Property exemplification conception

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... 

I will assume the property exemplification conception of events here. Moreover, I will assume that the relevant properties include nondynamic properties as well as dynamic properties, and so states (what C. D. Ducasse called unchanges ) can count as events. The presence of oxygen, which is a state, can be a cause of a match s lighting. 1 will follow the common philosophical practice of using events to cover states as well as changes. (In order to avoid stylistic infelicities, however, I will occasionally use event or state and occasionally just state.)... 

Now, it is one issue whether functional properties are identical with their first-order realizing properties it is another whether every instance of a functional property is identical with some instance of one of its first-order realizing properties. The claim that every instance of a functional property is identical with some instance of one of its first-order realizing properties is compatible with the conception of events as property exemplifications. On the conception of properties as universals, instances of properties are just things that have them. Thus, a red truck is an instance of the universal (the property) redness. Since events are things that can have second-order properties, they can be instances of such properties and so can be typed as such. A property exemplification theory of events can, however, distinguish properties the exemplification of which are events from properties that are possessed by events. And it is compatible with such a view that the events that have functional properties (such as the property of being an occupant of a role) are exemplifications of physical properties. Thus, it is compatible with the property exemplification conception of events that even if no functional property is a physical property, every instance of a functional property is a physical event. 

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. 

If we embrace an abundant conception of properties, then there is a substantive question of which properties are such that they are constitutive properties of events. For example, if disjunction is a property-forming operation, and so there are disjunctive properties, it by no means follows that disjunctive properties can be constitutive properties of events. Also, even if complementation is a property-forming operation, and so there are negative properties, it is a nontrivial question whether negative properties can be constitutive properties of events — whether, that is, omissions are events. 1 will recur to these matters later. The point to note for now is that on an abundant conception of properties, no extant property exemplification account of events counts literally every property as such that it can be a constitutive (or essential) property of an event. One might embrace quantification as a property-forming operation but reject it as an eventforming operation and so reject the claim that functional properties can be constitutive properties of events. Whether functional properties can be constitutive properties of events, and so whether there are functional events in the sense in question, is a controversial issue. The issue, moreover, as I see, is inseparable from the issue of whether such entities would be causes. 

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