Preface

Abstract

In a recent article entitled 'The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn', 1 one of the leading thinkers in contemporary philosophy of mind, Jaegwon Kim, observes that '[t]hrough much of the twentieth century, especially during the second half, debates over the mindbody problem were shaped by physicalism', that is, the metaphysical belief that 'all things that exist in this world are bits of matter and structures aggregated out of bits of matter'.Once this metaphysical framework is accepted, Kim goes on to say, then 'the foremost metaphysical problem about the mind is where in the physical world our minds fitin fact, whether minds have a place in such an austerely physical world at all' (129).Kim has his own view as to how minds can be accommodated within a physical universe.His suggestion is that the most salient features of consciousnesscognitive intentional states like belief, desire, or memorycan be coherently integrated within a physicalist worldview by means of functional reductions, that is, by re-conceptualising them in terms of the causal work they are supposed to do.To illustrate: part of the causal work of my belief that fire burns is to keep my body at a reasonable distance from it; thus, a capability to perform this function would be an essential part of any definition of what it is to believe that fire burns.Kim has little doubt that such reductions are possible in principle, even though they may be very difficult to achieve in fact.He also frankly admits, however, that there are aspects of consciousnessspecifically, its qualitative, phenomenal aspectsthat cannot be functionally re-conceptualised and are therefore physically irreducible: 'Qualia…'he remarks -'are the "mental residue" that cannot be accommodated within the physical domain' (143).According to Kim, the existence of this mental residue is not a serious threat to physicalism; as he has it, '[p]hysicalism is not the whole truth, but is the truth near enough, and near enough should be good enough' (146).This is a striking statement.Drawing on his deep knowledge of the philosophical debate over the mind-body problem in the last decades, Kim constructs a powerful argument in support of reductive physicalism.But a theory of consciousness that fails to account for those 1 The Future for Philosophy, edited by Brian