ABSTRACT
Philosophy.—Reducing a property or a proposition is giving an explanation of it that shows its equivalence to another or several other more fundamental properties or propositions.
A number of attempts have been made to reduce mental properties. The ontological status of mental properties is considered problematic, partly because they are not directly accessible to intersubjective observation-a feature they have in common with “theoretical” properties and the entities postulated in other sciences (e.g., physics)—and partly because, at present, there is no mature theory of mental properties.
