Multiple Realizability Argumentative Analysis
In the philosophy of mind, multiple realizability, a defined by Jaegwon Kim, is the thesis that mental states are such that they are instantiated in a range of organisms with “widely diverse neural-biological structures” (1). Because a single mental state can be “realized” by organisms with vastly different physiologies, multiple realizability is often claimed to be a threat to type-physicalist theories which reduce the mental to the physical. In “Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction,” Kim argues not against the thesis of multiple realizability itself, but rather against the common view that it effectively disproves reductionist physicalism and, as a result, proves that special sciences like psychology are autonomous (3-4).
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In response, supporters of the multiple realizability thesis who are functionalists have clarified that a mental state is a “second-order” physical state, or that the physical state instatiating a single mental state will not be exactly the same among organisms with different physiological systems. For functionalists, then, the Correlation Thesis is limited by the condition that there is just a similar “structure type” amongst the various organisms which are capable of having the same mental state (5). However, as Kim points out, within a single system there can be multiple ways for a mental state to be realized. As a consequence of this, for a given mental state, pain, there is a disjunction physical states, of which only the presence of one disjunct (physical state) is required for pain (the mental state) to be instatiated. While each physical state that realizes pain will not itself be a disjunction, there is the question of why the disjunction of all the possible instantiating physical states cannot be the correlate of pain rather than a singular physical state (7). Most advocates of multiple realizability would view this as a threat to the thesis, as the mental state of pain, instead of having multiple physical states correlates, would instead have one correlate that is
In response, supporters of the multiple realizability thesis who are functionalists have clarified that a mental state is a “second-order” physical state, or that the physical state instatiating a single mental state will not be exactly the same among organisms with different physiological systems. For functionalists, then, the Correlation Thesis is limited by the condition that there is just a similar “structure type” amongst the various organisms which are capable of having the same mental state (5). However, as Kim points out, within a single system there can be multiple ways for a mental state to be realized. As a consequence of this, for a given mental state, pain, there is a disjunction physical states, of which only the presence of one disjunct (physical state) is required for pain (the mental state) to be instatiated. While each physical state that realizes pain will not itself be a disjunction, there is the question of why the disjunction of all the possible instantiating physical states cannot be the correlate of pain rather than a singular physical state (7). Most advocates of multiple realizability would view this as a threat to the thesis, as the mental state of pain, instead of having multiple physical states correlates, would instead have one correlate that is