This book presents the current views on the mind-body problem of one of the most important analytic practitioners in the field. It is clearly written and full of astute substantive and methodological observations.....

NRP is a family of views differing by how they understand “reduction” and “physicalism.” Following Kim I understand the non-reduction as holding that some events and properties are distinct from any physical events and properties. A necessary condition for physicalism is that mental properties, events, and laws supervene on physical ones. Kim allows various understandings of “supervenience” but I think that physicalism requires at least the claim that any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter. Some (...) complications aside this means that true mental propositions, e.g. Jaegwon is thinking about sailing, are metaphysically entailed by true physical propositions. Kim says that supervenience is too weak to capture the root idea of physicalism that mental property instantiations depend on physical property instantiations so he adds that the mental depends on the physical. One way in which this dependance might be spelled out is that mental properties are higher order functional properties whose instantiations are realized by instantiations of physical properties. An event is an instantiation of a property by an individual and a time. A mental event is the instantiation of a mental property. Not every predicate expresses a genuine property. Kim further suggests that properties are individuated, at least partly, by nomological and causal relations. For physicalism to have content something must be said about the difficult issue of characterizing the physical. Kim’s view seems to be that the micro-physical properties of ideal physics are physical. He also counts as physical properties that are conjunctions and aggregates of micro-physical properties and higher level properties defined over lower-level physical properties.. Since these latter two classes of properties supervene on the micro-properties and laws there is no need to include them in the supervenience base. (shrink)

NRP is a family of views differing by how they understand “reduction” and “physicalism.” Following Kim I understand the non-reduction as holding that some events and properties are distinct from any physical events and properties. A necessary condition for physicalism is that mental properties, events, and laws supervene on physical ones. Kim allows various understandings of “supervenience” but I think that physicalism requires at least the claim that any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter. Some (...) complications aside this means that true mental propositions, e.g. Jaegwon is thinking about sailing, are metaphysically entailed by true physical propositions. Kim says that supervenience is too weak to capture the root idea of physicalism that mental property instantiations depend on physical property instantiations so he adds that the mental depends on the physical. One way in which this dependance might be spelled out is that mental properties are higher order functional properties whose instantiations are realized by instantiations of physical properties. An event is an instantiation of a property by an individual and a time. A mental event is the instantiation of a mental property. Not every predicate expresses a genuine property. Kim further suggests that properties are individuated, at least partly, by nomological and causal relations. For physicalism to have content something must be said about the difficult issue of characterizing the physical. Kim’s view seems to be that the micro-physical properties of ideal physics are physical. He also counts as physical properties that are conjunctions and aggregates of micro-physical properties and higher level properties defined over lower-level physical properties.. Since these latter two classes of properties supervene on the micro-properties and laws there is no need to include them in the supervenience base. (shrink)

This article is a discussion and a objection to the Jaegwon, Kim' s article : "Non-reductionist physicalism and its problem with mental causation" and in general a discussion and a objection to any (non) reductionist physical theory. -/- .

I summarize Jaegwon Kim's (2001/5) paper on the detrimental affect 'mental causation' has on physicalism.

In the present commentary on Jaegwon Kim's Laws, Causation, and Explanation in the Special Sciences, I first give a short summary of the global problem. In a second step, I go on to sum up and comment on the three arguments which Kim gives to the disadvantage of 'strict' special-science laws. In so doing, I shall focus on the question whether ceteris paribus laws can still apply in special sciences.

This is a review of Jaegwon Kim's Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough. It focuses (i) on his claim that mental properties can be causally efficacious only if they are, in a certain sense, functionally reducible to the physical, and (ii) on his criticisms of best-explanation arguments for physicalism as advocated by, e.g., Christopher Hill and Brian McLaughlin.

김재권은 여러 편의 논문을 통해 행위 설명에 대한 규범적 접근을 옹호해왔으며, 그의 최근 저작에서 심적 시뮬레이션에 기반한 행위 설명 이론을 내놓았다. 본 논문의 목적은 김재권의 이론을 비판적으로 검토하고 필자 자신의 대안적 규범적 접근의 기본 골자를 제시하는 것이다. 논문은 먼저 김재권의 입장을 가능한 한 분명하고 그럴듯한 형태로 제시하고, 그의 접근이 어떤 심각한 문제에 직면하는지 논의한다. 난점의 요지는 김재권 식의 접근 내에서는 참된 행위 설명과 거짓된 설명을 구분하기 위한 이론적 자원이 존재하지 않기에, 그의 이론은 행위 설명의 논리에 대한 적절한 분석일 수 없다는 (...) 것이다. 이어서 필자는 규범적 접근의 기본적 통찰을 어떻게 시뮬레이션을 통해 더 잘 포착할 수 있는지 제안한다. 필자의 접근은 이유는 행위의 원인이라는 인과주의자의 핵심 주장을 받아들인다. 그러나 그것은 또한 명시적으로 규범적이면서 시뮬레이션적인 접근인데, 필자의 접근에 의하면, 행위 설명에 내재하는 규범성은 이유를 이유이게끔 하는 규범성이며, 이 규범성은 심적 시뮬레이션에 의해 그럴듯하게 분석될 수 있다. (shrink)

As Jaegwon Kim points out in his excellent new book, “reductionism” has become something of a pejorative term in philosophy and related disciplines. But originally (eg, as expressed in Ernest Nagel’s 1961 The Structure of Science) reduction was supposed to be a form of explanation, and one may wonder whether it is reasonable to reject in principle the advances in knowledge which such explanations may offer. Nagel’s own view, illustrated famously by the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, was (...) that reduction is a relation between theories: theory A is reduced to theory B by formulating “bridge laws” which link the terminology of the theories, and using them to derive A from B. (An additional reductive claim is that Aphenomena are identical with certain B-phenomena—as when the temperature of a gas is identified with its mean molecular kinetic energy—but this kind of identity claim is, strictly speaking, independent of the claim about theories.) Applied to the case of mental states and brain states, a reduction would provide explanatory relations between psychology and neuroscience, normally supplemented with the claim that mental properties are identical with physical properties in the brain. (shrink)

There is a tension or even contradiction between mental causation - the belief that some mental events or properties are causally relevant for some physical events or properties - and the irreducibility of mental features to physical ones, the causal closure of the physical, and the assumption that there is no overdetermination of the physical. To reconcile these premises was a promise of nonreductive physicalism, but a closer inspection shows that it is, on the contrary, a source of the problem (...) - namely, the unintelligibility of mental causation. This has to do with the widely-held assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical. How can the mental be causally relevant, then? And what is the relationship of the mental and the physical? There are many options, including identity, realizationism, emergence, or some kind of reducibility. But they all have their own problems, e.g. they threaten mental reality, the causal closure of the physical, or scientific explanations. All these aspects are covered in Jaegwon Kim's book Mind in a Physical World. This paper is a detailed introduction to it, discussing and critically commenting it and those still intriguing, but also confusing and complicated issues of the mind-body problem, especially the ontology of mental causation. (shrink)

How does mind fit into nature? Philosophy has long been concerned with this question. No contemporary philosopher has done more to clarify it than Jaegwon Kim, a distinguished analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. With new contributions from an outstanding line-up of eminent scholars, this volume focuses on issues raised in Kim's work. The chapters cluster around two themes: first, exclusion, supervenience, and reduction, with attention to the causal exclusion argument for which Kim is widely celebrated; (...) and second, phenomenal consciousness and qualia, with attention to the prospects for a functionalist account of the mental. This volume is sure to become a major focus of attention and research in the disciplines of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s views on mental causation and the exclusion argument are evaluated systematically. Particular attention is paid to different theories of causation. It is argued that the exclusion argument and its premises do not cohere well with any systematic view of causation.

Review of Horgan, Sabatés, and Sosa's (eds.) *Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World: Themes from the Philosophy of Jaegwon Kim*.

This paper presents and evaluates Jaegwon Kim’s recent argument against substance dualism. The argument runs as follows. Causal interaction between two entities requires pairing relations. Pairing relations are spatial relations, such as distance and orientation. Souls are supposedly nonspatial, immaterial substances. So it is hard to see how souls could enter into paired causal relations with material substances. I show that Kim’s argument against dualism fails. I conclude by sketching a way the substance dualist could meet Kim’s central challenge (...) of explaining how souls and bodies are uniquely paired, allowing for them to enter into specific causal relationships, forming a singular soul–body unit. (shrink)

An analysis and rebuttal of Jaegwon Kim's reasons for taking nonreductive physicalism to entail the causal irrelevance of mental features to physical phenomena, particularly the behaviour of human bodies.