common sense philosophy

October 11, 2005

A question about supervenience

By Jim Sias

In his “Concepts of Supervenience,” Jaegwon Kim strengthens the definition of strong supervenience, giving us the following:

If A strongly supervenes on B, then for each property F in A there is a property G in B such that necessarily (∀x)[G(x) ↔ F(x)], that is, every A-property has a necessary coextension in B. [PPR 45 (December 1984) 170]

So, for instance, for each mental property F in the set of all mental properties A, there is a physical property G in the set of all properties of the brain B such that necessarily (∀x)[G(x) ↔ F(x)]. So mental properties and their corresponding physical properties are materially equivalent? If so, isn’t this just a fancy way of characterizing type-type identity?

Perhaps I’m reading him wrongly.

UPDATE: Yup. As it turns out, I was reading him wrongly. Ah well.

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