ABSTRACT
The dialectical context of Kim's criticism of downward causation arises from the widespread acceptance of Multiple Realizability, the idea that mental properties can be "realized" in different physical ways in different creatures with different physical structures and constitutions. Multiple Realizability brings with it the demise of Reductive Physicalism, characterized by Type Identity, according to which mental properties are identical to physical properties. Kim's own favorite option seems to be the abandonment of Distinctness and a retreat to reductive physicalism of a relativistic variety. Distinctness and Supervenience gives a layered model of reality that involves a dependence of the mental on the physical. The acceptance of Type Distinctness goes hand in hand with the basic intuition of the layered model: there is now a lower physical level with its own distinctive properties, and a higher level with its own mental properties.
