Jaegwon Kim

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Jaegwon Kim (born 1934) is a philosopher, currently at Brown University. He is best known for his work on mental causation and the mind-body problem. Key themes in his work include: a rejection of Cartesian metaphysics, the limitations of strict psychophysical identity, supervenience, and the individuation of events. Kim's work on these and other contemporary metaphysical and epistemological issues is well-represented by the papers collected in Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (1993).


Contents

[edit] Biography

Jaegwon Kim was born in 1934. Kim had two years of college in Seoul, Korea as a French literature major, before transferring to Dartmouth College in 1955. Soon after, at Dartmouth, he changed to a combined major in French, mathematics, and philosophy and received a B.A. degree. After Dartmouth, he went to Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy.[1]

Since receiving his Ph.D. in philosophy, Kim has lead an eventful academic career. Kim is currently the William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University (since 1987). He has also taught at Swarthmore College, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Michigan. From 1988-1989, he was president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. Since 1991, he has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And, along with Ernest Sosa, he is a joint editor of the quarterly philosophical journal Noûs.[2]

According to Kim, two of his major philosophical influences are Carl Hempel and Roderick Chisholm. Hempel, who sent him a letter encouraging him to go to Princeton, was a "formative influence", and from Chisholm he learned "not to fear metaphysics".[3]

[edit] Work

Kim's philosophical work focuses on the areas of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, action theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science.

[edit] Philosophy of mind

Kim has defended various mind-body theories during his career. He began defending a version of the identity theory in the early 1970s, and then moved to a non-reductive version of physicalism, which relied heavily on the supervenience relation.[citation needed]

More recently, he has rejected physicalism on the grounds that it is insufficient in explanatory power to solve the mind-body problem. His arguments against physicalism can be found in his two latest monographs: Mind in a Physical World (1998) and Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (2005). Kim claims "that physicalism will not be able to survive intact and in its entirety."[4] This, according to Kim, is because qualia (the phenomenal or qualitative aspect of mental states) cannot be reduced to physical states or processes. Kim claims that "phenomenal mental properties are not functionally definable and hence functionally irreducible"[5] and "if functional reduction doesn't work for qualia, nothing will"[6] Thus, there is an aspect of the mind that physicalism cannot capture.

Kim currently defends the thesis that intentional mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires) can be functionally reduced to their neurological realizers, but that the qualitative or phenomenal mental states (e.g., sensations) are irreducibly non-physical and epiphenomenal. He, thus, defends a version of dualism, although Kim argues that it is physicalism near enough.

[edit] Metaphysics

Kim's work in metaphysics focuses primarily on events and properties.

Kim developed an event identity theory, but has not defended it recently. This theory holds that events are identical if and only if they occur in the same time and place and instantiate the same property. Thus if one waves ten fingers, several events occur, including the waving of an even number of fingers, the event of waving fingers that are even divisible by five, and evenly divisible by ten. Some have criticized his theory as producing too many events.

Kim also theorized that events are structured. He is known for a property-exemplification account of events. They are composed of three things: Object(s), a property and time or a temporal interval. Events are defined using the operation [x ,P, t].[citation needed]

A unique event is defined by two principles: the existence condition and the identity condition. The existence condition states "[x, P, t] exists if and only if object x exemplifies the n-adic P at time t". This means a unique event exists if the above is met. The identity condition states "[x, P, t] is [y, Q, t`] if and only if x=y, P=Q and t=t`]".[citation needed]

[edit] Selected publications

The following is a partial list of publications by Jaegwon Kim. See Kim's web page at Brown for a more extensive list of publications.

  • (1993) Supervenience and Mind, Cambridge University Press.
  • (1998) Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press.
  • (2005) Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Princeton University Press. (Chapter 1 PDF)
  • (2006) Philosophy of Mind, 2nd ed., Westview Press.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Interview with Ephilosopher, Fall 2000.
  2. ^ Kim's profile at Brown: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/faculty/kim.html.
  3. ^ Interview with Ephilosopher, Fall 2000.
  4. ^ Kim, 2005, p. 31.
  5. ^ Kim, 2005, p. 29.
  6. ^ Kim, 2005, p. 29.

[edit] External links

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