ABSTRACT
Nonreductive materialists generally follow functionalists in emphasizing the importance of multiple readability. Before we can appreciate the evidence for multiple realizability, we need an appropriate vocabulary. A type of state, property, process, object, or event (hereafter, simply “object”), is a class or kind of object that admits of instances. An egg, for example, is a type of single-celled organism. There are many concrete instances of eggs: for instance, in humans, in hatcheries, and in many refrigerators. These individual eggs are tokens. We understand an object as a type or a token relative to a taxonomy, a means of classification-although it does not follow that the existence of all tokens depends on language. A particular mastiff may be a token of the type mastiff, but it is also a token of the type dog, mammal, animal, domesticated animal, and slobbering thing. Types may be scientifically taxonomic, but are not so automatically; whether they are such depends on their role in a scientific theory. With these concepts in hand, let us turn to the issue of type-type, or “smooth,” reduction.
