension.
Such facts are contingent. (FN 51/Chapter 2)
>Contingency.
Natural Supervenience/Chalmers: natural supervenience is - as opposed to the logical - contingent. This is ontologically expensive, therefore we can be glad that logical supervenience is the rule.
>Supervenience/Chalmers

1. Simon Blackburn (1985). Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (2):211-215.
2. Terence Horgan (1993). On What There Isn’t. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3):693-700.