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Single Idea 13746

[filed under theme 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 Ref

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]

The 23 ideas with the same theme [what should be inferred from a supervenience]:

3644 Two things being joined together doesn't prove they are the same [Descartes]
16045 General facts supervene on particular facts, but cannot be inferred from them [Russell, by Bennett,K]
16051 Life has a new supervenient relation, which alters its underlying physical events [Morgan,L]
16050 The goodness of a picture supervenes on the picture; duplicates must be equally good [Hare]
3532 Solidity in a piston is integral to its structure, not supervenient [Maslin on Searle]
3533 Is supervenience just causality? [Searle, by Maslin]
3431 Supervenience suggest dependence without reduction (e.g. beauty) [Kim]
13745 Supervenience is not a dependence relation, on the lines of causal, mereological or semantic dependence [Kim]
13746 Supervenience is just a 'surface' relation of pattern covariation, which still needs deeper explanation [Kim]
4242 Pure supervenience explains nothing, and is a sign of something fundamental we don't know [Nagel]
8606 A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation [Lewis]
16056 Don't just observe supervenience - explain it! [Horgan,T]
4078 Constitution (as in a statue constituted by its marble) is supervenience without identity [Crane]
2398 Reduction requires logical supervenience [Chalmers]
3523 Shadows are supervenient on their objects, but not reducible [Maslin]
16061 If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow]
9500 If naturalism refers to supervenience, that leaves necessary entities untouched [Bird]
21664 Supervenience offers little explanation for things which necessarily go together [Hofweber]
17486 Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry]
17322 Necessities supervene on everything, but don't depend on everything [Liggins]
16040 Aesthetics, morality and mind supervene on the physical? Modal on non-modal? General on particular? [Bennett,K]
16044 Some entailments do not involve supervenience, as when brotherhood entails siblinghood [Bennett,K]
16046 Reduction requires supervenience, but does supervenience suffice for reduction? [Bennett,K]