Mental properties exemplifications

Some philosophers recoil from Kim s position. They maintain that mental events are patently not physical events and that it is nevertheless patently absurd to think that any mental event is an epiphenomenon. That reaction is understandable. On a certain natural conception of events, the property exemplification conception, it is at least deeply controversial whether any mental event is a physical event. On that conception, it seems that a mental event could be a physical event only if the relevant mental property - the mental property the exemplification of which is the mental event - is a physical property. And it is, of course, deeply controversial whether any mental property is a physical property (though the reasons vary depending on the kind of mental property in question). Furthermore, it is hard to believe that any mental event is an epiphenomenon. Epiphenomenalism — the view that mental events are epiphenomena — seems patently absurd. 

Some philosophers reject the property exemplification conception of events and claim that although no mental event type is a physical event type, a particular event can be an instance of both a mental type and a... 

On the view that mental events are exemplifications of mental properties, it is deeply controversial whether any mental event is a physical event, for it is deeply controversial whether any mental property is a physical property. Moreover, on this view, Kim s position seems especially bold. It seems to amount to the claim that every mental property is such that it is either a physical property or else its exemplifications are without causal effects. ... 

We see later, however, that a property exemplification account of events even when combined with the denial of type physicalism can nevertheless be compatible with token physicalism, the thesis that every mental event is a physical event. 

A view that has been gaining popularity is that we can appeal to the idea of realization to explain how mental events (exemplifications of mental properties) can be causes without being physical events (exemplifications of physical properties). The idea that mental properties are realized by physical properties is not new. ° But Kim s work on the problem of mental causation seems to have played a major role in inspiring the recent spate of attempts to appeal to physical realization to explain how mental causation is possible. Kim (1998b) labels this viewpoint realization physicalism, but it is also sometimes called nonreductive physicalism. For reasons that should be clear in due course, I will call it nonreductive realization physicalism. The core of the view is this ... 

It should also be mentioned that although Yablo maintains that the physical properties that realize mental properties (a posteriori) metaphysically suffice for the mental properties, he seems to take no stand on whether there is a disjunction of physical properties, all of the possible physical realizers of the mental property, which is metaphysically necessary for possession of the mental property. Suffice it to note that if there is, and if no two properties can have the same extension in every possible world, then his position collapses to Kim s position, for, then, mental properties that are determinables of physical properties will be physical properties - disjunctive physical properties. The issne, then, would be whether exemplifications of such disjunctive physical properties would he events. (See the discussion of disjunctive events later in the text.)... 

Thus, even on a property exemplification conception of events, type role-functionalism can be combined with token physicalism (for events). Type role-functionalism, you will recall, is the view that a mental event type M is the event type of undergoing an event of some type or other tokens of which would play a certain role R. It is open to a type role-functionalist to maintain that every instance of an Af type event is a physical event. The property of being an M type event (an event tokens of which would play R) would be a characterizing property of an event rather than a constitutive property. A physical event (an event with a constitutive physical property) would be an instance of M in virtue of the fact that it plays role R. This combination of type role-functionalism and token physicalism is compatible with mental events being causes even given physical closure and the physical effects principle, for it entails that every mental event is a physical event. 

Although incompatible with Kim s denial that there are second-order properties, this combined view is compatible with his position that every mental event is either a physical event or an epiphenomenon. For it entails his position. This view, moreover, is compatible with Kim s position that events have causal effects only in virtue of being exemplifications of physical properties. For the property in virtue of which an event has causal effects is, arguably, its constitutive property, and on this view, the constitutive properties of events are physical properties. If the properties in virtue of which events have casual effects are constitutive properties, then, on this view, although instances of mental properties have causal effects, they do not have them in virtue of being instances of mental event types rather, they have causal effects in virtue of being instances of physical event types. 

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... 

I won t pursue these matters here. The reason is that NRP theorists must reject this combination of type role-functionalism and token physicalism, for they deny that mental event tokens are identical with physical event tokens. Mental event tokens, they hold, are exemplifications of functional properties and are not identical with exemplifications of physical properties that realize the functional properties. Let us see how to spell out their idea using Kim s theory of events. The idea is that functional properties will be constitutive properties of events rather than characterizing properties of events. Thus, let T be a functional property and P be one of its physical realizers. An exemplification of T by x at t will be the event [x, F, t] the property of which the event is an exemplification will be functional property F. If property T is realized on the occasion in question by P, then X will have Fat t in virtue of having Pat t. It follows that x, P, t] occurs and has role R, and indeed x, P, t will realize x, F, t by virtue of [x, P, t] having R But although [x, P, t R, it is nevertheless the case that x, P, t + x, F, t]. The reason is that P F. Thus, if there are functional properties and they are constitutive properties of events, then exemplifications of functional properties are not identical with exemplifications of their physical realizers. 

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