The Anti-Reductionist Dilemma

Abstract

Reductionism and anti-reductionism are the two theories of mind most accepted by contemporary philosophers in the philosophy of mind. Both that suppose psychological phenomena are simply a special sort of physical phenomena, but they differ in consideration of their identity. Reductionist supposes that all (different) instances of the same type of psychological state are also instances of the same type of physical state, which is called type physicalism, but anti-reductionist supposes that all (different) instances of the same type of psychological state are instances of different types of physical states, which is called token physicalism. Reductionist believes that type physicalism enables reduction of psychological states to physical states, but anti-reductionist believes that this is not possible because different physical states, which are a consequence of different physical and chemical structures of organisms, can realize the same psychological states. This idea is called “multiple realization” and it confirms the truth of token physicalism rather then the truth of type physicalism. The article introduces the anti-reductionist dilemma at the global level of consideration about psychological and physical phenomena, which has been built by reductionist Kim on the basis of anti-reductionist Fodor's answer to Kim's proposal how could reductionist avoid multiple realization and thus stay reductionist, which is called “the disjunction move”. Kim's anti-reductionist dilemma causes a serious problem for anti-reductionist because the first horn leads him to reductionism and the second one to eliminativism.