A Korean Perspective on Mental Causation and Agentive Choice — Epoche C2
Jaegwon Kim's seminal work, particularly his 1984 paper 'Concepts of Supervenience', has long been lauded within Anglo-American analytic philosophy as providing a robust framework for understanding non-reductive mental causation. His supervenience theory posits that mental properties, while distinct from physical properties, are nonetheless determined by them, thus offering a seemingly elegant solution to the perennial mind-body problem and the causal exclusion problem. The prevailing view, especially among those seeking a compatibilist reconciliation of free will with determinism, holds that Kim's account effectively safeguards the causal efficacy of mental states without resorting to an untenable dualism or a problematic reductionism. However, from a perspective steeped in the nuanced understanding of agency prevalent in Korean philosophical thought, this essay contends that Kim's defense, while insightful, ultimately falls short, particularly in its capacity to fully integrate the concept of possible worlds into an account of agentive choice. This deficiency, it will be argued, significantly weakens the intuition that free will is not merely epiphenomenal, thus necessitating a re-evaluation of his response to the causal exclusion problem. The Thesis: Kim's Supervenience and Mental Causation Kim's primary contribution lies in articulating supervenience as a relation wherein a set of properties (the supervening properties, e.g., mental states) is determined by another set of properties (the subvenient properties, e.g., physical states) such that no change in the former can occur without a change in the latter. For Kim, mental properties supervene on physical properties, meaning that if two individuals are physically identical, they must also be mentally identical. This hierarchical relationship is intended to preserve the distinctness of mental properties while ensuring their dependence on the physical, thereby allowing for mental causation without violating the causal closure of the physical domain. The causal exclusion problem, which asks how mental causes can operate if physical causes are already sufficient, is purportedly resolved by arguing that mental causes are simply higher-level realisations of underlying physical causes, rather than distinct, competing causal forces. This perspective has been widely embraced for its theoretical neatness. It offers a path to attribute causal power to our beliefs, desires, and intentions without resorting to interactionist dualism, which faces its own formidable challenges regarding energy conservation and the interface problem. Many philosophers have found solace in this framework, viewing it as a sophisticated articulation of how our rich mental lives can genuinely influence the world, even if ultimately grounded in physical reality. Indeed, the intuitive appeal of our mental states genuinely driving our actions – for instance, my desire for gukbap leading me to a restaurant – aligns well with our lived experience, and Kim's theory offers a philosophical underpinning for this intuition. The Antithesis: The Problem of Agentive Choice and Possible Worlds Despite its initial appeal, a critical examination reveals a significant lacuna in Kim's framework when confronting the complexities of agentive choice and the implications of possible worlds. While supervenience establishes a dependence relation, it struggles to fully account for the robust sense of 'could have done otherwise' that is central to our understanding of free will. If mental states supervene on physical states, and physical states are determined by prior physical states (as determinism posits), then the agent's choice, too, appears to be an inevitable outcome of the physical substrate. The challenge here is not merely about the existence of mental states, but their capacity for genuinely open alternatives in a deterministic universe. Consider the Korean cultural emphasis on jeong (정), a complex sentiment of deep affection, attachment, and human connection that often guides choices in personal and social interactions. If my decision to help a friend, driven by jeong , is merely the supervenient outcome of a specific neural configuration, does my choice truly reflect an unconstrained agency? The intuition, deeply ingrained in Korean ethical thought, is that genuine choice involves a moment of deliberation, a weighing of alternatives, where the agent could have genuinely chosen differently, even given the same antecedent conditions. This is where the concept of possible worlds becomes critical. For a choice to be genuinely free, it must be the case that, in a close possible world with the same initial physical conditions, the agent could have acted otherwise. Kim's supervenience, by strictly tying mental states to physical states, makes it difficult to conceive of a scenario where, holding all physical facts constant, a different mental choice could have arisen. If mental states are merely epiphenomenal in the sense that they add no independent causal power beyond their physical base, then the 'choice' of the agent becomes a mere readout of physical necessity. This undermines the very notion of agentive responsibility and moral praiseworthiness or blameworthiness, which are profoundly important in Korean society. If my choice to honour my elders (효, hyo ) is simply the inevitable unfolding of physical processes, does it truly carry the moral weight we attribute to it? The Synthesis: Re-evaluating Mental Causation To reconcile Kim's supervenience with a more robust understanding of agentive choice, particularly one informed by the nuanced demands of free will, we must move beyond a mere descriptive account of dependence towards a more active role for mental states in shaping the landscape of possible actions. One promising avenue involves re-evaluating the causal exclusion problem not as a matter of competing causes, but as a challenge to understand how mental properties, even if super