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's The 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 his Philosophical Investigations which 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

Is social science ‘reducible’ to individual psychology, and ultimately to some physical theory? If a sociological theory, that is, a theory dealing with group phenomena, is ‘reduced’ in a relevant and appropriate sense to individual psychology, could we then say that the social phenomena in the domain of the sociological theory are just psychological phenomena of individuals? Conversely, if social events and processes are just individual psychological events and processes, then does it follow that any theory dealing with the former is ‘reducible’ to some theory dealing with the latter? Analogously, if psychological theory is ‘reducible’ to physical theory, say the neurological theory of the brain and the associated organs, could we say that psychological phenomena are just neurological phenomena in the brain? What of the converse of this question? Further, what is the bearing on these questions of the thesis that there are laws correlating types of social phenomena with types of individual psychological phenomena, or types of psychological phenomena with types of neurological phenomena?

If contemporary analytic philosophy can be said to have a philosophical ideology, it undoubtedly is naturalism. Naturalism is often invoked as a motivating ground for many philosophical projects, and “naturalization” programs abound everywhere, in theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind, theory of meaning, metaphysics, and ethics. But what is naturalism, and where does it come from? This paper examines the naturalism debate in midtwentieth-century America as a proximate source of contemporary naturalism. Views of philosophers like Roy Wood Sellars, John Dewey, John Herman Randall, Sydney Hook, and Ernest Nagel are cited, and some of the central tenets of naturalism, such as an adherence to “scientific method” as the sole source of knowledge and the causal/ explanatory closure of the natural world, are explored. The paper ends with a brief discussion of how certain naturalistic constraints lead to some of the problems currently debated in metaethics and philosophy of mind.

Une des doctrines centrales de l’émergentisme est la thèse selon laquelle certaines propriétés d’un tout sont émergentes, en ce sens qu’elles sont irréductibles aux propriétés de base dont elles émergent — c’est-à-dire qu’elles ne peuvent ni être prédites, ni être expliquées à partir de leurs conditions sousjacentes. Pour comprendre et évaluer cette thèse correctement, il est essentiel que nous disposions d’un concept adéquat de réduction. Nous examinons d’abord le modèle classique de la réduction interthéorique de Nagel, et nous soutenons qu’il ne nous fournit pas une base adéquate pour comprendre la thèse émergentiste. Nous proposons ensuite un autre modèle de réduction, celui de la « réduction fonctionnelle », et nous montrons qu’il constitue une base adéquate permettant d’évaluer la thèse émergentiste. Nous concluons avec une brève discussion de la question de savoir si les propriétés phénoménales d’expériences conscientes, ou qualia , sont émergentes.A central doctrine of emergentism is the thesis that some properties of wholes are emergent in the sense that they are irreducible to the “basal” properties from which they emerge — that is, they are neither predictable nor explainable in terms of their underlying conditions. To understand and properly evaluate this claim, it is essential that we have at hand an appropriate concept of reduction. This paper first examines the classic Nagel model of inter- theoretic reduction and finds it wanting as a basis for understanding the emergentist claim. Another model of reduction, “functional reduction”, is proposed, and it is argued that this model does provide an appropriate basis for evaluating the claim that certain properties of wholes are emergent. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the question whether qualia , or the phenomenal properties of conscious experience, are emergent

The philosophy of mind has always been a staple of the philosophy curriculum. But it has never held a more important place than it does today, with both traditional problems and new topics often sparked by the developments in the psychological, cognitive, and computer sciences. Jaegwon Kim’s Philosophy of Mind is the classic, comprehensive survey of the subject. Now in its second edition, Kim explores, maps, and interprets this complex and exciting terrain. Designed as an introduction to the field for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, Philosophy of Mind focuses on the mind/body problem and related issues, some touching on the status of psychology and cognitive science. The second edition features a new chapter on Cartesian substance dualism-a perspective that has been little discussed in the mainstream philosophy of mind and almost entirely ignored in most introductory books in philosophy of mind. In addition, all the chapters have been revised and updated to reflect the trends and developments of the last decade. Throughout the text, Kim allows readers to come to their own terms with the central problems of the mind. At the same time, the author’s own emerging views are on display and serve to move the discussion forward. Comprehensive, clear, and fair, Philosophy of Mind is a model of philosophical exposition. It is a major contribution to the study and teaching of the philosophy of mind

This paper argues that since nonphysical souls lack a position in space, they cannot have the pairing relations that would allow them to interact with physical bodies. For example, if two rifles (A and B) are fired at the same time, and consequently Andy and Buddy are killed, we can only say that rifle A killed Andy while rifle B killed Buddy, rather than the other way around, if there are appropriate spatial relations (such as distance and orientation) that pair Andy’s death to A’s firing, and Buddy’s death to B’s firing. But no such pairing relations are available to nonphysical minds that lack spatial positions altogether. And attributing spatial location to nonphysical souls raises more problems than it solves, such as how to find particular souls at particular locations, how souls taken to be geometric points in space could retain enough structure to have sufficient causal powers to influence bodies, and why spatial entities more robust than points shouldn’t simply be conceived of as exotic physical entities like astral bodies. 1. The Problem -- 2. Descartes and Mental Causation -- 3. Causation and the “Pairing” Problem -- 4. Causation and Space -- 5. Can We Locate Souls in Space?

This paper offers a critique of the view that causation can be analyzed in terms of explanation. In particular, the following points are argued: a genuine explanatory analysis of causation must make use of a fully epistemological-psychological notion of explanation; it is unlikely that the relatively clear-cut structure of the causal relation can be captured by the relatively unstructured relation of explanation; the explanatory relation does not always parallel the direction of causation; certain difficulties arise for any attempt to construct a nonrelativistic relation of causation from the essentially relativistic relation of explanation; and to analyze causation as explanation is to embrace a form of “causal idealism”, the view that causal connections are not among the objective features of the world. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the contrast between the two fundamentally opposed viewpoints about causality, namely causal idealism and causal realism.

States of affairs constitute a basic ontological category in Chisholm's metaphysical system, and yield events and propositions as subclasses. Qua events, they enter into causal relations, and qua propositions, they are objects of our intentional attitudes. This paper expounds and critically examines Chisholm's conception of a state of affairs and his constructions of events and propositions. Various difficulties with some of Chisholm's definitions and procedures are pointed out and discussed. The last section contains a set of suggested modifications to the theory to avoid these difficulties.