Open AccessSupervenience and Explanatory Exclusion
Author(s) -
Lee McIntyre
Publication year - 2002
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.101
H-Index - 6
ISSN - 1870-4905
DOI - 10.22201/iifs.18704905e.2002.958
Subject(s) - supervenience , agnosticism , epistemology , argument (complex analysis) , voluntarism (philosophy) , work (physics) , philosophy , metaphysics , mechanical engineering , chemistry , biochemistry , engineering
This paper argues that there is an inconsistency between Jaegwon Kim's earlier work on supervenience and his more recent work on explanatory exclusion. In his work on supervenience Kim advocates an explanatory agnosticism that, by the time of his later work, is replaced by an endorsement of reductive explanation. My argument is that this tension between Kim's early and later work is unfortunate since explanatory exclusion is highly questionable in its own right and is not reconcilable with his earlier work on supervenience anyway.