Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Shoemaker's analysis of realization: a review

18 March 2015 | 15:00 | Seminari de Filosofia UB

Sydney Shoemaker has been arguing for more than a decade for an account of

the mind-body problem where the notion of realization takes centre stage.

His project consists in providing a notion of realization which is

consistent with the multiple realizability of mental properties or events,

and explains (i) that the physical grounds the mental, and (ii) that the

causal work of mental events is not screened off by that of physical events.

His proposal consists in individuating properties in terms of causal powers,

and defining realization as a relation of inclusion between sets of causal

powers. Thus, as the causal powers which define a mental property are a

subset of the causal powers which characterize a physical property, it can

be said that physical properties realize mental properties. In this paper we

examine the physicalist credentials of Shoemaker’s mind-body theory in

relation with three important issues: the direction of the relation of

dependence that the theory commits to, the possibility of allowing mental

properties to exist without being anchored by physical properties, and the

compatibility of the theory with the causal closure of the physical world.

We argue that the theory is problematic in all the three respects examined.

Then we move to consider whether the theory should count as a mind-body

theory at all, given that it seems to commit to a distorted view on mental

properties.