Jaegwon Kim

(1934 - 2019)

It was about half a century ago that the mind–body problem, which like much else in serious metaphysics had been moribund for several decades, was resurrected as a mainstream philosophical problem. The first impetus came from Gilbert Ryle'sThe Concept of Mind, published in 1948, and Wittgenstein's well-known, if not well-understood, reflections on the nature of mentality and mental language, especially in hisPhilosophical Investigationswhich appeared in 1953. The primary concerns of Ryle and Wittgenstein, however, focused on the logic of mental discourse rather than the metaphysical issue of how our mentality is related to our bodily nature. In fact, Ryle and Wittgenstein would have regarded, each for different reasons, the metaphysical problem of the mind-body relation as arising out of deplorable linguistic confusions and not amenable to intelligible discussion. There was C. D. Broad's earlier and much neglected classic,The Mind and Its Place in Nature, which appeared in 1925, but this work, although robustly metaphysical, failed to connect with, and shape, the mind–body debate in the second half of this century.

Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this highly successful textbook continues to represent the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of canonical readings in metaphysics. In addition to updated material from the first edition, it presents entirely new sections on ontology and the metaphysics of material objects. One of the most comprehensive and authoritative metaphysics anthologies available - now updated and expanded Offers the most important contemporary works on the central issues of metaphysics Includes new sections on ontology and the metaphysics of material objects, as well as readings on the topics of fictionalism, fundamentality, tropes, vague identity, temporary intrinsics, stage theory, and composition Surpasses other anthologies in its combination of contributions from leading metaphysicians and a younger generation of "rising-stars"

Thirty-two years ago W. V. Quine proposed a definition of 'logical truth' that has been widely repeated and reprinted. Quine himself seems to have recognized that this definition is wrong in detail; in section 1 we eliminate this fault. What has perhaps been less widely observed is that, in abandoning the model-theoretic account of logical truth in favor of a "substitutional" account, Quine's definition swells the ranks of the logical truths and makes the classification of a sentence as a logical truth dependent both on the interpretation of its extralogical words and on the extralogical vocabulary available in the language.

Jackson says that the form of physicalism that I recommend, with certain emendations he believes are necessary, turns out to be none other than the “Australian” type-type identity theory of J.J.C. Smart and others. About this, too, I have no serious disagreement, although Jackson’s claim appears to depend, at least in part, on a certain chosen reading of the texts involved. In fact, one point of similarity may be worth noting. As I take it, one special feature of the “Australian” type identity theory is the claim that mental-physical identities are contingent, not necessary. Suppose M has a single physical realizer, P. On my account, the statement that M = P is not metaphysically or logically necessary. It is contingent since the statement that P realizes M is contingent. This is so because for P to realize M is for it to fulfill the causal specification that defines M, and what causal relations P actually enters into is a question that depends on the laws prevailing in a given world. Thus, P may be a realizer of M in this world but perhaps not in another in which different laws hold; in some worlds M may have no realizers at all. None of this is in violation of the idea that identities are necessary. For, according to me, if M has realizers, M is a functional property defined by a causal specification. This means that “M” is not a rigid designator, though it is, as we might call it, “nomologically rigid” or “semi-rigid”.