Jaegwon Kim (1934–2019)

Korean-American philosopher; William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. One of the most influential metaphysicians of the 20th century and the strongest modern critic of strong emergence and non-reductive physicalism. Trained at Swarthmore (BA) and Princeton (PhD, under Carl Hempel); previously taught at Swarthmore, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and Notre Dame. ¹

The Causal Exclusion Argument

Kim’s central objection to non-reductive physicalism and strong emergence. Suppose:

P → M → P*

where P = physical brain state, M = emergent mental state, P* = subsequent physical state. Three plausible theses then collide:

1. Emergent dependence: M depends on P
2. Physical causal closure: every physical event P* has a sufficient physical cause P
3. Mental causation: M causes P*

If closure holds, P is already sufficient for P*. So what causal work remains for M? If M contributes nothing, consciousness becomes epiphenomenal. The apparent result is systematic causal overdetermination — two sufficient causes of the same effect. Kim asks: why regard the emergent mental property as causally real rather than dispensable? ¹

His classic statement is “Making Sense of Emergence” (1999), where he argues that strong emergence collapses into either reduced or eliminable status unless one accepts downward causation — which in turn conflicts with physical causal closure. The dilemma: emergent properties either do real causal work (and violate closure) or do none (and are epiphenomenal). Kim himself concluded that the mental is causally impotent and endorsed a largely epiphenomenalist picture for qualia.

Broader Program

• Supervenience — Kim did more than anyone to make supervenience the standard framework for physicalism, and then argued it was too weak to secure mental causation
• Mind in a Physical World (1998) — the exclusion argument’s definitive statement
• “The Myth of Nonreductive Physicalism” (1989) — the earlier attack: non-reductive physicalism is unstable, sliding toward either reductionism or epiphenomenalism

Why the Criticism Is Limited

The “God of the gaps” objection is a legitimate criticism of brute strong emergence — but not of emergence as such. The article’s response strategy (following Woodward): causation need not be defined at the microphysical level, and higher-level and lower-level causes need not compete when they are related by realization. Kim’s argument assumes a picture of causation (competition between sufficient causes at one level) that interventionist theories reject. ¹

Relationship to This Wiki

• The principal dialectical opponent on emergence — any emergentist account of consciousness must answer his exclusion challenge
• His target — the supervenience relation between mental and physical — parallels the constitution claims in Searle’s biological naturalism; Kim’s point is precisely that dependence without causal efficacy buys nothing
• His qualia epiphenomenalism connects to the hard-problem territory of psychophysical-harmony (which additionally asks why conscious states line up with functional roles)

See Also

• emergence — The concept his argument constrains
• james-woodward — Interventionist response to the exclusion problem
• jessica-wilson — Contemporary metaphysical response via powers-based emergence
• jerry-fodor — Whose special-science autonomy Kim also attacked

References

• Kim, J. (1999). “Making Sense of Emergence.” Philosophical Studies 95(1–2): 3–36. JSTOR issue ¹
• Kim, J. (1998). Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. MIT Press.
• Kim, J. (1993). Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge University Press.
• Wikipedia: Jaegwon Kim

Footnotes

1. raw/articles/emergence-without-magic-nonreductive-materialism.md ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴