Mary Does Not Learn Anything New

Within the discourse surrounding mind-body interaction, mental causation is intimately associated with non-reductive physicalism. However, such a theory holds two opposing views: that all causal properties and relations can be explicated by physics and that special sciences have an explanatory role. Jaegwon Kim attempts to deconstruct this problematic contradiction by arguing that it is untenable for non-reductive physicalists to explain human behavior by appeal to mental properties. In combination, Kim’s critique of mental causation and the phenomenal concept strategy serves as an effectual response to the anti-physicalist stance enclosed within the Knowledge Argument and the Zombie Thought Experiment.

Emergence and the Failure of Reduction

This chapter explores the different ways in which the reductive method of explanation might fail, and asks what such failures might tell us about the world. In particular, the chapter investigates possible situations in which one or more of the assumptions identified in previous chapters fails. It is argued that the failure of one of these assumptions will give rise to something that is recognizable in the traditional notion of ‘ontological’ or ‘strong’ emergence. This understanding is then used to defend the conceptual possibility of such ontological emergence against the influential arguments of Jaegwon Kim. It is further argued that the failure of a different assumption gives rise to a relatively unrecognized form of ontological emergence related to the way that causal influences combine. Thus, an understanding of the reductive method gives us a way to grasp the notoriously slippery metaphysical concept of emergence.

Mary Does Not Learn Anything New

Within the discourse surrounding mind-body interaction, mental causation is intimately associated with non-reductive physicalism. However, such a theory holds two opposing views: that all causal properties and relations can be explicated by physics and that special sciences have an explanatory role. Jaegwon Kim attempts to deconstruct this problematic contradiction by arguing that it is untenable for non-reductive physicalists to explain human behavior by appeal to mental properties. In combination, Kim’s critique of mental causation and the phenomenal concept strategy serves as an effectual response to the anti-physicalist stance enclosed within the Knowledge Argument and the Zombie Thought Experiment.

On the Possibility of a Disembodied Mind

Even though the Cartesian mind-body dualism has largely been dismissed in contemporary philosophy, the idea that the conscious mind can be a bodiless and non-spatial entity is still held to be possible. This paper examines a series of arguments by Jaegwon Kim, Peter Strawson, and Immanuel Kant against the possibility of a disembodied mind. It is argued that although the concept of a disembodied mind is coherent, it derives from a more fundamental concept in which the mind and the body are originally unified. The unity of mind and body, which can be called a person, is logically prior to the concept of the mind as a disembodied person, and thus the possibility of a disembodied mind turns out to depend on the existence of the physical and spatial world.

The Program Model, Difference-makers, and the Exclusion Problem

How do the notions of programming and difference-making relate to one another? A higher-level property programs for an effect just in case, intuitively, the actual realizer of the property at any lower level gives rise to a realizer of the effect and any possible realizer at that level would also have done this. A higher-level property makes a difference to the effect just in case its presence programs for the effect and, in addition, its absence programs for the absence of the effect. Christian List and Peter Menzies argue for the capacity of the difference-making model to explain away the exclusion problem raised for physicalists by Jaegwon Kim. But the program model, developed in earlier work by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, offers a simpler and more straightforward way of handling the challenge.

Nonreductive Physicalism and Mental Causation

In this work I articulate and defend a problem about the place of the mind in the causation of behaviour. Ask why someone did a certain action and you can see the problem arise, if only you assume certain plausible suppositions about the world. The suppositions are taken to be those of nonreductive materialism.I think that the argument from exclusion, originally developed by Jaegwon Kim, shows that unless there is overdetermination, the mental cannot be causally relevant in the causation of behaviour. It is my view, however, that a proper understanding of overdetermination shows that the overdetermination move is not available to the nonreductive physicalist. That is, he cannot escape exclusion by claiming that the mental overdetermines the physical in the causation of our actions.It is argued that neither appeals to economy nor to Bennett's counterfactual test are good ways to decide matters of overdetermination. That should be decided in terms of the ability of a theory to consistently permit such overdetermination, which however is shown not to be the case for nonreductive materialism.Moreover, in general all realized properties will face this problem - assuming them to be causally relevant will ignite exclusionary claims and in the competition for relevance, physical properties will have a better and more fundamental claim for relevance, threatening once again to relegate realized properties to the category of epiphenomena.

Jaegwon, Kim. “El fisicalismo no reduccionista y su problema con la causalidad mental.” Trad. Juan Diego Morales. Ideas y Valores 63.155 (2014): 235-259.

<p>Jaegwon, Kim. “El fisicalismo no reduccionista y su problema con la causalidad mental.” Trad. Juan Diego Morales. Ideas y Valores 63.155 (2014): 235-259.</p>