Kim maintains that"a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism". But physiealists can reject both by using the Strict Implication thesis (SI). Discussing his arguments will help to show what useful work SI can do.
(1) His discussion of anomalous monism depends on an unexamined assumption to the effect that SI is false.
(2) His conclusion on multiple realizability is much stronger than his reasoning warrants.
(3) In discussing supervenience, he is wrong to assume that the only approach to explaining why "physical truths determine all the truths" must be via psychophysical laws.
(4) His general argument rests on a mistaken assumption that the only alternative to psychophysical identity theses is to accept "supervenient causal relations".
. Must physicalists choose between eliminativism and reductionism? Jaegwon Kim has recently argued that there is no room for a "substantial form of physiealism" that is combined with rejection ofpsychophysical reduction. He asserts that "the choices we face concerning the mind-body problem are rather stark: there are three -antiphysicalist dualism, reductionism, and eliminativism". So "a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism" (Kim 1993, 267). I think he has overlooked something. There is a substantial form of physicalism which can consistently reject both eliminativism and reductionism. It is based on a thesis of strict implication: from the physical to the mental. Discussing Kim's claim provides a good opportunity to see what useful work a thesis of strict implication can do. But first, a word about reduction.
Kim remarks that in the philosophy of mind the word 'reduetionism' "seems ... to have acquired a negative, faintly disreputable flavour ... β’ Being a reductionist", he aptly comments, "is a bit like being a logical positivist or member of the Old Left-an aura of doctrinaire naivet6 hangs over him" (Kim 1993,266). He goes on to say that many physicalists today think "that we can assuage our physicalist qualms by embracing 'ontological physicalism', the claim that all that exists in spacetime is physical, but, at the same time, accept 'property dualism', a dualism about psychological and physical attributes, insisting that psychological concepts or properties