Nonreductive Physicalism and the Limits of the Exclusion Principle

Nonreductive physicalism is very popular in the philosophy of the special sciences. It consists of three theses. First, the properties studied in the special sciences are not identical to physical properties, since they are multiply realized by them. Second, special-science properties nevertheless supervene on physical properties in the sense that there cannot be a difference with respect to these properties without a further difference with respect to physical properties. Third, these higher-level properties are causes and effects of other properties. But several philosophers, most notably Jaegwon Kim, have argued that nonreductive physicalism is untenable since its first two theses contradict the third. Here, List and Menzies trace Kim in focusing on the relationship between mental and neural properties, though their conclusions apply more generally. They show that the truth or falsity of the principle is in fact a contingent matter, and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for its truth and establish that, when the principle is true, it can actually support, rather than undermine, the causal autonomy of special-science properties.