Joseph Baltimore (West Virginia University)

Abstract:

Concerns about the physical causally excluding the mental have persistently plagued non-reductive physicalism. Yet it is standardly assumed that the exclusion problem does not apply to reductive type physicalism. Here, I challenge this widely accepted advantage of type physicalism over non-reductive physicalism in avoiding the causal exclusion of the mental. In particular, I focus on Jaegwon Kim’s influential version of the causal exclusion argument, i.e. his supervenience argument. I argue that the generalizability of the supervenience argument, combined with type physicalism’s incompatibility with fundamental mental properties, undermines type physicalism’s advantage.