Jaegwon Kim’s influential exclusion argument attempts to demonstrate the inconsistency of nonreductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. Kim’s argument begins by showing that the three main theses of nonreductive materialism, plus two additional considerations, lead to a specific and familiar picture of mental causation. The exclusion argument can succeed only if, as Kim claims, this picture is not one of genuine causal overdetermination. Accordingly, one can resist Kim’s conclusion by denying this claim, maintaining instead (...) that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. I call this strategy the ‘ overdetermination challenge’. One of the main aims of this paper is to show that the overdetermination challenge is the most appropriate response to Kim’s exclusion argument, at least in its latest form. I argue that Kim fails to adequately respond to the overdetermination challenge, thus failing to prevent his opponents from reasonably maintaining that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. Interestingly, this discussion reveals a curious dialectical feature of Kim’s latest response to the overdetermination challenge: if it succeeds, then a new, simpler and more compact version of the exclusion argument is available. While I argue against the consequent of this conditional, thereby also rejecting the antecedent, this dialectical feature should be of interest to philosophers on either side of this debate. (shrink)

Critical examination will be made firstly of the exclusion argument, famously developed by Jaegwon Kim, against nonreductive physicalism, and secondly of the identity solution as suggested by Kim himself for the exclusion problem allegedly prompted by his argument. I will argue that the argument is not so much of a trouble for nonreductive physicalism as Kim claims it to be, and that his purported solution is hardly convincing. For one thing, the principles, of which use (...) are made in the argument, concern events, not properties. That is why the argument does not have a direct force to exclude properties. Second, the identification of mental and physical properties involves the idea that a functional property is to be at the same time a structural property, and, on the other hand, it amounts to a reflexive relation such that one and the same property is to realize itself, both of which ideas make little sense. Plus, a brief consideration will be made of the exclusion problem of how it is possible for mental properties to be causally relevant along with physical properties that always suffice for the effect. It will be suggested that mental properties can be causally relevant only if they are dependent upon physical properties, a suggestion which is based on the property-exclusion principle extracted from the principle of explanatory exclusion formulated by Kim himself. (shrink)

Abstract: 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. Neither side in the debate over the status of functionally conceived mental properties comes out unscathed. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Locke is not in fact agnostic about the ultimate nature of the mind. In particular, he produces an argument, much like Jaegwon Kim's exclusion argument, to show that any materialist view that takes mental states to supervene on physical states is committed to epiphenomenalism. This result helps illuminate Locke's otherwise puzzling notion of 'superaddition.'.

Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument is a general ontological argument, applicable to any properties deemed supervenient on a microproperty basis, including biological properties. It implies that the causal power of any higher-level property must be reducible to the subset of the causal powers of its lower-level properties. Moreover, as Kim’s recent version of the argument indicates, a higher-level property can be causally efficient only to the extent of the efficiency of its micro-basis. In response, I argue that (...) the ontology that aims to capture experimentally based explanations of metabolic control systems and morphogenetic systems must involve causally relevant contextual properties. Such an ontology challenges the exclusiveness of micro-based causal efficiency that grounds Kim’s reductionism, since configurations themselves are inherently causally efficient constituents. I anticipate and respond to the reductionist’s objection that the nonreductionist ontology’s account of causes and inter-level causal relations is incoherent. I also argue that such an ontology is not open to Kim’s overdetermination objection. (shrink)

Loewer (in: Physicalism and its discontents, 2001; Philos Phenomenol Res 65:655–663, 2002; in: Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, 2007) has argued that the nonreductive physicalist should respond to the exclusion problem by endorsing the overdetermination entailed by their view. Kim’s (Physicalism, or something near enough, 2005; in: Contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind, 2007) argument against this reply is based on the premise that mental causation must be a productive relation in order to sustain human agency. (...) In this paper, I challenge the premise that mental causation is a productive relation by appealing to the underlying double prevention structure of the physiological mechanisms of human action. Since the causal pathways from an agent’s mental events to bodily movement involves an absence, mental causation is not productive. This places Kim in a troublesome dilemma in his debate with Loewer: either surrender mental causation or deny that causation is a productive relation. With the support offered for productive mental causation undermined, responses to the exclusion problem based on accepting overdetermination remain viable options for the nonreductive physicalist. (shrink)

In this paper I will revisit an argument that I have called “the supervenience argument”; it is sometimes called “the exclusion argument” in the literature. I want to reconsider several aspects of this argument in light of some of the criticisms and comments it has elicited, clarifying some points and offering a slightly reformulated—and improved—version of the argument. My primary aim, however, is to discuss and respond to Ned Block’s edifying and challenging critique of (...) the argument in his “Do Causal Powers Drain Away?”—in particular, his claim that the argument has the consequence that if there is no bottom microphysical level, causal powers will “drain away”, leaving us with no causation anywhere. The supervenience argument was designed to show that on a certain popular and influential view of mentality and its relationship to the physical, mental properties turn out to be epiphenomenal, that is, without causal powers of their own. (shrink)

As conceived by Kim, the causal exclusion argument targets all forms of nonreductive physicalism equally, but by restricting its focus to functionalist varieties of nonreductivism, I am able to develop a version of the argument that has a number of virtues lacking in the original. First, the revised argument has no need for Kim’s causal exclusion principle, which many find dubious if not simply false. Second, the revised argument can be adapted to either a (...) production-based conception of causation, as Kim himself favors, or to any of a number of dependence-based conceptions, like the ones favored by many of Kim’s critics. And, finally, the revised argument does not have the objectionable consequence that all so-called higher-level properties are epiphenomenal, for it does not generalize in the way that Kim’s original version of the argument arguably does. Nor does it concede much to narrow the scope of the argument in the way proposed. Those who adopt nonreductive theories of mind do so, by and large, on the strength of functionalist arguments for the multiple realizability of mental states. If functionalism entails that mental properties are epiphenomenal, this thus deals a critical, if not quite fatal, blow to nonreductivism. (shrink)

I summarize Jaegwon Kim's (2001/5) paper on the detrimental affect 'mental causation' has on physicalism.

Jaegwon Kim’s (2005) most recent formulation of the so-called Supervenience Argument against Non-Reductive Physicalism is discussed. The two stages of Kim’s argument can be seen as instances of, what I will call, the Generalized Exclusion Argument.

Kim's exclusion argument threatens to show that irreducible constituted objects are epiphenomenal. Kim's arguments are examined and found to be unconvincing; that a constituted cause requires its constituent to be a cause is not an adequate reason to reject the causation of the constituted object (event or property-instance). However, I introduce and argue for, the Causal Power Uniqueness Condition (CPUC). I argue that CPUC and the causal closure of the physical, implies that constituted objects or property-instances are not (...) novel causal powers. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of embodiment/disembodiment discussed by Hwa Yol Jung mainly in his recent work, Rethinking Political Theory (1993a) in tandem with an examination of some recent developments in Korean scholarship on the same subject. To sum up, the following three points are emphasized. First, this living body does not exist except in specific modalities. In this sense, Gabriel Marcel''s paradigmatic affirmation that I am my body requires an elaboration of the specific modalities of the living body as (...) a being in the world. Second, the way a living body exists is not exclusively mental or physical, but both. In short, it is phenomenal. Third, the point of the whole argument can be summed up as follows: to conceal one''s own body is natural, but to forget it is dangerous. The primary task of phenomenology is not to denude human beings, but to reawaken ourselves to the idea that we are beings who live with and through bodies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that Kim’s ‚supervenience argument’ is at best inconclusive and so fails to provide an adequate challenge to nonreductive physicalism. I shall argue, first, that Kim’s argument rests on assumptions that the nonreductive physicalist is entitled to regard as question-begging; second, that even if those assumptions are granted, it is not clear that irreducible mental causes fail to␣satisfy them; and, third, that since the argument has the overall structure of a (...) reductio, which of its various premises one performs the reductio on remains open to debate in an interesting way. I shall finally suggest that the issue of reductive vs. nonreductive physicalism is best contested not in the arena of mental causation but in that in which the issues pertaining to theory and property reduction are currently being debated. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses the most influential attempts to characterize physicalism without postulating relations of identity between the physical and the prima facie non-physical. The first section deals with a possible criticism that these attempts are misguided, since they contradict the physicalist slogan “everything there is physical.” In the second section, I elucidate the different formulations of the physicalist supervenience claim, and argue that none of them consists in an adequate characterization of physicalism. Three reasons are given in favor (...) of this conclusion: their compatibility with forms of dualism ; the fact that the supervenience relation is left unexplained; and Kim’s causal exclusion argument, which asserts that merely supervenient entities must be epiphenomenal. The third section presents the general features of another identity-independent attempt to characterize physicalism, namely realization physicalism. According to this view, tokens of prima facie non-physical types are realized by tokens of strictly physical types performing functional roles that specify the nature of the former. The third section also shows how realization physicalism deals with the objections that make physicalist supervenience claims inadequate for characterizing physicalism. Resumo O artigo apresenta e discute as tentativas mais influentes de caracterizar o fisicalismo sem postular relações de identidade entre o que é físico e o que é prima facie não físico. A primeira seção trata da possível crítica de que essas tentativas são equivocadas, porque contradizem o bordão fisicalista “tudo o que existe é físico”. Na segunda seção, elucido as diferentes formulações da tese fisicalista da superveniência, e argumento que nenhuma delas consiste em uma caracterização adequada do fisicalismo. Três razões são oferecidas em favor dessa conclusão: sua compatibilidade com formas de dualismo ; o fato de que a relação de superveniência é mantida sem explicação; e o argumento de Kim da exclusão causal, segundo o qual entidades meramente supervenientes devem ser epifenomenais. A terceira seção apresenta os aspectos gerais de outra tentativa de caracterizar o fisicalismo independente da identidade, a saber, o fisicalismo de realização. De acordo com essa posição, ocorrências de tipos prima facie não físicos são realizadas por ocorrências de tipos físicos quando estes executam os papéis funcionais que especificam a natureza dos primeiros. A terceira seção também revela como o fisicalismo de realização lida com as objeções que tornam as teses fisicalistas da superveniência inadequadas para a caracterização do fisicalismo. (shrink)

of (from British Columbia Philosophy Graduate Conference) In response to the “Causal Drainage” objection to his Supervenience Argument, Kim introduces micro-based properties and argues that their presence prohibits any causal drainage between metaphysical levels. Noordhof disagrees and instead argues that the causal powers of the �micro-bases� of micro-based properties seem to preempt the causal powers of micro-based properties, in much the same way as Kim claims the powers of subvening base properties preempt the powers of supervenient properties. Thus Noordhof (...) argues that the causal powers of higher-level micro-based properties still seem to drain downward to their lower-level micro-bases. In this paper I will defend Noordhof and argue that in fact this drainage is due to the fact that micro-based properties seem to supervene on their micro-bases. I thus argue that micro-based properties fall victim to the very same Supervenience Argument that Kim himself presents and I conclude that even micro-based properties turn out to be causally impotent if Kim�s Supervenience Argument is sound. (shrink)

Recent work by Jaegwon Kim and others suggest that functionalism leaves mental properties causally inefficacious in some sense. I examine three lines of argument for this conclusion. The first appeals to Occam's Razor; the second appeals to a ban on overdetermination; and the third charges that the kind of response I favor to these arguments forces me to give up "the homogeneity of mental and physical causation". I show how each argument fails. While I concede that a positive (...) theory of mental causation is desirable, there is no reason to think that functionalism renders such a theory unattainable. (shrink)

Jeagwon Kim's exclusion argument is a well-known argument against non-reductive physicalism in the contemporary debate on mental causation. In this essay, we will first discuss two versions of the exclusion argument: the simple version and the sophisticated version. Secondly, we will take a conservative strategy to defend the kind of non-reductive physicalism initiated by Donald Davidson: the Token Identity Theory. Namely, we will explain where Kim failed to appropriately understand Davidson's work and argue that the (...) simple version and the sophisticated version of the exclusion argument won't work against the clarified token identity theory at all. Lastly, Since much of Kim's inappropriate interpretation of Davidson's work is rooted in their difference in metaphysics, there is reason to believe the proper understanding and evaluation on contemplation as such on mental causation, non-reductive physicalism, and other related problems can't be achieved without finding an appropriate metaphysical frame. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the circularity reading of Frege's argument for the indefinability of truth. According to this reading, Frege is appealing to a sort of circularity in the argument. I argue that the circularity reading is interpretatively incorrect, or makes Frege's argument a non‐starter.

I develop a new reading of Frege’s argument for the indefinability of truth. I concentrate on what Frege literally says in the passage that contains the argument. This literal reading of the passage establishes that the indefinability argument is an arguably sound argument to the following conclusion: provided that the Fregean conception of judgment—which has recently been countered by Hanks—is correct and that truth is a property of truth-bearers, a vicious infinite regress is produced. Given this (...) vicious regress, Frege chooses to reject that truth is a property of truth-bearers. Frege’s choice leads to a unique version of the Fregean conception of judgment. His unique conception of judgment can cope with Hanks’s recent criticisms against the Fregean conception. (shrink)

This paper challenges Daniel Dennett’s attempt to reconcile the performance of mind and brain within a physicalist framework with Jaegwon Kim’s argument that a coherent physicalist framework entails the epiphenomenalism of mental events. Dennett offers a materialist explanation of consciousness and argues that his model of mind does not imply reductive physicalism. I argue that Dennett’s explanation of mind clashes with Jaegwon Kim’s mind-body supervenience argument. Kim contends that non-reductive physicalism either voids the causal powers of mental properties, (...) or it violates physicalist framework. I conclude that Dennett’s account of mind does not escape or overcome Kim’s mind/body supervenience problem. If Kim’s argument does not prove Dennett’s explanation of mind to be either a form of reductive materialism, or a logically inconsistent view, it is due to the ambiguity of concepts involved in Dennett’s theory. (shrink)

In his article “The Blurred Line between Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design” and his response “The Problem of Natural Divine Causation and the Benefits of Partial Causation”, Mikael Leidenhag uses Jaegwon Kim’s work on causal exclusion to critique what he calls “Natural Divine Causation” (NDC). Although I agree with Leidenhag that questions about divine action can fruitfully be posed in terms of Kim’s so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, I take issue with the way he attempts to carry out (...) this task and the reasons he offers against the overdetermination response to the Causal Exclusion Argument. (shrink)

While concerns of the mental being causally excluded by the physical have persistently plagued non-reductive physicalism, such concerns are standardly taken to pose no problem for reductive type physicalism. Type physicalists have the obvious advantage of being able to countenance the reduction of mental properties to their physical base properties by way of type identity, thereby avoiding any causal competition between instances of mental properties and their physical bases. 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, namely, his supervenience argument. I argue that type physicalism’s advantage is undermined by the following two things: (1) the generalizability of the supervenience argument, and (2) type physicalism’s incompatibility with mental properties at the fundamental level. This involves evaluating the generalization objection to the supervenience argument, probing the metaphysics of physicalism, and showing how (1) and (2) combine in a way that appears underappreciated given the general confidence in type physicalism’s advantage. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience/exclusion argument attempts to show that non-reductive physicalism is incompatible with mental causation. This influential argument can be seen as relying on the following principle, which I call “the piggyback principle”: If, with respect to an effect, E, an instance of a supervenient property, A, has no causal powers over and above, or in addition to, those had by its supervenience base, B, then the instance of A does not cause E (unless A is identical (...) with B). In their “Epiphenomenalism: The Dos and the Don’ts,” Larry Shapiro and Elliott Sober employ a novel empirical approach to challenge the piggyback principle. Their empirical approach pulls from the experiments of August Weismann regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Through an examination of Weismann’s experiments, Shapiro and Sober extract lessons in reasoning about the epiphenomenalism of a property. And according to these empirically drawn lessons, the piggyback principle is a don’t. My primary aim in this paper is to defend the piggyback principle against Shapiro and Sober’s empirical approach. (shrink)

In this essay, I qualify Jean-Luc Marion's anti-ontological interpretation of Anselm's argument. Marion claims that the argument is not ontological but in line with Dionysian apophatic theology. To substantiate his anti-ontological reading, Marion suggests that the main regulative idea of the Proslogion is bonum. The final regulative idea, however, is gaudium, since gaudium, not bonum, leads the argument to the beatific vision. If we reformulate the Proslogion focusing on gaudium, we find that Marion's analysis misses the evident (...) ontological aspects of the argument, such as the tradition of prayer and hermeneutics. Since Anselm promulgated the argument within the Benedictine tradition of Bec, the practice of prayer or meditation is the legitimate context of the argument. However, because of his emphasis on the structure of call and response over the ontological and hermeneutical aspects of revelation, his analysis neglects the importance of the hermeneutic relation within which the Proslogion is born. (shrink)

The paper aims to demonstrate the possibility of consistently accepting the existence of effective mental causality in the fundamentally physical world. We suppose that the concept of causality in J. Kim’s exclusion argument against mental causation, which implies а generative conception of causal relations, can be revised taking into account the specificity of the multilevel organization of living objects. Rejection of the mechanistic model of causality as a linear process, allows you to maintain commitment to the principle of (...) causal closure of the physical world and at the same time explain how top-down causality at the macro level is possible. For this, we use the model of a fractal tree of causal chains by J. Lowe, in which mental causality plays the role of an indirect cause of a fact. We carry out a meaningful distinction between the causality of facts and events by resorting to the multilevel model of J. Ellis, in which mental causality can be considered as a macro-level fact that has a selective effect on physical events of lower levels, taking into account a wide environmental context. (shrink)

This article considers the recent defense of the supervenience approach to physicalism due to Jaegwon Kim. Kim argues that supervenience supports physical causal closure, and that causal closure supports physicalism – indeed, a kind of reductive physicalism – and thus that supervenience suffices for physicalism. After laying out Kim's argument, I ask whether its success would truly vindicate the role of supervenience in defining physicalist positions. I argue that it would not, and that insofar as Kim's defense of supervenience (...) physicalism succeeds, it does so by showing that supervenience physicalism is not a unique, nonredundant way to be a physicalist. (shrink)

For three decades the writings of Jaegwon Kim have had a major influence in philosophy of mind and in metaphysics. Sixteen of his philosophical papers, together with several new postscripts, are collected in Kim [1993]. The publication of this collection prompts the present essay. After some preliminary remarks in the opening section, in Section 2 I will briefly describe Kim's philosophical 'big picture' about the relation between the mental and the physical. In Section 3 I will situate Kim's approach on (...) the larger philosophical landscape, vis-à-vis various other approaches frequently discussed in contemporary philosophy of mind. This comparative discussion will further illuminate Kim's own position, and also will serve as groundwork for subsequent discussion. In Section 4 I will point out certain persistent internal tensions in Kim's philosophical position on the mind--body problem, tensions that emerge especially clearly against the backdrop of Section 3's comparative discussion of Kim's position relative to various competing positions. In the remainder of the paper I will focus on two issues at the heart of his position, with particular attention to what he says about them in some of the more recent papers and the postscripts in Kim [1993]. First, how should a materialist understand the notion that the mental is 'determined' by the physical? More specifically, what role, if any, should be played by the concept of supervenience in explicating this kind of determination relation? Kim's views on this matter have recently changed, and I will discuss the issue with particular attention to his own latest remarks on it. This is the business of Section 5. Second, need a viable materialism assert that mentalistic psychology is reducible to neurobiology? More specifically, should a materialist insist on reducibility, despite the currently influential line of argument used by non-reductive materialists, the 'multiple realization' argument? On this matter too, Kim's views have changed somewhat; again, I will discuss the issue with particular attention to his recent thinking. This is the business of Section 6. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument says that if all physical effects have sufficient physical causes, and no physical effects are caused twice over by distinct physical and mental causes, there cannot be any irreducible mental causes. In addition, Kim has argued that the nonreductive physicalist must give up completeness, and embrace the possibility of downward causation. This paper argues first that this extra argument relies on a principle of property individuation, which the nonreductive physicalist need not accept, (...) and second that once we get clear on overdetermination, there is a way to reject the exclusion principle upon which the causal exclusion argument depends, but third that this should not lead to the belief that mental causation is easily accounted for in terms of counterfactual dependencies. (shrink)

We offer a critical assessment of the “exclusion argument” against free will, which may be summarized by the slogan: “My brain made me do it, therefore I couldn't have been free”. While the exclusion argument has received much attention in debates about mental causation (“could my mental states ever cause my actions?”), it is seldom discussed in relation to free will. However, the argument informally underlies many neuroscientific discussions of free will, especially the claim that (...) advances in neuroscience seriously challenge our belief in free will. We introduce two distinct versions of the argument, discuss several unsuccessful responses to it, and then present our preferred response. This involves showing that a key premise – the “exclusion principle” – is false under what we take to be the most natural account of causation in the context of agency: the difference-making account. We finally revisit the debate about neuroscience and free will. (shrink)

The general crisis of capitalism embraces all spheres of the life of society and, in the final analysis, is reflected in the life of each individual. The family is no exception in this regard. Problems of disorganization and disintegration of the family and marriage, the breakdown of traditional moral norms regulating familial and marital relationships and sexual behavior, have become subjects of close attention by philosophers, sociologists, educators, and physicians. The number of items published on these problems increases from year (...) to year. One is struck, in this regard, by the extreme diversity of criteria in the approaches to the study of these problems. Of course, this may be partially explained by the complexity of the subject under study. But in the case in point, the reason is primarily the presence of acute social contradictions in capitalist society itself, of methodological and ethical pluralism, and of the extreme contradictoriness of the initial theoretical positions characteristic of bourgeois social thought. For example, within a single collection, Sociology and Social Problems. A Conceptual Approach , one may find not only different but even mutually exclusive points of view on the same question. But for all the diversity of starting points, approaches and arguments, styles and methods of presentation, it is still possible to identify two common features that mark all such writings to some extent:1. The standards of consumer society are taken as model. Withrespect towoman's work in employment [outside the home], this is expressed in the attitude toward her career and her power . Development of parental roles in the family is associated with parents' capacities to assure, in the course of socializing their children, that they will subsequently advance. The relationships between spouses are regarded as harmonious only if a mutual attitude toward success outside the family and toward a high level of sexual activity, which creates a special kind of prestige, particularly for the man, is achieved. Consumerist attitudes are revealed, perhaps most vividly, in the approach to sexual behavior and corresponding norms of morality. Even in the writings of scholars striving for objectivity, overestimation of the significance and role of sexual activity is a factor. Most works are characterized by a spirit of negation of the traditional norms of sexual morality of Western European culture. (shrink)

This mixed-methods study examined Grade 4 students’ growth in two types of civic competencies—argumentation skills and disciplinary thinking, and how civic competencies interweave and co-develop over an academic year in the context of an interdisciplinary social studies curriculum called Digital Civic Learning (DCL). A total of 106 fourth-grade students (38.7% girls) and 6 social studies teachers participated in the study. Quantitative evidence indicates that students in the DCL curriculum significantly improved in their argumentation skills (argument-counterargument integration, claim-evidence integration) and (...) disciplinary thinking. These civic competencies became more strongly associated with each other by the end of the curriculum. Multiple case studies revealed how two students synergistically applied their evolving argumentation skills and disciplinary thinking through distinct learning pathways. These results paint a complex picture of the development of students’ disciplinary thinking and integrating of argumentation skills, and the role of the curriculum in fostering the concurrent development of these civic competencies. Findings align with our overarching assumption that, through collaborative discourse and immersive learning about complex social issues, students can leverage their disciplinary thinking during argumentative social interactions, grappling with solutions and seeking common ground; continuous discourse among peers further enhances argumentation skills while honing disciplinary thinking. This study bridges the research-practice gap by providing evidence for the co-development of argumentation and disciplinary thinking within social studies classrooms. Our findings underscore the importance of inquiry-based learning, aligning with the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, fostering critical civic competencies, and empowering students to actively participate in democratic processes. Particularly in this digitalized society, DCL emerges as a promising approach to integrate disciplinary thinking and argumentation skills across both physical and digital environments, fostering informed and active citizenship among students. (shrink)

In this article, I critically examine the religious argument for the existence of God, which Palmquist formulated from Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. After showing the structure of the argument, I point the problematic point of the argument and focus on the concept of Gesinnung. The privateness of Gesinnung is problematized in the analysis of it, and I briefly suggest that an alternative account of the Gesinnung is possible. Yet I emphasize the advantage that (...) this argument has compared to other competing arguments. (shrink)

Karen Bennett (2003, 2008) has argued for and developed a way of defending a non-reductive physicalist solution to Jaegwon Kim's Causal Exclusion Argument. She argues that mental and physical causes can both be sufficient causes of the same event without being classified as overdetermining causes. This strategy, however, is only available to physicalists. I argue that dualists can adopt or adapt her strategy.

A prominent approach in the debate on territorial rights claims that a group may have jurisdictional rights over a particular land if that land has become a repository of value for the group. This justification relies on a premise which has remained largely unsubstantiated, namely that having jurisdictional rights should be our preferred means for ensuring the group’s retaining of the land’s embedded value. This article discusses a recent attempt to fill this gap. David Miller acknowledges that the value could (...) be retained by the group if it has private property rights. However, he argues that because such rights can be changed at will by the holder of jurisdictional rights the group’s retaining of value is unacceptably insecure. I argue that this attempt fails. Miller’s argument is briefly stated so I start with some reconstructive work. Most importantly, I suggest that the argument relies on a descriptive claim about empirical probabilities, namely that the group’s having jurisdictional rights (in international law) provides the largest feasible reduction of insecurity. I then provide some tentative suggestions about expected state behavior which challenge the validity of that descriptive claim; I argue that a reform of international law which confers internationally enforced property rights on the relevant groups—rather than jurisdiction—may provide a similar (or even relatively larger) reduction of insecurity. My tentative conclusion is that Miller’s appeal to insecurity fails to provide the “embedded value” approach (favored by him and others) with the needed bridge from property rights to rights of jurisdiction. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to analyze the response of John Duns Scotus to Godfrey of Fontaines’s argument against Henry of Ghent’s theory of the will’s self-motion. Godfrey’s argument is that, if the object is assumed to be causa sine qua non and the efficient causality is totally attributed to the will in the act of volition, it would also follow that not only the will’s motion but every motion in nature, such as, for example, the igniting (...) of wood, is a self-motion. In this paper, I will explain that Scotus’s refutation of this argument in Reportatio II, d. 25 is based on his reflection upon the general possibility of self-motion as well as upon the indeterminacy of the will’s act. In doing so, I will show that the development of Scotus’s theory of the will’s motion is closely related to his universalized theory of self-motion. (shrink)

Ever since Elga presented his famous puzzle of Sleeping Beauty, philosophers have debated between the Thirder and the Halfer positions. In his recent article, Daniel Singer proposes a new position, according to which Beauty ought to assign [0, 1/2] to the coin’s landing heads. For this argument, he exploits the similarity between Elga’s original puzzle and Bovens’s modified one. According to Singer, Beauty ought to assign the same credence to H in both versions of Sleeping Beauty. Since Beauty ought (...) to assign [0, 1/2] to H in Bovens’s version, she ought to assign [0, 1/2] to H in Elga’s original version, too. Let us call this “the Impreciser view.” In this paper, I will contend that Singer’s argument fails. First, he depends on false assumptions in defending his Impreciser view. Second, Bovens’s version of Sleeping Beauty turns out to be underdescribed in an important aspect. If we try to provide a fuller description for it, either Beauty does not have to assign [0, 1/2] to H or the thus complemented version of Bovens’s puzzle will fail to be analogous with Elga’s original one. In either case, Singer’s discussion does not establish his Impreciser view. (shrink)

In some recent articles, Jaegwon Kim has argued that non-reductive physicalism is a myth: when it comes to the mind-body problem, the only serious options are reductionism, eliminativism, and dualism.[1] And when it comes to reductionism, Kim is inclined to regard a functionalist theory of the mind as the best available option—mostly because it offers the best explanation of mind-body supervenience. In this paper, I will discuss Kim’s views about functionalism. They may be contended on two general grounds. First, some (...) functionalists will object to being classified as reductionists. Second, Kim argues for a version (or a reading) of functionalism, conceptualized functionalism, that makes it rather similar to the “old” mind-body identity theory it was designed to replace. Moreover, Kim’s conceptualized functionalism turns out to be a somewhat surprising brand of reductionism—a reductionism with some eliminativist cut-outs and, possibly, some dualist leftovers. At the end of the paper I propose a construal of the more standard version of functionalism that obviates Kim’s argument for switching-over to his conceptualized version. (shrink)

I shall discuss some of the issues concerning a notorious doctrine of Frege that sentences are names of truth-values. I am interested in a problem raised by Kripke that the doctrine obscures the distinction between judgeable and unjudgeable contents. I shall present what I take to be Frege’s account of judgeable content: a proper expression of a judgeable content is susceptible to an analysis into a predicate and an argument-word, where a predicate is understood as a concept-word used to (...) attribute a certain property to the referent of the argument-word. In the light of this analysis, I shall argue that the doctrine does not obscure the distinction. The problem will also be discussed within the formal context of Grundgesetze. A new light will be shed on his rather peculiar conception of the symbol ‘ ${\boldsymbol \vdash}$’. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics ix 9, Aristotle answers the question of why the happy person needs friends. I argue that interpretatively, we must understand ix 9 in instrumental terms. I begin with ix 9’s opening sections, arguing that Aristotle understands the question of why the happy person needs friends, and his answer, in instrumental terms. Aristotle’s first major argument suggests that the instrumental role friends play has to do with one’s own activity, specifically self-contemplation. This argument, however, does not (...) clearly show why friends over and above just any other people are needed. To address this, I attend to NE’s longest sustained argument and show that it makes headway on this question, and in a way that again presents an instrumental account for why the happy person needs friends: facilitation of one’s own activity. (shrink)

I defend a unified fictionalism about modality and mathematics. First, I defend each view separately against internal objections. Then, I attempt a unified fictionalism by giving an analysis of truth in fiction which is neither modal nor platonistic. Finally, I explore the prospects for nominalistic unified fictionalism. ;In the first chapter, I defend modal fictionalism: the view that statements about possible worlds are best understood as claims about the content of a fiction, the 'many-worlds story'. I address the Brock-Rosen objection (...) that the fictionalist is a modal realist despite himself. I argue that Noonan's solution, the best response so far, is inadequate, and then offer an alternative fictionalist translation scheme for modal statements. ;In the second chapter, I defend mathematical fictionalism. Mathematical fictionalism is the view that mathematics is best understood as a fiction whose value is quite independent of its truth-value. Field argues for fictionalism in this sense by constructing nominalistic alternatives to standard physical theories. The aim is to establish that mathematical entities are 'dispensable for the purposes of science', and so to undermine the only reason we might have for believing in the literal truth of standard mathematics. I address an objection that the nominalization of current science would not suffice to establish the 'dispensability' of mathematical entities in the epistemologically relevant sense. I argue that there is a plausible interpretation of the indispensability argument according to which successful nominalization would establish that it is unreasonable to believe in mathematical entities. ;The most important challenge for any attempt at a unified fictionalism is to provide an account of truth in fiction that is neither implicitly modal nor implicitly platonistic. To this end, I offer in the third chapter an analysis of truth in a story which is based on a modified version of Walton's account of truth in fiction. ;A second challenge is to show that the timelessness and necessity of modal truth are compatible with the view that fictions are contingent and temporally restricted entities. In the final chapter, I argue this problem constitutes a genuine obstacle for a unified nominalistic fictionalism. (shrink)

Abstract: In The Imaginary Jean-Paul Sartre makes what will strike many as an implausibly strong claim, namely that perception and imagination are incompatible kinds of experience - I call this the exclusion claim. This paper offers a reconstruction of Sartre’s exclusion claim. First, it frames the claim in terms of cross-modal attention distribution, such that it is not possible to simultaneously attend to what one is imagining and what one is perceiving. However, this leaves it open that a (...) subject can simultaneously imagine and perceive on the condition that either the perceived or imagined objects are not attended to. While this is a philosophically plausible position it fails to do justice to Sartre’s intended position, which suggests a more radical exclusion between perception and imagination. In light of this section 3 develops a supplementary argument to remove one of the possible configurations of attention that the ban on divided attention leaves in place by arguing that the objects of imagining must be attended to, which follows from Sartre’s characterisation of imagination as spontaneous. The resulting exclusion is as follows: attentive perception excludes imagination (and vice versa), given that the latter is necessarily attentive, but attentive imagination can co-occur with non-attentive or background perception (in this sense the exclusion is asymmetric in a way that Sartre fails to recognise). In concluding I detail how from this exclusion we get an important consequence – which Sartre wants the exclusion claim to have – namely that it rules out an imagination-based solution to the problem of perceptual presence. (shrink)

How does mind fit into nature? Philosophy has long been concerned with this question. No contemporary philosopher has done more to clarify it than Jaegwon Kim, a distinguished analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. With new contributions from an outstanding line-up of eminent scholars, this volume focuses on issues raised in Kim's work. The chapters cluster around two themes: first, exclusion, supervenience, and reduction, with attention to the causal exclusion argument for which Kim is (...) widely celebrated; and second, phenomenal consciousness and qualia, with attention to the prospects for a functionalist account of the mental. This volume is sure to become a major focus of attention and research in the disciplines of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I argue that Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience argument does not generalize to all special science properties by undermining his central intuition, employed in stage 1 of the argument, that there is a tension between horizontal causation and vertical determination. First, I challenge Kim’s treatment of the examples he employs to support this intuition, then I appeal to Kim’s own work on the metaphysics of explanation in order to dissipate the alleged tension.

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This is a pre-print. Please cite only the revised published version. This paper presents an original, ambitious, truth-directed transcendental argument for the existence of an ‘external world’. It begins with a double-headed starting-point: Stroud’s own remarks on the necessary conditions of language in general, and Hegel’s critique of the “fear of error.” The paper argues that the sceptical challenge requires a particular critical concept of thought as that which may diverge from reality, and that (...) this concept is possible only through reflection on situations of error, in which how things are thought to be diverges from how things really are with independent items in an objective world. The existence of such a world is therefore a necessary condition of the possibility of scepticism: such scepticism is therefore false. I defend the argument against objections from Stroud’s sceptic and others. Drawing on Heidegger, the paper concludes by indicating that the chain of necessary conditions includes practical engagement with the world. (shrink)

For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If causation (...) is simply counterfactual dependence, for example, then the Causal Exclusion Argument fails. Thus, much of the existing debate turns on the issue of which account of causation is appropriate. In this paper, however, I take a bolder approach and argue that Kim’s preferred version of the Causal Exclusion Argument fails no matter what account one gives of causation. Any notion of causation that is strong enough to support the premises of the argument is too strong to play the role required in the logic of the argument. I also consider a second version of the Causal Exclusion Argument, and suggest that although it may avoid the problems of the first version, it begs the question against a particular form of non-reductive physicalism, namely emergentism. (shrink)

In this dissertation I explore Frege’s conception of truth. In particular I defend the thesis that Frege in his mature career takes truth to be an object, i.e., the True qua the reference of true sentences. In the literature on truth Frege has been usually taken to be a truth deflationist or a truth primitivist. Indeed Frege leaves a number of comments that sound like typical deflationist claims and his famous indefinability argument is the most discussed argument for (...) primitivism. However, Frege is neither a deflationist nor a primitivist. His deflationist remarks and the indefinability argument are rather his arguments that truth is an object. -/- For Frege judging—and its verbal counterpart asserting—is always acknowledging the truth of a truth-bearer. Thus, if truth is an object for him, his conception of judgment ought to also be adjusted accordingly. Indeed Frege shows how we can understand judgment qua acknowledgment of truth if truth is an object. Specifically, judging that p is identifying the True with the reference of ‘p’ non-judgmentally, i.e., without judging that p is identical with the reference of ‘p’. Frege’s conception of judgment impacts his conception of knowledge because the act of judging is that of producing knowledge. In a nutshell our act of judging and the knowledge we produce by it are epistemically grounded in our objectual knowledge of the True. If we take this point into account, we can develop a new reading of Frege’s claim that logic is the science of truth. -/- The suggested reading of Frege’s conception of truth and related notions can make a contribution to contemporary philosophical problems. First, Frege’s conception of judgment can cope with Peter Hanks’s recent criticisms of the Fregean picture of judgment in general. Secondly, his conception of assertion can explain the connection between truth and assertion in a novel way. Lastly, Frege’s conception of knowledge can be developed into a new theory of knowledge where objectual knowledge is more fundamental than propositional knowledge. (shrink)

I shall discuss Han’s analysis of the necessity of origin theses. His analysis comes in two parts. The negative part argues that well-known Kripkean arguments leave an inferential gap, thus falling short of establishing the necessity of origin theses. The positive part contends that the gap can only be bridged by Aristotelian metaphysics of essence and causation. I shall critically examine both the negative and positive parts of Han’s analysis.

ABSTRACT:In this article I inquire into Confucian ethics from a non-ideal stance investigating the complex interaction between Confucian ideals and the reality of the modern workplace. I contend that even Confucian workers who regularly engage in social rites at the workplace have an internal, Confucian reason to appreciate the value of rights at the workplace. I explain, from a Confucian non-ideal perspective, why I disagree with the presumptuous idea that labor (or workplace) rights are necessarily incompatible with Confucian ideals and (...) values. Specifically, I argue that if managers were “sages,” the highest moral exemplars and authorities in the Confucian tradition, they would perceive that social rituals alone are often not a contextually intelligent and valued response for the development of intimate communities in the modern workplace. The sage perspective will lead Confucian managers to realize, from their own moral perspective, that they have good reason to balance rites with rights, so long as the adoption is extrinsically valuable and consistent with the Confucian ideal. This article contributes to the debates about Confucianism's compatibility with rights, helps Western human rights scholars better contextualize their arguments in Confucianism-influenced cultures, and contributes to the development of a Confucian or Chinese approach to business ethics. (shrink)

A much discussed argument in the philosophy of mind against non-reductive physicalism leads to the conclusion that all genuine causes involved in mental phenomena must be reductive physical causes. The latter ostensibly exclude any other causes from having genuine effects in human thought and behaviour. Jaegwon Kim has been the chief exponent of this line of argument, calling it variously the causal exclusion argument or the supervenience argument against non-reductive physicalism. I will analyse this (...) class='Hi'>argument and show that some of its key assumptions are unwarranted. Two assumptions on which I will particularly focus are the causal closure of the physical and the prohibition against causal overdetermination when multiple sufficient causes are involved in some effect. The upshot will be that rather than lower-level physical causes always excluding or pre-empting possible mental causes, context plays a key role in determining what kinds of causation are at work in human behaviour and how those causes cooperate. (shrink)