Mente corpo: identità e spiegazione

In his last book, Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim buttresses and develops the arguments with which he set the agenda for identity theories in recent philosophy of mind. First of all, the so-called “supervenience argument” is clarified by considering the tension between determination and causation. Then, the strategy of “functionalization” is contrasted with other recent attempts to provide reductive analyses of mental phenomena. Kim argues that his way of “filling the gap” between the mental and the physical fares better than any other competitors. At the same time, Kim recognizes that physicalism will not be the complete answer, but is by far the best possible answer that can be given. The last part raises some skepticism because the “functionalization” strategy is taken to be adequate for the intentional states and insufficient for the phenomenal ones but the examples are always on the phenomenal side (and the reviewer wonders what is wrong with them) and is doubtful (at least the reviewer thinks it is) whether it would be possible to provide adequate examples on the intentional side.