Abstract

Neil Campbell has argued that certain problems with the doctrine of psycho-physical supervenience can be overcome if supervenience is viewed as a relation between predicates rather than as a relation between properties. Campbell suggests that, when properly understood, this predicate version of supervenience "expresses a form of psycho-physical dependence that might be useful to those who wish to argue for a supervenience-based physicalism”. In this note I indicate why I think we ought to resist this suggestion. First, I argue quite generally that any appeal to a distinction between predicates and properties is irrelevant to issues concerning physicalism and supervenience. And, second, I argue that Campbell's own predicate version of supervenience fails to capture a notion of dependence that physicalists are likely to find useful. I conclude that viewing supervenience as a relation between predicates does not help in articulating a more plausible version of physicalism.