I offer a novel objection to Jaegwon Kim's Supervenience Argument. I argue that the Supervenience Argument relies upon an untenable conception of the base physical properties upon which mental properties are supposed to supervene: the base properties are required to be both ordinary physical/causal properties and also unconditionally sufficient for the properties that they subvene. But these requirements are mutually exclusive; as a result, at least two premises in the Supervenience Argument are false. I argue that this has disruptive consequences both for the reductive position that Kim defends and the non-reductive position that he attacks. Neitherside in the debate over the status of functionally conceived mental properties comes out unscathed. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
CITATION STYLE
Keaton, D. (2012). Kim’s supervenience argument and the nature of total realizers. European Journal of Philosophy, 20(2), 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2010.00411.x
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