Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (Representation and Mind) (Paperback)

by Jaegwon Kim (Author) "Current debates on the mind-body problem can be traced back to the late 1950s and early 1960s..." (more)
Key Phrases: physical realizationism, mental anomalism, supervenience argument (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review


"Mr. Kim has long been a lone voice against the dominant functionalist orthodoxy, but the tide now seems to be turning in his favor. In this book he elegantly cuts through the baroque structure of recent philosophical debate, and displays the flaws common to the various sophisticated alternatives."
—The Economist

"This is a wonderful book: ingenious, penetrating, illuminating."
—Ned Block, New York University

Product Description
This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (January 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262611538
• ISBN-13: 978-0262611534
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #782,746 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In my top ten philosophy books! Wow!, August 30, 2000

By	James Ryan (London, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This book is great because after a great page you turn and get another, and another.... For the reader, an orgiastic feast of clear, insightful explanations of reductionism, the reigning non-reductive materialism, and dualism. Kim admittedly has no startlingly new theory which he hasn't expressed before, so the book is more of a textbook than a new thesis. But it simply overflows with illuminating presentations of the various aspects of the mind-body problem. And the argument that our only real choices are substance dualism and hardcore reductionism is excellent. Kim, no substance dualist, opts for reductionism. Non-reductive materialist functionalism, property dualism, anomalous monism - all these are either confusions or substance dualism in disguise. It gives us epiphenomenalist property dualists a kick in the rear. CORRECTION: I recently met Kim and asked him whether he was a reductionist, just to make sure. He said that people often misread him that way. Yes, he's saying there is a stark choice between dualism and reductionism, with no "non-reductive materialist" middle ground. But he's a dualist (actually, a property dualist, not a substance dualist).

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let's get serious about the metaphysics of mind, May 11, 2001

By A Customer

This is a must for anyone who's in need of an adequate physicalist metaphysics for the mind. Kim's clarity invites even the not so technically trained young philosopher to consider the puzzles that arise when one is committed to an antireductionist stance on the nature of mentality. Aside from its excellent historical account of the mind-body problem since the Smart-Feigl central-state materialism, I think that the major contribution this book makes is precisely the confrontation of the possibility of us remaining antireductionists and still consistently claim that the mental is real, in the sense of its having autonomous causal potency.

If you believe, as many functionalists do, that mental properties (functional properties) could be understood as second-order properties defined in terms of the causal/nomic relations of its first-order realizers, please read this book!! You'll be surprised by how untidy the metaphysics of functionalism has been since its inception in the late sixties.

Kim once more has shown that his work is here to stay.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Consciousness and Functional Reduction, May 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (Representation and Mind) (Hardcover)

Kim's proposal about reduction is persuasive. Since Nagelian Model of standard reduction collapsed, philosophers haven't dared to build up a new one. Now we have Kim's functional reduction.

But it is doubtable that his reduction can be applied to the case of consciousness. In his another book (Philosophy of Mind), he said that qualia problem is not captured by materialism and non-reductive materialism must meet the problem of downward causation or causal realism. Thus, he confessed that the two difficult problems are entangled: consciousness and mental causation.

This book can't solve that problem, but I'm expecting his next elaboration.

Anyway, in this book, he achieves new model of reduction through his original arguments! If his model is decisive, he has overcome the problem of functionalism vs. physicalism!

Overall, Kim's arguments are clear and easy to follow. But the debate about "generalization" (chapter 2 & 3) leaves a room for controversy.