Levels of Reality and Levels of Description

The assumption of the causal closure of the fundamental level of reality has been used to support reductionism and undermine non-reductive views such as Davidson’s anomalous monism. Jaegwon Kim, in particular, devoted numerous papers to this line of critique, arguing that the stratification of reality into distinct levels is incompatible with the causal closure assumption. Taking issue with Kim’s position, my chapter seeks to show that the stratified picture is both safe and useful from the scientific point of view. The defense of non-reductive physicalism requires a clear distinction between levels of reality and levels of description, a distinction that counter-arguments (such as Kim’s) tend to blur.