Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Supervenience, philosophy of mind: supervenience is an expression for a restricted dependency between areas. Elements of a region B are dependent on changes of elements of an area A, but not vice versa. Supervenience is used by some authors to explain the relationship between mental and physical processes. The assumption of a supervenience serves to circumvent more powerful assumptions like, e.g. the identity theory. See also covariance, dependency, identity theory, materialism, reductionism.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Donald Davidson on Supervenience - Dictionary of Arguments

Glüer II 142ff
Supervenience/Davidson/Glüer: no difference in the one set without any difference in the other. Glüer: the mental should not be a mere epiphenomenon of the physical.
All mental events are physical, but not reversed.

(S1) There can be no two events, which are the same in all physical aspects but differ in a mental aspect. - or:

(S2) An object cannot change in a mental aspect without changing at the same time in a physical aspect.

Problem: Individuation of objects - Davidson: beliefs are not supervenient in relation to neuronal states, because they get partly individuated externalistically with respect to objects -

E.g. twin earth: Brain states identical/mental states are different. >Twin earth
, >Mental states, >Brain states.
Glüer II 144
Davidson: a further conception of supervenience: "that does not mean that mental states are not supervenient in relation to physical states, for somewhere there must be a physical difference when psychological states are different." (Here, for example, water/twin earth - thus externalistic) - "worldwide supervenience". >Externalism.

(S3) A predicate P is supervenient in relation to a set of predicates S if and only if P does not distinguish entities that also cannot be distinguished by S.

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Davidson I
D. Davidson
Der Mythos des Subjektiven Stuttgart 1993

Davidson I (a)
Donald Davidson
"Tho Conditions of Thoughts", in: Le Cahier du Collège de Philosophie, Paris 1989, pp. 163-171
In
Der Mythos des Subjektiven, , Stuttgart 1993

Davidson I (b)
Donald Davidson
"What is Present to the Mind?" in: J. Brandl/W. Gombocz (eds) The MInd of Donald Davidson, Amsterdam 1989, pp. 3-18
In
Der Mythos des Subjektiven, , Stuttgart 1993

Davidson I (c)
Donald Davidson
"Meaning, Truth and Evidence", in: R. Barrett/R. Gibson (eds.) Perspectives on Quine, Cambridge/MA 1990, pp. 68-79
In
Der Mythos des Subjektiven, , Stuttgart 1993

Davidson I (d)
Donald Davidson
"Epistemology Externalized", Ms 1989
In
Der Mythos des Subjektiven, , Stuttgart 1993

Davidson I (e)
Donald Davidson
"The Myth of the Subjective", in: M. Benedikt/R. Burger (eds.) Bewußtsein, Sprache und die Kunst, Wien 1988, pp. 45-54
In
Der Mythos des Subjektiven, , Stuttgart 1993

Davidson II
Donald Davidson
"Reply to Foster"
In
Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell, Oxford 1976

Davidson III
D. Davidson
Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford 1980
German Edition:
Handlung und Ereignis Frankfurt 1990

Davidson IV
D. Davidson
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford 1984
German Edition:
Wahrheit und Interpretation Frankfurt 1990

Davidson V
Donald Davidson
"Rational Animals", in: D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford 2001, pp. 95-105
In
Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild, Frankfurt/M. 2005

D II
K. Glüer
D. Davidson Zur Einführung Hamburg 1993


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