Kim, Jaegwon - The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn

12/08/2006

The Future of Philosophy, Brian Leiter, editor. 2004

Author begins with claming that physicalism is close enough to the right answer, and better than substance dualism and property dualism.

Substance dualism: the idea that Cartesian minds of a different substance can act causally on the physical plain cannot be supported. Causation needs spatial relations, or relational properties that can be laid out in space. Space, at least, is the thing that allows us to 'pair' causes with their effects. Author argues that since cartesian minds are non-spatial, we have no possibility of pairing them with spatially allocated items. There is also way that we can think of for non-spatial objects to cause and effect each other, let alone spatial objects.

Property dualism: most famous version of 'nonreductive materialism'. Beliefs, desires, feelings and so on cannot be reduced to the physical. They play a causal role. But how, author questions? Brings same arguments to bear, since now we're wondering how beliefs and desires move our physical bodies to do anything at all.

"If mentality is to have any causal efficacy at all-- it must be physically reducible" pg 138.

Mental Residue: Inverted qualia is a genuine possibility. Author concedes that the nature of qualia might be non-reducible, but also, luckily, causally impotent. The similarities and differences between qualia ought to be causally potent, and also reducible, but the feel and nature of this or that quale cannot be explained.

The subjective is the first-personal aspect of the mind, and is currently incompatible with the reductive program. The cogito 'I exist' is not the same proposition as 'Descartes exists', or 'that man exists', and so on. The special status of this proposition [is it a proposition?] and the privileged access we have to our mentality is lost on reduction, and is different from the mind-body problem, but needs attention. Review pg 149.