Cooper Wilson

In everyday causal explanations of human behaviour, known generally as folk psychology,' the causal powers of the mental seem to be taken for granted. Mental properties such as perceptions, beliefs, and desires, are all called upon in causal explanations of events that are deemed intentional. Jaegwon Kim's exclusion principle has led him to deny mental properties causal efficacy unless they are metaphysically reduced to physical properties, but what of their causal relevance? By giving up the assumption of causally efficacious mental properties, has Kim put into question the explanatory value of explanations with mental descriptions? In other words, if a lower order neurological causal explanation involving a causally efficacious property is at hand, does it make the higher order mental explanation irrelevant and therefore redundant? If we are to save the explanatory importance of higher order predicates, and thus the causal explanations of the special sciences and folk psychology, we need an account of how such properties can be relevant as opposed to irrelevant in causal explanations, even though they may not be causally efficacious. Frank Jackson's and Philip Pettit's notion of program explanation tries to do just this.

In Physical Realization, Sydney Shoemaker argues that all properties, including phenomenally conscious properties that feature in our cognitive activities are realized in microphysical states of affairs or properties. It is the purpose of Physical Realization to provide an account of realization ‘and to discuss [its] bearing on a number of central topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind’ . This book consolidates many of the themes found in Sydney Shoemaker’s work over the past quarter of a century, including his work on properties, coincident objects, essentialism, material constitution, and persistence through time, and culminates in a systematic overall metaphysical framework