Hadron the Collider

Psychoneural Identity Theory, or identity theory, posits that any mental event is equal to a neural occurrence, or some physical event, inside the brain.  Jaegwon Kim describes two ways to define what an “event” is.   Token physicalism views events as discrete “particulars of the world, along with material objects.” (Kim, Philosophy of Mind, Chapter 4, pg. 101)   In token physicalism, a specific mental event “kind” also has a specific physical event “kind”.  For example, the action of a hammer hitting my hand is painful, and the painfulness is equal to both the pain itself and the firing of C-fibers in my brain.  A second way to define an event is with type physicalism, which states that mental event kinds are equal to physical event kinds and vice versa.  Therefore, the hammer hitting my hand is painful, and painfulness is the same as the C-fibers firing in my brain.  From this example, it can be shown that type physicalism necessitates token physicalism but token physicalism has no need for the specificity offered by type physicalism.  In other words, token physicalism doesn’t actually necessarily mean that the pain I’m feeling is the C-fibers firing, like type physicalism does, it only says that for the particular event of pain that I am feeling, there is the pain and there is also the C-fiber firing.  This caveat of token physicalism is what opens the door to dualism and is ultimately why it fails the minimum requirements of a physicalist identity description.

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