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Breakwater: The New Wave, Supervenience and Individualism

Post, John F. (1999) Breakwater: The New Wave, Supervenience and Individualism. [Conference Paper] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

New-wave psychoneural reduction, a la Bickle and Churchland, conflicts with the way certain adaptation properties are individuated according to evolutionary biology. Such properties cannot be reduced to physical properties of the token items that have the adaptation properties. The New Wave may entail a form of individualism inconsistent with evolutionary biology. All of this causes serious trouble as well for Jaegwon Kim's thesis of the Causal Individuation of Kinds, his Weak Supervenience thesis, Alexander's Dictum, his synchronicity thesis that all psychological kinds supervene on the contemporaneous physical states of the organism, Correlation Thesis, and indeed his Restricted Correlation Thesis. All these theses are strongly individualist, in the sense of entailing that ALL a thing's properties are determined by its own physical properties and relations, contrary to many properties in biology and psychology.

Item Type:Conference Paper
Keywords:Bickle, Churchland, Kim, Brandon, individualism, individuation, supervenience, global supervenience, weak supervenience, reduction, psychoneural reduction, physicalism, materialism, property, dualism, property dualism, kinds, natural kinds, adaptation, adaptation kind, correlation thesis, Alexander's dictum, causal individuation of kinds, downward causation, nonreductive physicalism, nonreductive materialism, function, teleofunction, proper function
Subjects:Biology > Evolution
Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology
Philosophy > Philosophy of Language
Philosophy > Metaphysics
Philosophy > Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy > Philosophy of Science
Psychology > Psychobiology
ID Code:389
Deposited By: Post, John F.
Deposited On:24 Aug 1999
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:53

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