Abstract
In his recent book, Jaegwon Kim argues thatpsychophysical supervenience withoutpsychophysical reduction renders mentalcausation `unintelligible'. He also claimsthat, contrary to popular opinion, his argumentagainst supervenient mental causation cannot begeneralized so as to threaten the causalefficacy of other `higher-level' properties:e.g., the properties of special sciences likebiology. In this paper, I argue that none ofthe considerations Kim advances are sufficientto keep the supervenience argument fromgeneralizing to all higher-level properties,and that Kim's position in fact entails thatonly the properties of fundamental physicalparticles are causally efficacious.
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Bontly, T.D. The Supervenience Argument Generalizes. Philosophical Studies 109, 75–96 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015786809364
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015786809364