Abstract

This conclusion criticizes Daniel Dennett for dividing reality into first-class illata and second-class abstracta, and argues that fundamental physics directly studies extra-representational real patterns, while special sciences study real patterns located by means of the notional-world concepts of cohesion and causation. Dennett's abstracta are approximate descriptions of the illata, where the approximations in question usefully serve human purposes. By contrast, special-science real patterns are not approximations of (fundamental) physical real patterns. The primacy of physics constraint (PPC) is the only physicalist principle motivated by actual science, and it is too weak to support any form of reduction of special-science real patterns to physical real patterns. The special sciences often successfully track real patterns, an assertion based on the no-miracles argument rather than on any claim about how the special sciences inherit ontological seriousness from their relationship to physics.