Mind in a Physical World

Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press. 

Let me begin with a close reading of Kim s most recent formulation of the exclusion argument, with an eye toward seeing just how Kim thinks he has defused the generalization bomb. Chapter 2 of Mind in a Physical World, The Many Problems of Mental Causation, introduces the exclusion problem with the admonition that it strikes at the very heart of physicalism (p. 30). It arises, he says, for anyone who accepts two modest metaphysical commitments the thesis that the mental supervenes on the physical, and the thesis that the mental is realized in the physical. Denial of either of these theses is tantamount, in Kim s opinion, to the rejection of physicalism. 

I here side with Mill against Davidson on singular causation. Davidson is out of sympathy with the whole way the causal conundrum is traditionally set up see Davidson (i995> pp. 3-17). Davidson thinks that talk of properties as standing in causal relations is a confusion. Events stand in causal relations. But it is events qua the kind they are that stand in causal relations - that is> event types that is, properties. This line of response to Davidson has been well put by Kim in many places see, e.g., his Mind in a Physical World (1998b), especially chapter 2, pp. 29-56. 

As the title of Kim s seminal book Mind in a Physical World An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation suggests, his central concern is how mental causation is possible given that our world is fundamentally physical. Some philosophers have denied that our world is fundamentally physical in the way that Kim assumes that it is. A presupposition of the exclusion problem (as I have formulated it) — given physical closure and the physical effects principle, how can mental events be causes if they are not physical events — is that physical closure holds. The philosophers in... 

Kim, J. (1998a). The mind-body problem after fifty years. In A. O Hear, ed.. Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-21. Kim, J. (1998b). Mind in a Physical World An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. MIT Press. 

Loewer, B. (2002b). Review of Jaegwon Kim s Mind in a Physical World. Journal of Philosophy, 98, 315-24. 

Kim, Jaegwon. 1998. Mind in a physical world. An essay on the mind-body problem and mental causation. Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press. 

Mathematics, in the very broadest sense, is the systematic study of relationships in the physical world and relationships between symbols which need not pertain to the real world. In relation to the world, mathematics is the language of science. It operates within the laws and constraints of science as it examines physical phenomena. Unlike science, however, mathematics has no constraints. So in relation to symbols, mathematics can be considered a pure mental activity which is capable of generating new concepts within the mind unrelated to anything that presently exists. 

Examples of gas-liquid equilibria abound both in the physical world surrounding us and within an industrial context. Gases of both a benign and toxic nature are taken up or released by bodies of water. The example of dissolved oxygen, which is essential to the sustenance of aquatic life, immediately comes to mind. On the industrial scene both valuable and objectionable gases are often selectively removed or recovered by gas absorption or gas scrubbing. We have already alluded to this process in Illustration 2.3 and Section 5.4, and more on this process appears in Chapter 8. 

We have seen that physical chemistry evolved from a deep dissatisfaction in the minds of a few pioneers with the current state of chemistry as a whole one could say that its emergence was research-driven and spread across the world by hordes of new Ph.Ds. Chemical engineering was driven by industrial needs and the corresponding changes that were required in undergraduate education. Polymer science started from a wish to understand certain natural products and moved by... 

These men in the Statler bar — their views were exceptional, maybe. But how many normal voices were heard in Washington How many others, fearing the evil prospect, would greet the future world with solutions that stood upon the worst features of an equally evil past Fear may come to the mind long before physical danger. Footsteps may march up and down the hallway time and again before the knock comes on the door. Then a sudden terror, as if your mind, loosely planted, has been uprooted before it can reach down to the soil or up to the sunlight... . ... 

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