Kim's Argument
Jaegwon Kim has recently argued against non-reductive physicalism on the grounds that it violates the causal closure of the physical. Roughly, the idea is that physics provides a full explanation of physical events. If mental properties are causally efficacious, they must either be identical to physical properties, or there must be widespread overdetermination. The latter is often held to be either unlikely or even impossible on conceptual grounds. If this is right, then the options seem to be either reduction or elimination.
Read more about this topic: Multiple Realizability
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“Argument is conclusive ... but ... it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.... For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns ... his hearer’s mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it ... that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.”
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