Essays in the metaphysics of mind
By: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 317
ISBN-13: 9780199585878; 9780199585885
Subjects: Metaphysics; Philosophy of mind
Description: "Jaegwon Kim presents a selection of his essays from the last two decades. The volume includes three new essays, on an agent-centered first-person account of action explanation, the concepts of realization and their bearings on the mind-body problem, and the nonexistence of laws in the special sciences. Among other topics covered are emergence and emergentism, the nature of explanation and of theories of explanation, reduction and reductive explanation, mental causation and explanatory exclusion. Kim tackles questions such as: How should we understand the concept of e  mergence', and what are the prospects of emergentism as a doctrine about the status of minds? What does an agent-centered, first-person account of explanation of human actions look like? Why aren't there strict laws in the special sciences-sciences like biology, psychology, and sociology? The essays will be accessible to attentive readers without an extensive philosophical background. "--Book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Making sense of emergence; title: The layered world : metaphysical considerations; title: Emergence : core ideas and issues; title: Supervenient and yet not deducible : is there a coherent concept of ontological emergence?; title: Reasons and the first person; title: Taking the agent's point of view seriously in action explanation; title: Explanatory realism, casual realism, and explanatory exclusion; title: Explanatory knowledge and metaphysical dependence; title: Hempel, explanation, metaphysics; title: Reduction and reductive explanation : is one possible without the other?; title: Can supervenience and "non-strict" laws save anomalous monism?; title: Causation and mental causation; title: Two concepts of realization, mental causation, and physicalism; title: Why there are no laws in the special sciences : three arguments.