Reduction and the layered model

In this paper, we evaluate the scope of Jaegwon Kim's causal exclusion argument for reduction. Does its conclusion only apply to psychology or does it generalize to all of the special sciences? We argue that the question of whether reduction generalizes is ambiguous. We distinguish three readings of it and propose that some of them warrant a positive answer whereas others warrant a negative answer.

This ambiguity concerns a hierarchical picture of the world with the domain of physics at the bottom and the domains of the social sciences at the top, which is not precise enough and yet it often underlies discussions on reduction and the special sciences. In the process of addressing the generalization worry, we use some distinctions in the literature on mental causation to clarify this picture.