IS SUPERVENIENCE JUST DISGUISED REDUCTION
1985, Southern Journal of Philosophy
https://doi.org/10.1111/J.2041-6962.1985.TB00379.X…
7 pages
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Abstract
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This paper explores the philosophical concept of supervenience and its relationship to reductionism, particularly in the context of the mind-body problem. The argument revolves around whether supervenience can be seen as merely a disguise for reductionistic views, focusing on Kim's notion of "Strong Supervenience" and its implications for the relationship between mental and physical properties. The author contends that a nuanced interpretation of supervenience offers ways to understand the interaction between properties without necessarily resorting to reductionism, engaging with Post's critiques and suggestions for a clearer characterization of supervenience.
Related papers
Supervenience physicalism attempts to combine non-reductionism about properties with a physical determination thesis in such a way as to ensure physicalism. I argue that this attempt is unsuccessful: the specific supervenience relation in question is either strong enough to ensure reductionism, as in the case of strong supervenience, or too weak to yield physical determination, as in the case of global supervenience. The argument develops in three stages. First, I propose a distinction between two types of reductionism, definitional and scientific, a distinction thanks to which we can reply to a standard objection against the ontological reductionism of strong supervenience. Second,I claim that because of “the problem of random distribution,” global supervenience needs strengthening to be an adequate relation to capture our physicalistic intuitions; and I show, in accordance with Stalnaker’s relevant proof, why a natural strengthening of global supervenience renders it equivalent to strong supervenience. Finally, I argue against Stalnaker about the possibility of a non-reductionist global supervenience. The upshot is that despite appearances, supervenience physicalism is a form of reductive physicalism.
[Psychophysical supervenience] The mental supervenes on the physical in that any two things exactly alike in all physical properties cannot differ in respect of mental properties (Kim, 1996). This principle doesn’t state that things psychologically indiscernible must be therefore alike in every physical character, but only the converse thesis. Kim criticizes the idea from Davidson (1970) of an anti-reductive supervenience, embracing that of a reductive supervenience, according to which mental causation would be a mere illusion. Dulcis in fundo, I consider Kim’s distinction between “levels” (micro/macro) and “orders” (physical/mental) very interesting and important from a logical and metaphysical point of view to clarify the causal role of some mental properties and notably consciousness (Kim, 1998; 2006).
2002
In his recent book, Jaegwon Kim argues that psychophysical supervenience without psychophysical reduction renders mental causation 'unintelligible'. He also claims that, contrary to popular opinion, his argument against supervenient mental causation cannot be generalized so as to threaten the causal efficacy of other 'higher-level' properties: e.g., the properties of special sciences like biology. In this paper, I argue that none of the considerations Kim advances are sufficient to keep the supervenience argument from generalizing to all higherlevel properties, and that Kim's position in fact entails that only the properties of fundamental physical particles are causally efficacious. In his recent book Mind in a Physical World, Jaegwon Kim argues for two controversial and (if true) important claims. The first is that psychophysical supervenience without psychophysical reduction would render mental causation 'unintelligible'-that mental properties, if supervenient, would have their causal efficacy usurped by the very properties on which they supervene. (That is the conclusion of the so-called supervenience argument.) The second claim is that, contrary to popular opinion, the argument for the first claim cannot be generalized so as to threaten the causal efficacy of other 'higher-level' properties: e.g., the properties of special sciences like biology. In this paper, I take issue with the second of these claims. Specifically, I will argue that none of the considerations Kim advances are sufficient to keep the supervenience argument from generalizing to all higher-level properties, and that Kim's position in fact entails that only the properties of fundamental physical particles are causally efficacious. Before I argue this point, however, some background is in order.
Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience argument purports to show that epiphenomenalism about the mental follows from premises that any nonreductive physicalist should find acceptable. Kim regards his argument as a reductio ad absurdum of nonreductive physicalism. We reconstruct and evaluate the latest version of Kim’s argument. We argue that the premises of Kim’s argument are much less innocent than they may appear. In particular, we single out for criticism an unstated assumption about the identity conditions of events, and we argue that this assumption could be seen as all by itself implying that nonreductive physicalism is false, thus begging the question against that position. It is also dubious, we argue, whether Kim’s unstated assumption is even consistent with one of the stated assumptions of his argument, “the principle of causal exclusion”, given a standard understanding of causal overdetermination.
Synthese, 1988
This paper explores the explanatory adequacy of lower-level theories when their higher-level counterparts are irreducible. If some state or entity described by a high-level theory supervenes upon and is realized in events, entities, etc. described by the relevant lower-level theory, does the latter fully explain the higher-level event even if the higher-level theory is irreducible? While the autonomy of the special sciences and the success of various eliminativist programs depends in large part on how we answer this question, neither the affirmative or negative answer has been defended in detail. I argue, contra Putnam and others, that certain facts about causation and explanation show that such lower-level theories do explain. I also argue, however, that there may be important questions about counterfactuals and laws that such explanations cannot answer, thereby showing their partial inadequacy. I defend the latter claim against criticisms based on eliminativism about higher-level explanations and sketch a number of empirical conditions that lower-level explanations would have to meet to fully explain higher-level events. Most c o n t e m p o r a r y philosophers have given up the positivist tenet that the special sciences are strictly reducible to their lower-level counterparts. Mental predicates, for example, seem unlikely to m a t c h up neatly-as traditional accounts of reduction require-with the kinds of neurophysiology, and m u c h the same holds for biological and social predicates visa -vis those of chemistry and psychology, respectively. Nonetheless, it is generally agreed that such irreducibility does not entail that higher-level p h e n o m e n a described by the special sciences are s o m e h o w autonomous, for they can supervene upon and be realized in the appropriate lower-level p h e n o m e n a-ultimately the physical-even if higher-level theories are not reducible to those at a lower level. While we m a y never be able to define biological predicates, for example, in chemical terms, we can still hold with g o o d reason that the chemical facts fix the biological facts and that every biological event is b r o u g h t about by or realized in chemical p h e n o m e n a. Thus the notions of supervenience and realization preserve the ontological primacy of the physical: irreducibility of theories does not c o m m i t us to nonphysical entities such as souls, vital forces, world
In Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy. Wiley-Blackwell., 2011
This short paper is a "quick and dirty" introduction for non-philosophers (with some background in propositional logic) to Jaegwon Kim's famous supervenience argument against non-reductive physicalism (also known as the exclusion problem). It motivates the problem of mental causation, introduces Kim's formulation of the issue centered around mind-body supervenience, presents the argument in deductive form, and makes explicit why Kim concludes that vindicating mental causation demands a reduction of mind.
2010
This is one of two papers about emergence, reduction and supervenience. It expounds these notions and analyses the general relations between them. The companion paper analyses the situation in physics, especially limiting relations between physical theories. I shall take emergence as behaviour that is novel and robust relative to some comparison class. I shall take reduction as deduction using appropriate auxiliary definitions. And I shall take supervenience as a weakening of reduction, viz. to allow infinitely long definitions.
Philosophia, 1998
Synthese, 1998
"Supervenience and Physicalism" 1 Supervenience and Physica l i sm Discussion of the supervenience relation in the philosophical literature of recent years has become almost Byzantine in its intricacy and diversity. Subtle modulations of the basic concept have been tooled and retooled with increasing frequency, until supervenience has lost nearly all its original lustre as a simple and powerful tool for cracking open refractory philosophical problems. I present a conceptual model of the supervenience relation that captures all the important extant concepts without ignoring the complexities uncovered during work over the past two decades. I test the usefulness of my analysis by applying it to the problem of defining physicalism, concluding that the thesis of physicalism is best captured by the conjunction of two supervenience relations of different modal strength.
2000
Weak and global supervenience are equivalent to strong supervenience for intrinsic properties. Moreover, weak and global supervenience relations are always mere parts of a more general underlying strong supervenience relation. Most appeals to global supervenience, though, involve spatio-temporally relational properties; but here too, global and strong supervenience are equivalent. Functionally we can characterize merely weak and global supervenience as follows: for A to supervene on B requires that at all worlds an individual's A properties be a function of its B properties, where this function varies from world to world. But what are the metaphysical commitments of such a relation? We can make metaphysical sense of this functional requirement only if the properties in question are second-order properties, the functionalist theory of the mind being a conspicuous example. Weak and Global Supervenience Back in the days of free love, supervenience relations were welcomed as harbingers of peace and joy. "Let one hundred supervenience concepts bloom!" came the prophet's cry. 1 And bloom they did! As a result, supervenience now comes in a plethora of permutations: weak and strong, local and global, multiple-and single-domain, indiscernible and similarity-based, modal and de facto, all appealing to a variety of 'possible's from the familiar metaphysical, nomological, and epistemic to the rarer historical and temporal-a flavor to fit every palate! But, alas, the heyday of supervenience has come and gone. Now, surveying this surfeit of superveniences, we wonder if the multitude of proposed variations are truly useful or rather, in Lewis's words, "an unlovely proliferation of non-equivalent definitions"? 2 Are they aiding us in our quest to unravel the metaphysical mysteries of how one sort of thing can depend upon another? Or do they only help "to add mystery to mystery, to cover one obscurantist move with another," as Schiffer insists? 3 Kim sees the growing numbers of supervenience concepts in the literature as good evidence that they are useful in philosophy. 4 Cynics might instead think this merely reflects the ease with which one can alter the standard formulations and thereby create yet another supervenience relation-or, worse yet, another family of them. A thorough house-cleaning would require a careful examination of every supervenience notion that has been proposed, a cure worse than the disease. Rather, I propose to examine the predominant notions of supervenience. Strong supervenience, like all supervenience relations, can be reformulated, more perspicuously I suggest, in 1 Kim, "Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept," p. 155. 2 Lewis, "On the Plurality of Worlds," p. 14. 3 Remnants of Meaning, p. 153-154. 4 "Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept," p. 133.

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References (4)
- John F. ( 1984),"Comments on Teller", Southern Journalof Philosophy, Volume XXII Supplement -Spindel Conference 1983: Supervenience. pp. 163-7.
- Kim, Jaegwon (1984), "Supervenience and Supervenient Causation", Sourhern Journal of Philosophy. Volume XXII Supplement -Spindel Conference 1983: Supervenience. pp. 45-56.
- Kim. Jaegwon (To Appear), "Concepts of Supervenience", Philosophy and Phe- nomonological Research. Teller, Paul (1984a), "A Poor Man's Guide to Supervenience and Determination", Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume X X I l Supplement -Spindel Conference 1983: Supervenienre. pp. 137-162.
- Teller, Paul (1984b). "Comments on Kim's Paper", Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume XXII Supplement -Spindel Conference 1983: Supervenience. pp. 57-62.