Reduction and Supervenience
Beyond Reduction October 1, 2007 Steven Horst
In contemporary philosophy of mind, several positions address whether the mind can be explained by natural science. Reductionists argue the mind is reducible to natural phenomena, while eliminativists hold that if it cannot be reduced, mentalistic concepts should be replaced with naturalistic ones. Dualists point to an explanatory gap between mind and nature, concluding the mind is not reducible and that either substance or property dualism follows. Mysterians agree the mind is irreducible but attribute this to human cognitive limitations. Nonreductive materialists reject reduction yet maintain the mind is nothing beyond natural phenomena. All these views share the assumption that intertheoretic reduction is the norm in natural sciences, which drives both reductionism and the perception of the explanatory gap as uniquely problematic.