Jaegwon Kim

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Jaegwon Kim
Western Philosophy
21st-century philosophy
Full name Jaegwon Kim
Birth September 12, 1934(1934-09-12)
Daegu, Korea (now in S. Korea)
School/tradition Analytic
Main interests Philosophy of mind
Metaphysics · Epistemology
Action theory
Philosophy of science
Notable ideas Reductive physicalism
Weak supervenience
Influenced by

Jaegwon Kim (born 1934 in Daegu, Korea (now in South Korea)) is a Korean-born American philosopher currently working at Brown University. He is best known for his work on mental causation and the mind-body problem. Key themes in his work include: a rejection of Cartesian metaphysics, the limitations of strict psychophysical identity, supervenience, and the individuation of events. Kim's work on these and other contemporary metaphysical and epistemological issues is well-represented by the papers collected in Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (1993).

Contents

[edit] Biography

Kim took two years of college in Seoul, Korea as a French literature major, before transferring to Dartmouth College in 1955. Soon after, at Dartmouth, he changed to a combined major in French, mathematics, and philosophy and received a B.A. degree. After Dartmouth, he went to Princeton University, where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy.[1]

Kim is currently the William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University (since 1987). He has also taught at Swarthmore College, Cornell University, the University of Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1988–1989, he was president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. Since 1991, he has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [2]. And, along with Ernest Sosa, he is a joint editor of the quarterly philosophical journal Noûs.[3]

According to Kim, two of his major philosophical influences are Carl Hempel and Roderick Chisholm. Hempel, who sent him a letter encouraging him to go to Princeton, was a "formative influence".[4] More specifically, Kim claims that he hope he learned "a certain style of philosophy, one that emphasizes clarity, responsible argument, and aversion to studied obscurities and feigned profundities."[5] From Chisholm he learned "not to fear metaphysics" which allowed him to extend logical positivist approach of investigation (that he learned from Hempel) to metaphysics and philosophy of mind.[6]

[edit] Work

Kim's philosophical work focuses on the areas of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, action theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science.

[edit] Philosophy of mind

Kim has defended various mind-body theories during his career. He began defending a version of the identity theory in the early 1970s, and then moved to a non-reductive version of physicalism, which relied heavily on the supervenience relation.[7]

More recently, he has rejected physicalism on the grounds that it is insufficient in explanatory power to solve the mind-body problem. His arguments against physicalism can be found in his two latest monographs: Mind in a Physical World (1998) and Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (2005). Kim claims "that physicalism will not be able to survive intact and in its entirety."[8] This, according to Kim, is because qualia (the phenomenal or qualitative aspect of mental states) cannot be reduced to physical states or processes. Kim claims that "phenomenal mental properties are not functionally definable and hence functionally irreducible"[9] and "if functional reduction doesn't work for qualia, nothing will"[10] Thus, there is an aspect of the mind that physicalism cannot capture.

Kim currently defends the thesis that intentional mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires) can be functionally reduced to their neurological realizers, but that the qualitative or phenomenal mental states (e.g., sensations) are irreducibly non-physical and epiphenomenal. He, thus, defends a version of dualism, although Kim argues that it is physicalism near enough. As of March, 2008, Kim still sees physicalism to be the most comprehensive world view that is irreplaceable with any other world view [11].

Kim revealed in a recent interview conducted in 2008 with Korean daily newspaper, Joongang Ilbo, that we must seek for natural explanation for mind as mind itself is a natural phenomenon and supernatural explanation only replaces "one riddle over another" [12]. He believes that the explanation for the nature of mind would come from natural science rather than philosophy or psychology [13].

[edit] Metaphysics

Kim's work in metaphysics focuses primarily on events and properties.

Kim developed an event identity theory, but has not defended it recently. This theory holds that events are identical if and only if they occur in the same time and place and instantiate the same property. Thus if one waves ten fingers, several events occur, including the waving of an even number of fingers, the event of waving fingers that are even divisible by five, and evenly divisible by ten. Some have criticized his theory as producing too many events.

Kim also theorized that events are structured. He is known for a property-exemplification account of events. They are composed of three things: Object(s), a property and time or a temporal interval. Events are defined using the operation [x ,P, t].[citation needed]

A unique event is defined by two principles: the existence condition and the identity condition. The existence condition states "[x, P, t] exists if and only if object x exemplifies the n-adic P at time t". This means a unique event exists if the above is met. The identity condition states "[x, P, t] is [y, Q, t`] if and only if x=y, P=Q and t=t`]".[citation needed]

[edit] Epistemology

Kim is a critic of the "naturalized" epistemology popularized by Willard Van Orman Quine in the latter half of the twentieth century. Kim's influential article "What is 'Naturalized Epistemology'?" (1988) argues that "naturalized" epistemologies are not proper epistemologies as they are merely descriptive in scope, while one generally expects an "epistemology" to make normative claims about knowledge. As such, naturalized epistemologies cannot be used to answer many of the questions one would expect theories of knowledge – epistemologies – to resolve.

[edit] Selected publications

The following is a partial list of publications by Jaegwon Kim. See Kim's web page at Brown for a more extensive list of publications.

  • (1984) "Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. IX, Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. 257-70.
  • (1988) "What is 'Naturalized Epistemology'?", Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 2 (1988): 381-405.
  • (1993) Supervenience and Mind, Cambridge University Press.
  • (1998) Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press.
  • (2005) Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Princeton University Press. (Chapter 1 PDF)
  • (2006) Philosophy of Mind, 2nd ed., Westview Press.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Interview with Ephilosopher, Fall 2000.
  2. ^ The Directory of Research and Researchers at Brown: Jaegwon Kim
  3. ^ Kim's profile at Brown: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/faculty/kim.html.
  4. ^ [1], Fall 2000.
  5. ^ [2], Fall 2000.
  6. ^ [3], Fall 2000.
  7. ^ Kim, 1984.
  8. ^ Kim, 2005, p. 31.
  9. ^ Kim, 2005, p. 29.
  10. ^ Kim, 2005, p. 29.
  11. ^ Kim, Kihyeon, "세계적 철학자 7명 릴레이 인터뷰 ⑧·끝 김재권 미 브라운대 석좌교수 (Relay Interview with 7 World Renown Philosophers ⑧ End: Jaegwon Kim, William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University)", Joongang Ilbo Newspaper article, March 8, 2008.
  12. ^ Kim, Kihyeon, "세계적 철학자 7명 릴레이 인터뷰 ⑧·끝 김재권 미 브라운대 석좌교수 (Relay Interview with 7 World Renown Philosophers ⑧ End: Jaegwon Kim, William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University)", Joongang Ilbo Newspaper article, March 8, 2008.
  13. ^ Kim, Kihyeon, "세계적 철학자 7명 릴레이 인터뷰 ⑧·끝 김재권 미 브라운대 석좌교수 (Relay Interview with 7 World Renown Philosophers ⑧ End: Jaegwon Kim, William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University)", Joongang Ilbo Newspaper article, March 8, 2008.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaegwon_Kim"
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