ABSTRACT
Many contemporary philosophers believe there is something ontologically fundamental about physics, particularly microphysics. Supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be two events exactly alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respect, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respect without altering in some physical respect. The author believes that the notion of supervenience should be generalized: all characteristics of individuals in our world, and not just mental characteristics, are strongly dependent upon physico-chemical characteristics, and ultimately upon microphysical characteristics. Kim Jaegwon has proposed a generalized supervenience thesis, which he weds to his psychophysical event-dualism. He defines supervenience as a relation between sets of properties. For any set M of properties, he says, let M# be the closure of M under the usual Boolean operations, including perhaps infinite conjunction and disjunction, and any other operations whereby properties are generated from other properties.
