Dennett’s Account of Mind versus Kim’s Supervenience Argument

• Authors: Zbigniew Jan Marczuk
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper challenges Daniel Dennett’s attempt to reconcile the performance of mind and brain within a physicalist framework with Jaegwon Kim’s argument that a coherent physicalist framework entails the epiphenomenalism of mental events. Dennett offers a materialist explanation of consciousness and argues that his model of mind does not imply reductive physicalism. I argue that Dennett’s explanation of mind clashes with Jaegwon Kim’s mind-body supervenience argument. Kim contends that non-reductive physicalism either voids the causal powers of mental properties, or it violates physicalist framework. I conclude that Dennett’s account of mind does not escape or overcome Kim’s mind/body supervenience problem. If Kim’s argument does not prove Dennett’s explanation of mind to be either a form of reductive materialism, or a logically inconsistent view, it is due to the ambiguity of concepts involved in Dennett’s theory.

Keywords

EN

Dennett, Daniel; Kim, Jaegwon; physicalism; mind; mind-body problem; supervenience

• Publisher: Akademia Ignatianum w Krakowie
• Journal: Forum Philosophicum
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 1-15

Dates

published

2011

Contributors

author

Zbigniew Jan Marczuk

• Claremont Graduate University, USA

References

• Alexander, Samuel. Space, Time, and Deity, The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow, 1916–1918. London: Macmillan, 1927.
• Broad, C. D. The Mind and Its Place in Nature. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1925.
• Coleman, Mary. Decisions in Action: Reasons, Motivation and the Connections Between Them. Ph.D. dissertation, Philosophy Department, Harvard University, 2001.
• Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
• Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. London: Penguin Books, 1991.
• Dennett, Daniel. Freedom Evolves. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
• Kim, Jaegwon. “The Non-Reductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation.” In Mental Causation, edited by John Heil and Albert Mele, 189–210. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Kim, Jaegwon. Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
• Kim, Jaegwon. Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005.
• Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2006.
• Smart, C. J. John. “Sensations and Brain Processes.” In Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology, edited by John Heil, 116–127. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Identifiers

DOI

10.5840/forphil20111621

URI

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=70556894&lang=pl&site=ehost-live

URI

http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2011_0016_0002_0001_0015