Supervenience is understood as a kind of dependent relationship that exists between objects’ properties in the field of philosophy. Supervenience has been used in various fields to explain relationships between objects, for example, it has been used in Aesthetics to explain the beauty of art. Also it has been used in the philosophy of mind to explain the relationship that exists between the body and mind. Supervenience is concerned with the way a particular kind of property is available in virtue of the availability of other kinds of properties. The features of Supervenience often exist due to the availability of underlying properties which are sufficient in determining how the features of supervening come out. For example, an individual can be considered as good by virtue of being generous or kind and at the same time, an animal is seen as being alive by virtue of having a specific kind physical organization which is advanced. In relation to the mind, the mental properties are factors that supervene on physical properties. The mental states are often caused by variations in brain states, but this cannot happen the other way round. This paper will, therefore, determine if supervenience provides a satisfactory explanation of the relationship between mind and body.
Mind-Body Relationship in a Person
For very many years researchers have been trying to understand the relationship that exists between the mind and body of a person. It is usually difficult to explain the relationship between mind and body of a person and this is because the person is a dynamic entity. This means that individuals are continuously in a mode of understanding oneself. Several thinkers believe that an individual is composed of mind and body, while others do not think so.
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Kim (1990), suggested that individuals are not composed of the body and mind. He claims that because most things are real, then the different things are characterized by causal power. There are three principles that play a big role in explaining the causal powers. The first principle is the criterion of reality, which states that in order for something to be considered as real it needs to have causal powers. Since various kinds of things are considered real, then they should have causal power. Kim discussed different views concerning the causal efficacy of fire, God and time slices. The causal power of an object is different from the causal powers of other objects (Kim, 1990) .
The second principle is the Causal Exclusion Principle, which states that events and properties have their own independent and complete causal explanations. The third principle is the Causal Closure Principle which provides that physical events with a cause, have an explanation in relation to other physical events. The three principles are used to explain the attack of Kim on nonreductive materialism. In other words, he means that every particular event is considered as physical and therefore the mental events cannot be categorized as physical events (Kim, 1990). Kim believes that there is no relationship between physical cause and mental cause. Every physical event such as the movement of the arms has its own physical cause which is categorized into Causal Closure Principle. In addition, a physical events often have a physical cause and therefore they will not have a mental cause which is distinct which is under the Causal Exclusion Principle. According to Kim, every mental event including properties must be changed to physical events because they do not have any causal influence regarding the physical world.
Only the mental events that have been reduced to physical events can have an influence on the mental events and properties. Therefore, if the mental states need to have a causal power on physical states and other mental states, then they need to be identified with or reduced to physical properties. If there is no reduction in the mental states to physical states then they do not have any causal powers because there is no existence of the Criterion of reality. If one wants to be a materialist, he or she should reduce the mental states to physical states. There are two options for one to be materialistic which involves reducing the mental events to physical events or eliminating them altogether (Kim, 1990).
Not all properties and events that can be explained in physical properties, but all the causal relations are concerned with the macrophysical world and they supervene on casual relations which involve microphysical ethics. The microphysical world enjoys some privileged status which is derived from the idea that the lower level is considered as more basic than the higher level. Therefore there is no relationship between the higher level and the lower level properties. All causal elements at a higher level need to supervene those elements at the lower level. In this case, the causal powers that are supervening must be reduced to the same level with those of lower level. All events taking place in the world are usually explained in relation to microphysics and concerning Causal Exclusion, and there is often a causal explanation related to every event. The causal powers should be reduced to the same level as those of microphysics (Kim, 1990).
As a result, Kim endorsed the fourth principle which is No Irreducible Causal Powers which provides that an object’s or event’s causal powers can be reduced to the causal powers of the lower level. It is usually advisable to use two types of reductions. The first reduction is involving properties and events and the second one is associated with causal powers. However the relationship between the two is not usually obvious and it must be understood that they have a close relationship. If the causal powers of the mental state can be reduced to be like that of physical state, we can conclude that the mental state can be reduced to be in line with the physical state (Kim, 1990).
The principles of Kim led to the reduction of physical properties that are no concerned with the mind. If the causal powers of a body is reducible to be in line with the causal powers in relation to a swam of atoms, then the body is reducible to the swam of atoms. Therefore, the reduction concerning the mind’s philosophy is so strong that it leads to the reduction of mental properties and microphysical events and objects. According to the principles used by Kim, there either no human bodies or there exist human bodies but they are associated with a specific swam of atoms by which the body’s causal powers supervene. This means that all the microphysical objects should be eliminated just like the way Peter van Inwagen eliminated artifact such as desks and also some simples can be endorsed (Kim, 1990).
Non-reductive materialism is concerned with orthodoxy that exists in the current Western Philosophy thinking in relation to the status of the mind. Kim holds that the mind is part of the material world and therefore the mind is causally efficacious even if it cannot be reduced to physical properties. Even if the mind is considered as physical, the mentalist explanatory scheme cannot be reduced to physical properties but it is often considered as autonomous. Kim defines the physical nature of the mind and inability of the mind to reduce to physical nature as realism. He also believes that the combination of the body and mind is fundamentally unstable. The mental kinds can be distinguished from physical kinds whereby the mental kinds are such as thought and sensation, while the physical is known as the domain of physical science such as neurophysiology.
Kim believes that only the mental events that can be reduced to physical events can only have an influence on other mental events. The assumptions of Kim were based on two assumptions. The first assumption is that Causal Exclusion in important in the attack of non-reductive materialism and the other assumption is that the causal powers of events and objects at various levels supervene on other objects’ causal power that is in the lower level. If these assumptions are ignored then there is no need to accept psychophysical supervenience (Kim, 1990).
Therefore reduction is dependent on supervenience. This is important in the case where reduction required the identity of the property as supervenience is considered as flexible. From the reasonable view of reduction, we can conclude that if set A-properties are reduced to set B-properties, then there will never be an A-difference without the B-difference. This is considered thru for both the conceptual reductions and ontological reductions. The formulation of Kim concerning supervenience is connected to properties which are associated with the events and their building blocks. In general, Kim sees supervenience as a metaphysics which is concerned with property distribution in various worlds (Kim, 1990).
The non-reductive materialism is understood as a form of monism because everything is considered to be having a physical substance. An object is considered non-reductive if some of its properties can never be explained in relation to lower level physical properties. Materialists concerned with non-reductive materials believe that mental properties can be physical, but they can never be reduced to neural states. Also, non-reductive materialism is understood as the inability to provide an explanation about biological causes in both chemical and physical terms.
The thesis of concerning the mind-body supervenience according to Kim is "Mental properties supervene on physical properties, in that necessarily, for a specific property M, if anything has M at time t, there is exists a physical base property P so that it has a p at t, and necessarily anything that has a p at a time has M at that time”. The thesis provides a promising way for materials that are non-reductive in order to understand the relationship between physical properties and mental properties (Kim, 1990).
According to the thesis, the mental is supervenient on the physical. This means that the mental character of something is primarily determined by its physical properties. This has played a big role in the development of influential positions concerning the body-mind problem especially versions concerning non-reductive physicalism. The supervenience of the mind-body has resulted in arguments that are associated with various claims regarding the mental. It has been used to come up with solutions that will help in solving the major problems associated with the mind. There are also concerns about the supervenience of the mind-body such as how it should be formulated, the relationship it has to mind-body reduction, and various types of mental states. In relation to Kim’s argument, the causal powers of an event or property supervene upon the causal powers of its constituent property or substance. Therefore, there is no evidence that explains what is real and also provides a causal explanation of other events. Many issues concerning Supervenience and Mind have been addressed by Kim. He claims that the body and mind are not related and this is because the properties of the mind cannot be changed to physical properties. Therefore individuals are not composed of the mind and body (Kim, 1990).
Conclusion
Supervenience is concerned with the way a particular kind of property is available in virtue of the availability of other kinds of properties. The features of Supervenience often exist due to the availability of underlying properties which are sufficient in determining how the features of supervening come out. In understanding the relationship that exists between the mind and body of a person, there are causal properties of the mind and body that determines their relationship. Every physical event like arm the movement has its own physical cause. Also, physical events often have a physical cause and therefore they will not have a mental cause which is distinct. It is not all causes of events that can have a physical terms explanation, but all the causal relations include the macrophysical world and they supervene on casual relations which include microphysical ethics. Therefore, the supervenience provides a satisfactory explanation of the relationship between mind and body.
Reference
Kim, J. (1990). Supervenience as a philosophical concept. Metaphilosophy, 21(1 ‐ 2) , 1-27.
