First-order property mental properties

It is, of course, not properties of this sort that philosophers usually have in mind when they speak of the first-order properties of persons that realize their mental properties. Having C-fiber stimulation occurring in one is not an MSE-property it is rather a property that is realized by different MSE-properties on different occasions. In all likelihood, the MSE-properties are... 

If by a first-order property we mean one the possession of which by a thing does not consist in the possession by that thing of some other property, and if by a second-order property we mean one the possession of which by a thing does consist in the possession by that thing of some other property, then the only first-order properties of macroscopic things will be MSE-properties, and all of their other properties will be second order. On this understanding of the first-order/second-order distinction, mental properties are second order — but so are all of the other properties of macroscopic things we can refer to. To preserve a distinction. 

This point applies straightforwardly to the functionalist perspective on mentality. If we want a functional definition of mental property terms that apply to properties, the first-order variant will do. For example, the pain-property can be thought of as the property of jointly causing certain outputs together with certain other (mental) properties, being caused by certain inputs, and so forth. But if we want to ascribe those properties to people, we need second-order properties. What it is for a person to have pain, according to the functionalist, is for the person to have some property or other that has certain causal relations to other (mental) properties and to inputs and outputs. 

The reader may feel that the fact that a second-order property cannot be identical to a first-order property can mislead us with regard to physicalism, for the second-order property can itself be seen as in effect first-order physical so long as all its realizers are first-order physical. (In addition, it would have to be stipulated that there are no extra nonphysical ghost mental properties.) I explain the inadequacy of this view in the next section. 

This is in fact the view Jaegwon Kim has advanced in several places about instances of second-order properties and instances of their first-order realizers.As Kim has noted, such an identification requires a revision of his property-exemplification account of events assuming that mental properties are second-order properties, it requires the exclusion of mental properties as constitutive properties of events. This instance-identity thesis is supposed to support reductionism about the mental. But there is a tension between this thesis and Kim s formulation in several places of his causal inheritance principle, which says that the causal powers of an instance of a higher-order property are identical with or are a subset of [emphasis mine] the causal powers of the instance of its realizer. Clearly, if the causal powers of the realized property instance were... 

One important function of the elaboration knowledge and its related mental model of the situation is to preserve the order expressed in the relationship from its first manifestation to the second. Consider again the age problem introduced above. The two things in this problem are readily identifiable as Mary and her mother. Their associated measurable properties are ages in years. The relationship of interest is that Mary s age is one-third of her mother s age. The importance of the mental model should be evident here. Without an adequate model, the solver might be tempted to apply a formulaic approach that depends on a sequential parsing of the problem, expecting the two statements of the relationship to maintain their order. In fact, as this simple problem illustrates, the order is often disrupted. In this problem, the initial statement is Mary-related to-mother. In the final statement, we... 

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