engleski

Supervenience, mind and chemistry

Physicalism in philosophy of mind maintains that mental states can be accommodated in the physical world that is, at least in principle, completely describable and explainable by natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. A family of physicalist doctrines in philosophy of mind is based on the following three main theses: the causal closure of the physical, the exclusion principle that denies the possibility of causal overdetermination, and the supervenience of the mental on the physical. Firstly, relying on Jaegwon Kim’s “supervenience argument”, we maintain that these positions collapse into reductive forms of physicalism. These are positions that deny downward causal relations between irreducible structures and the physical. Then, we consider how the debate on the place of molecular shape in quantum chemistry and quantum physics is relevant for the investigation of the tenability of this family of reductionist positions in philosophy of mind.

physicalism ; supervenience ; causal closure of the physical ; causal argument for physicalism ; the supervenience argument ; reductionism ; chemical shape and structure ; quantum foundations of chemistry

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