Single Idea 13746

[catalogued under 7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience]

Full Idea

Supervenience itself is not an explanatory relation, not a 'deep' metaphysical relation; rather it is a 'surface' relation that reports a pattern of property covariation, suggesting the presence of an interesting dependency relation that might explain it.

Gist of Idea

Supervenience is just a 'surface' relation of pattern covariation, which still needs deeper explanation

Source

Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)

Book Reference

Kim,Jaegwon: 'Supervenience and Mind' [CUP 1993], p.167


A Reaction

I think the underlying idea here is that supervenience appeals to the Humean view of physical laws as mere regularities, but it is no good for those who seek underlying mechanisms to explain the patterns and regularities. Humeans are wrong.

Related Idea

Idea 13745 Supervenience is not a dependence relation, on the lines of causal, mereological or semantic dependence [Kim]