The mind-body problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_dichotomy) is as old as philosophy itself. Modern science proceeds with the assumption that the category of subject matter under investigation is physical. How can this accommodate consciouness and mental causation, though? These seem not to be reducible. Qualia (the ‘felt experience’ of the conscious mind, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia) seem particularly resistent.
Jaegwon Kim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaegwon_Kim) offers a fresh set of arguments to show that even these may not lack causal efficacy, and therefore that physicalism, or something near enough, is still our best understanding of how the world really is. Having read Kim’s arguments, do you agree? Published in 2007.
200 pages in Princeton University Press edition.
ISBN 978-0691133850