New Hope for Non-Reductive Physicalism

Abstract

Non-reductive physicalism is committed to two theses: first, that mental properties
are ontologically autonomous, and second, that physicalism is true. Jaegwon Kim has
argued that this view is unstable – to honor one thesis, one must abandon the other.
In this paper, I present an account of property realization that addresses Kim’s
criticism and that explains how the two theses are indeed comfortably compatible.