Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind

by Jaegwon Kim

Overview

Jaegwon Kim presents a selection of his essays from the last two decades. The volume includes three new essays, on an agent-centered first-person account of action explanation, the concepts of realization and their bearings on the mind-body problem, and the nonexistence of laws in the special sciences. Among other topics covered are emergence and emergentism, the nature of explanation and of theories of explanation, reduction and reductive explanation, mental causation and explanatory exclusion. Kim tackles questions such as: How should we understand the concept of "emergence", and what are the prospects of emergentism as a doctrine about the status of minds? What does an agent-centered, first-person account of explanation of human actions look like? Why aren't there strict laws in the special sciences - sciences like biology, psychology, and sociology? The essays will be accessible to attentive readers without an extensive philosophical background.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199585885
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/16/2010
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jaegwon Kim received his PhD from Princeton University in 1962 and has taught at Swarthmore College, the University of Michigan, Cornell University, and University of Notre Dame. He is presently William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. Kim is past President of the American Philosophical Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

1. Making sense of emergence2. The layered world: Metaphysical considerations3. Emergence: Core ideas and issues4. "Supervenient and yet not deducible": Is there a coherent concept of ontological emergence? 5. Reasons and the first person6. Taking the agent's point of view seriously in action explanation7. Explanatory realism, causal realism, and explanatory exclusion8. Explanatory knowledge and metaphysical dependence9. Hempel, explanation, metaphysics10. Reduction and reductive explanation: Is one possible without the other? 11. Can supervenience and "non-strict" laws save anomalous monism? 12. Causation and mental causation13. Two concepts of realization, mental causation, and physicalism14. Why there are no laws in the special sciences: Three argumentsIndex

Editorial Reviews

"It is written in Kim's usual lucid and concise style and offers novel and intriguing arguments that will be of great interest to all philosophers of mind (and beyond)." —Metapsychology

From the Publisher