Customer Reviews

Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

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This anthology of Kim's papers is really fundamental to anyone willing to study the metaphysics of mind. There are also papers on causality, events and epistemology. However, the core of the book is the seminal work laid by Kim on supervenience and its relation to the mind-body problem.

I really cannot believe how can Kim manage to be at the same precise, technical and transparently clear. Some of the papers contained in here are already classics in the field. I have learned A LOT from Kim. I hope you benefit from his work as I have.

Jaegwon Kim's "Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays" is an absolute must-read for any philosopher working in the philosophy of mind. Of particular interest, Kim lays out his views in supervenience and its relation to the mind-body problem, discusses and (in my view) deals a death-blow to Donald Davidson's anomalous monism, and begins the development of his views on reductionism that come to fruition in his "Mind in a Physical World" (also a great read). Kim's work is a paradigm of thoroughness, both in material covered and the scope of his application of a few key ideas. Also of particular interest is Kim's work in event theory, which is developed in the first few essays, and which, though neglected for some time, has been the subject of several recent journal articles in application to problems associated with natural kinds.

All-in-all, a great set of essays by, in my view, one of the greatest living philosophers.