Volume 11, Issue 3, September 2022
Jonas F. Christensen
Pages 165-169
https://doi.org/10.5840/tht2023102421
Subset Realization and the Entailment Problem
A Response
According to the principle of conditional power aggregation (CPA), conditional powers conjoin when the properties that bestow them conjoin. Sophie Gibb has argued that CPA is false given Shoemaker¡¯s account of conditional powers and that this leads to a problem for his account of subset realization. In short: If CPA is rejected, subset realization fails to be an entailment relation, in which case it cannot provide a basis for non-reductive physicalism. I defend the subset account against this argument by denying that CPA fails. I argue that (i) Shoemaker¡¯s account of conditional powers does not warrant a rejection of CPA, (ii) his account is incomplete and should be supplemented with a further sufficient condition for when a property bestows a conditional power, and (iii) this further sufficient condition supports CPA.