Abstract
Kim maintains that “a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism”. But physicalists can reject both by using the Strict Implication thesis (SI). Discussing his arguments will help to show what useful work SI can do.
(1) His discussion of anomalous monism depends on an unexamined assumption to the effect that SI is false.
(2) His conclusion on multiple realizability is much stronger than his reasoning warrants.
(3) In discussing supervenience, he is wrong to assume that the only approach to explaining why “physical truths determine all the truths” must be via psychophysical laws.
(4) His general argument rests on a mistaken assumption that the only alternative to psychophysical identity theses is to accept “supervenient causal relations”.
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References
Block, Ned: 1981, ‘Psychologism and Behaviourism’, Philosophical Review 90, 5–43.
Kim, Jaegwon: 1993, ‘The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism’, in Supervenience and Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 265–84.
Kirk, Robert: 1994, Raw Feeling: a Philosophical Account of the Essence of Consciousness, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
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Putnam, Hilary: 1979, ‘Philosophy and Our Mental Life’, in Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers vol. ii, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 291–303.
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Kirk, R. How physicalists can avoid reductionism. Synthese 108, 157–170 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413495
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413495