- Lived:
- 1934–2019 · Daegu, Korea → Providence, Rhode Island
- Tradition:
- Analytic philosophy of mind and metaphysics; the physicalist tradition audited from the inside
- The Big Idea:
- If everything that happens in your body has a complete physical cause, then your mind has to earn its place in the causal story — and showing exactly how hard that is became his life's work.
- In their words:
- He summed up his final position in four famously honest words: "physicalism, or something near enough."
- If you remember one thing:
- Kim took the mind–body problem — the oldest riddle in modern philosophy — and instead of announcing a solution, mapped the terrain so precisely that every serious answer since has had to pass through his checkpoints.