Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T11:31:11.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reasons and the First-Person: Explanatory Exclusion and Explanatory Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2013

NEIL CAMPBELL*
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University

Abstract

In two recent papers, Jaegwon Kim offers an account of action explanation that is agent-centered and reasons-based. I argue that, despite his claims to the contrary, Kim’s proposal points the way to a pluralist view of explanation that might resolve the problem of explanatory exclusion and provide a way for nonreductive physicalists to escape the supervenience/exclusion argument.

Dans deux articles récents, Jaegwon Kim aborde le problème de l’explication de l’action d’une façon qui est centrée sur l’agent et fondée sur les raisons. Je soutiens que, bien qu’il prétende le contraire, la proposition de Kim ouvre la voie à une vision pluraliste de l’explication qui pourrait résoudre le problème de l’exclusion explicative et fournir un moyen permettant au physicalisme non réductionniste de se soustraire à l’argument de la survenance, aussi appelé argument de l’exclusion.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Dray, William 1957 Laws and Explanation in History. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dray, William 1963The Historical Explanation of Actions Reconsidered.” In Philosophy and History: A Symposium. Edited by Hook., SidneyNew York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, Fred 1988 Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, Fred 1993Mental Events as Structuring Causes of Behaviour.” In Mental Causation. Edited by Heil, John and Mele., AlfredOxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, Fred 1995a Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, Fred 1995b “Reply: Causal Relevance and Explanatory Exclusion.” In Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation. Edited by MacDonald, Cynthia and MacDonald, Graham. Oxford: Blackwood.Google Scholar
Fuhrmann, André, and Mendonça, Wilson 2002Explanatory Exclusion and Causal Relevance.” Facta Philosophica 4: 287300.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 1988Explanatory Realism, Causal Realism, and Explanatory Exclusion.” Midwest studies in Philosophy 12: 225–40.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 1994Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence.” Philosophical Issues 5: 5169.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 1995Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem of Mental Causation.” In Philosophy of Psychology: Debates on Psychological Explanation. Edited by MacDonald, Cynthia and MacDonald., GrahamOxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 1998a Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 1998b “Reasons and the First Person.” In Human Action, Deliberation and Causation. Edited by Bransen., JanDordrecht: Kluwer. Reprinted in Kim, Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page references are to the reprint.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 2005 Physicalism, or Something near Enough. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon 2010Taking the Agent’s Point of View Seriously in Action Explanation.” In Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Edited by Kim., JaegwonOxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Cynthia, and MacDonald, Graham 2006The Metaphysics of Mental Causation.” Journal of Philosophy 103, no. 11: 539–76.Google Scholar
Marras, Ausonio 1998Kim’s Principle of Explanatory Exclusion.”Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76, no. 3: 439–51.Google Scholar
Marras, Ausonio 2007Kim’s Supervenience Argument and Nonreductive Physicalism.” Erkenntnis 66, no. 3: 305–27.Google Scholar
Marras, Ausonio, and Yli-Vakkuri, Juhani 2008The ‘Supervenience Argument’: Kim’s Challenge to Nonreductive Physicalism.” In Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind: Essays at the Boundary of Ontology and Philosophical Psychology Edited by Gozzano, Simon and Orilia., FrancescoFrankfurt: Ontos Verlag.Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas 1986 The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whittle, Ann 2007The Co-Instantiation Thesis.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 1: 6179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar