Abstract
Over the past few decades, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is an inherently unstable position. In his view, the most serious problem is that non-reductive physicalism leads to type epiphenomenalism—the causal inefficacy of mental properties. Kim suggests that we can salvage mental causation by endorsing functional reduction. Given the fact that Kim’s goal in formulating functional reduction is to provide a robust account of mental causation it would be surprising if his position implies eliminativism about mental properties or leads to a view that is similar to one of the versions of non-reductive physicalism that he criticizes. We will show that depending on how certain key claims are interpreted, there are reasons for thinking functional reduction has these implications, in which case either Kim fails to provide a robust account of mental causation or there is reason to suspect that some of his criticisms of non-reductive physicalism are misguided.
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Notes
Kim defines this principle as follows: “No single event can have more than one sufficient cause occurring at any given time—unless it is a genuine case of causal overdetermination” (Kim 2005, p. 42).
Kim assumes that closure is acceptable to advocates of non-reductive physicalism. We will not challenge this assumption. He defines closure as follows: “If a physical event has a cause that occurs a t, it has a physical cause that occurs at t” (Kim 2005, p. 43).
In his early work on events, Kim leaves open the possibility that properties of events can be re-described (Kim 1993b, p. 43).
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Moore, D., Campbell, N. Functional Reduction and Mental Causation. Acta Anal 25, 435–446 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0107-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-010-0107-8