MindPapers: 4.5b. Nonreductive Materialism

Antony, Louise M. (2007). Everybody has got it: A defense of non-reductive materialism. In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell. (Google | Edit)

Antony, Louise M. (1999). Making room for the mental. Philosophical Studies 95 (1-2):37-44. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)

Barrett, J. (1995). Causal relevance and nonreductive physicalism. Erkenntnis 42 (3):339-62. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: It has been argued that nonreductive physicalism leads to epiphenominalism about mental properties: the view that mental events cannot cause behavioral effects by virtue of their mental properties. Recently, attempts have been made to develop accounts of causal relevance for irreducible properties to show that mental properties need not be epiphenomenal. In this paper, I primarily discuss the account of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit. I show how it can be developed to meet several obvious objections and to capture our intuitive conception of degrees of causal relevance. However, I argue that the account requires large-scale miraculous coincidence for there to be causally relevant mental properties. I also argue that the same problem arises for two apparently very different accounts of causal relevance. I suggest that this result does not show that these accounts, on appropriate readings, are false. Therefore, I tentatively conclude that we have reason to believe that irreducible mental properties are causally irrelevant. Moreover, given that there is at leastprima facie evidence that mental properties can be causally relevant, my conclusion casts doubt on nonreductive physicalist theories of mental properties

Beckermann, Ansgar; Flohr, Hans & Kim, Jaegwon (1992). Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter. (Cited by 26 | Google | Edit)

Beckermann, Ansgar (1992). Reductive and nonreductive physicalism. In Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr & Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter. (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)

Bielfeldt, Dennis D. (1999). Nancey Murphy's nonreductive physicalism. Zygon 34 (4):619-628. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links | Edit)

Boyd, Robert (1980). Materialism without reductionism: What physicalism does not entail. In Ned Block (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology. (Cited by 43 | Google | Edit)

Clarke, Randolph (1999). Nonreductive physicalism and the causal powers of the mental. Erkenntnis 51 (2-3):295-322. (Cited by 8 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Nonreductive physicalism is currently one of the most widely held views about the world in general and about the status of the mental in particular. However, the view has recently faced a series of powerful criticisms from, among others, Jaegwon Kim. In several papers, Kim has argued that the nonreductivist's view of the mental is an unstable position, one harboring contradictions that push it either to reductivism or to eliminativism. The problems arise, Kim maintains, when we consider the causal powers that mental properties are held to carry on the nonreductivist's view and the causal transactions into which mental events are said to enter. My aim here is less than that of defending nonreductive physicalism against all of Kim's criticisms. I wish primarily to call into question the claim that nonreductive physicalism is committed to emergentism with respect to the causal powers of the mental. As subsidiary points, I shall offer a limited defense of nonreductivism against two related objections that Kim raises. However, even if my conclusions are correct, problems remain for the nonreductivist's treatment of mental causation. I shall close the paper with a brief discussion of these difficulties

Dupre, John (1988). Materialism, physicalism, and scientism. Philosophical Topics 16:31-56. (Google | Annotation | Edit)

Ellis, Ralph D. (2000). Consciousness, self-organization, and the process-substratum relation: Rethinking nonreductive physicalism. Philosophical Psychology 13 (2):173-190. (Cited by 9 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Knowing only what is empirically knowable can't by itself entail knowledge of what consciousness "is like." But if dualism is to be avoided, the question arises: how can a process be completely empirically unobservable when all of its components are completely observable? The recently emerging theory of self-organization offers resources with which to resolve this problem: Consciousness can be an empirically unobservable process because the emotions motivating attention are experienced only from the perspective of the one whose phenomenal states are executed by the self-organizing processes which themselves constitute the consciousness. I argue that a self-organizing process can differ from the sum of its (empirically observable) substrata because, rather than just being realized by them, it actively rearranges the background conditions under which alternative component causal sequences can realize the self-organizing pattern into the future

Ellis, Ralph D. (1999). Why isn't consciousness empirically observable? Emotion, self-organization, and nonreductive physicalism. Journal of Mind and Behavior 20 (4):391-402. (Google | Edit)

Elshof, Ten G. (1997). Supervenient difficulties with nonreductive physicalism: A critical analysis of supervenience physicalism. Kinesis 24 (1):3-22. (Google | Edit)

Fodor, Jerry A. (1974). Special sciences. Synthese 28:97-115. (Cited by 437 | Google | More links | Annotation | Edit)

Francescotti, Robert M. (1998). The nonreductionist's troubles with supervenience. Philosophical Studies 89 (1):105-24. (Google | Edit)

Gillett, Carl & Rives, Bradley (2001). Does the argument from realization generalize? Responses to Kim. Southern Journal of Philosophy 39 (1):79-98. (Cited by 10 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: By quantifying over properties we cannot create new properties any more than by quantifying over individuals we can create new individuals. Someone murdered Jones, and the murderer is either Smith or Jones or Wang. That “someone”, who murdered Jones, is not a person in addition to Smith, Jones, and Wang, and it would be absurd to posit a disjunctive person, Smith-or-Jones-or-Wang, with whom to identify the murderer. The same goes for second-order properties and their realizers. (Kim (1997a), p.201)

Gillett, Carl (2003). Nonreductive realization and nonreductive identity: What physicalism does not entail. In Sven Walter & Heinz-Dieter Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation. Imprint Academic. (Cited by 8 | Google | Edit)

Healey, Richard A. (1978). Physicalist imperialism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 79:191-211. (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)

Horgan, Terence E. (1994). Nonreductive materialism. In Richard Warner & Tadeusz Szubka (eds.), The Mind-Body Problem: A Guide to the Current Debate. Blackwell. (Cited by 9 | Google | Edit)

Horgan, Terence E. (1993). Nonreductive materialism and the explanatory autonomy of psychology. In Steven J. Wagner & Richard Warner (eds.), Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal. University of Notre Dame Press. (Cited by 29 | Google | Annotation | Edit)

Hunter, David (2001). Mind-brain identity and the nature of states. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3):366-86. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Johansson, Ingvar (2001). Hartmann's nonreductive materialism, superimposition, and supervenience. Axiomathes 12 (3-4). (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Karakus, Attila & Vieth, Andreas (2005). Is Rorty's non-reductive naturalism reductive? In Richard Rorty: His Philosophy Under Discussion. Verlag. (Google | Edit)

Kernohan, Andrew (1988). Non-reductive materialism and the spectrum of mind-body identity theories. Dialogue 27:475-88. (Cited by 1 | Google | Annotation | Edit)

Kim, Jaegwon (1992). "Downward causation" in emergentism and nonreductive physicalism. In Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr & Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter. (Cited by 34 | Google | Edit)

Kim, Jaegwon (1989). The myth of non-reductive materialism. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 63 (3):31-47. (Cited by 122 | Google | More links | Annotation | Edit)

Kim, Jaegwon (1992). The nonreductivist's trouble with mental causation. In John Heil & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation. Oxford University Press. (Google | Annotation | Edit)

Kirk, Robert E. (1996). How physicalists can avoid reductionism. Synthese 108 (2):157-70. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Annotation | Edit)

Abstract: Kim maintains that a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism. But physicalists can reject both by using the Strict Implication thesis (SI). Discussing his arguments will help to show what useful work SI can do.(1) His discussion of anomalous monism depends on an unexamined assumption to the effect that SI is false

Kirk, Robert E. (2001). Nonreductive physicalism and strict implication. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4):544-552. (Cited by 7 | Google | More links | Edit)

Knowles, Jonathan (1999). Physicalism, teleology and the miraculous coincidence problem. Philosophical Quarterly 50 (195):164-81. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Lennon, Kathleen (1984). Anti-reductionist materialism. Inquiry 27 (December):363-380. (Cited by 1 | Google | Edit)

Loar, Brian (1992). Elimination versus nonreductive physicalism. In David Charles & Kathleen Lennon (eds.), Reduction, Explanation and Realism. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 7 | Google | Edit)

Mainwood, Paul (online). How is non-reductive physicalism possible. (Google | Edit)

Margolis, Joseph (1978). Persons and Minds: The Prospects of Non-Reductive Materialism. D. (Cited by 16 | Google | Edit)

Markic, Olga (2002). Nonreductive materialism and the problem of causal exclusion. Grazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1):79-88. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: In this paper I examine nonreductive materialism (physicalism). This is a position that Terry Horgan favors in his papers and is probably the most widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind in recent decades. In contrast to this, I will argue that nonreductive materialism is an unstable position and will suggest that we can show this using Horgan's own work on the concept of superdupervenience

Marras, Ausonio (2007). Kim's supervenience argument and nonreductive physicalism. Erkenntnis 66 (3). (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show that Kim’s ‚supervenience argument’ is at best inconclusive and so fails to provide an adequate challenge to nonreductive physicalism. I shall argue, first, that Kim’s argument rests on assumptions that the nonreductive physicalist is entitled to regard as question-begging; second, that even if those assumptions are granted, it is not clear that irreducible mental causes fail to␣satisfy them; and, third, that since the argument has the overall structure of a reductio, which of its various premises one performs the reductio on remains open to debate in an interesting way. I shall finally suggest that the issue of reductive vs. nonreductive physicalism is best contested not in the arena of mental causation but in that in which the issues pertaining to theory and property reduction are currently being debated

Marras, Ausonio (1994). Nonreductive materialism and mental causation. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24 (3):465-93. (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)

Marras, Ausonio (1993). Psychophysical supervenience and nonreductive materialism. Synthese 95 (2):275-304. (Cited by 8 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Jaegwon Kim and others have claimed that (strong) psychophysical supervenience entails the reducibility of mental properties to physical properties. I argue that this claim is unwarranted with respect to epistemic (explanatory) reducibility (either of a global or of a local sort), as well as with respect to ontological reducibility. I then attempt to show that a robust version of nonreductive materialism (which I call supervenient token-physicalism) can be defended against the charge that nonreductive materialism leads to epiphenomenalism in failing to account for the causal or explanatory relevance of mental properties

Melnyk, Andrew (1995). Two cheers for reductionism, or, the dim prospects for nonreductive materialism. Philosophy of Science 62 (3):370-88. (Cited by 10 | Google | More links | Edit)

Melnyk, Andrew (1998). The prospects for Kirk's nonreductive physicalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (2):323-32. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Papineau, David (1992). Irreducibility and teleology. In David Charles & Kathleen Lennon (eds.), Reduction, Explanation and Realism. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 9 | Google | Annotation | Edit)

Pereboom, Derk (2002). Robust nonreductive materialism. Journal of Philosophy 99 (10):499-531. (Cited by 17 | Google | More links | Edit)

Pereboom, Derk & Kornblith, Hilary (1991). The metaphysics of irreducibility. Philosophical Studies 63 (August):125-45. (Cited by 24 | Google | More links | Annotation | Edit)

Abstract: During the 'sixties and 'seventies, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and Richard Boyd, among others, developed a type of materialism that eschews reductionist claims.¹ In this view, explana- tions, natural kinds, and properties in psychology do not reduce to counterparts in more basic sciences, such as neurophysiology or physics. Nevertheless, all token psychological entities-- states, processes, and faculties--are wholly constituted of physical entities, ultimately out of entities over which microphysics quantifies. This view quickly became the standard position in philosophy of mind, and reductionism fell out of favor. Recently, however, reductionism has been experiencing a rebirth, and many have suggested that the non-reductive approach was accepted too quickly and too uncritically. In this paper, we attempt to provide a more thorough account of the anti-reductionist position, and, in the process, to defend it against its recent critics

Robinson, Howard M. (2001). Davidson and nonreductive materialism: A tale of two cultures. In Carl Gillett & Barry M. Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents. Cambridge University Press. (Google | Edit)

Rosenberg, Alex (2005). How to reconcile physicalism and antireductionism about biology. Philosophy Of Science 72 (1):43-68. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Physicalism and antireductionism are the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of biology. But these two theses are difficult to reconcile. Merely embracing an epistemic antireductionism will not suffice, as both reductionists and antireductionists accept that given our cognitive interests and limitations, non-molecular explanations may not be improved, corrected or grounded in molecular ones. Moreover, antireductionists themselves view their claim as a metaphysical or ontological one about the existence of facts molecular biology cannot identify, express, or explain. However, this is tantamount to a rejection of physicalism and so causes the antireductionist discomfort. In this paper we argue that vindicating physicalism requires a physicalistic account of the principle of natural selection, and we provide such an account. The most important pay-off to the account is that it provides for the very sort of autonomy from the physical that antireductionists need without threatening their commitment to physicalism

Silvers, Stuart (1997). Nonreductive naturalism. Theoria 12 (28):163-84. (Google | Edit)

Slors, Marc (2003). Epiphenomenalism and cross-realization induction. Grazer Philosophische Studien 65 (1):15-36. (Google | Edit)

Abstract: In the first part of this paper I argue that epiphenomenalism does not pose a threat to nonreductive physicalism, if type-epiphenomenalism does not imply the redundancy of mental (or in general higher-level) typing of events and/or states. Furthermore, if justifiable induction over folk-psychological regularities is possible independently of the ways in which these regularities are realized, type-epiphenomenalism does not imply the redundancy ofmental typing. Inthe second part of this paper I explain how justifiable 'cross-realization induction' can be possible. This explanation does what none of the currently available ones can: combine the generally accepted ideas that (i) folk-psychology is a successful means of predicting, explaining, and understanding human behaviour and (ii) that mental states are multiply realized. Given these two steps, it is relatively safe to say that there is no epiphe-nomenalism-threat to nonreductive physicalism

Smith, A. D. (1993). Non-reductive physicalism? In Howard M. Robinson (ed.), Objections to Physicalism. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 5 | Google | Annotation | Edit)

Stephan, Achim (2001). How to lose the mind-body problem. Grazer Philosophische Studien 61:279-283. (Google | Edit)

van Gulick, Robert (2002). Nonreduction, consciousness and physical causation. Journal of Consciousness Studies 9 (11):41-49. (Google | Edit)

van Gulick, Robert (1992). Nonreductive materialism and the nature of intertheoretical constraint. In Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr & Jaegwon Kim (eds.), Emergence or Reduction?: Prospects for Nonreductive Physicalism. De Gruyter. (Cited by 19 | Google | Edit)

Wacome, Donald H. (2004). Reductionism's demise: Cold comfort. Zygon 39 (2):321-337. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Walter, Sven (2006). Causal exclusion as an argument against non-reductive physicalism. Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (1-2):67-83. (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)

Wedgwood, Ralph (2000). The price of non-reductive physicalism. Noûs 34 (3):400-421. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Williamson, Francis X. (1998). Autonomy, reduction and the artificiality of mental properties. South African Journal of Philosophy 17 (1):1-7. (Google | Edit)

Wilson, Jessica M. (online). Weak emergence, non-reductive physicalism, and degrees of freedom. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: It has been claimed that Non-reductive Physicalism (NRP) is not a stable position, on grounds that NRP either collapses into reductive physicalism (involving the denial of Non- reduction), or expands into emergentism of a robust or “strong” variety (involving the denial of Physicalism). I argue that this claim is unfounded. I start by considering a range of (intuitively physically acceptable) special science entities and systems E composed of lower-level entities e₁, e₂, . . . , e_n. I show that in the two most common circumstances characterizing such entities or systems E, E has a reduced set of the degrees of freedom (roughly: independent parameters required to characterize some state of interest of an entity or system) had by the system of e_i understood as not constrained in the way associated with composing E; and I deﬁne an associated notion of weak emergence in terms of such a reduction in degrees of freedom. I then argue that a weakly emergent entity or system E is (a) physically acceptable if its composing e_i are physically acceptable; and (b) ontologically irreducible to the e_i. When the e_i are physically acceptable (as when, for example, the e_i are physical), E satisﬁes both Physicalism and Non-reduction

4.5b	Nonreductive Materialism [55]

4.5d	Reduction, Misc [45]

Search tips