PSYCHOPHYSICAL SUPERVENIENCE AND NONREDUCTIVE MATERIALISM

Jaegwon Kim and others have claimed that (strong) psychophysical super venience entails the reducibility of mental properties to physical pro perties. I argue that this claim is unwarranted with respect to episte mic (explanatory) reducibility (either of a 'global' or of a 'local' s ort), as well as with respect to ontological reducibility. I then atte mpt to show that a robust version of nonreductive materialism (which I call 'supervenient token-physicalism') can be defended against the ch arge that nonreductive materialism leads to epiphenomenalism in failin g to account for the causal or explanatory relevance of mental propert ies.