Summary
THE SUPERVENIENCE HYPOTHESIS
It is time to explore in more detail the suggestion that mental characteristics of agents, more particularly agents' intentional attitudes, supervene on agents' physical conditions. I have designated this the supervenience hypothesis. In this chapter I propose to discuss the supervenience relation and explain why I am persuaded that the supervenience hypothesis is reasonable. I begin with a nontechnical characterisation of supervenience, move to a discussion of various philosophical refinements that have been suggested for this characterisation, and conclude with an overview of the metaphysical status of supervenience and the supervenience hypothesis. In Chapter 4, discussion will focus on some of the consequences of the supervenience hypothesis, especially its bearing on the causal standing of supervenient mental characteristics.
The supervenience hypothesis takes its inspiration from a much-quoted passage in Davidson's ‘Mental Events’:
Mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be two events alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respect, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respect without altering in some physical respect.
(1970/1980, p. 214; see also 1973/1980, p. 253)The supervenience relation holds, if and when it holds, between collections or ‘families’ of properties or characteristics.
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- Information
- The Nature of True Minds , pp. 58 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992