CAN THE MENTAL BE CAUSALLY EFFICACIOUS? (original) (raw)

Multiple Realizability and Mind-Body Identity

It is generally held that type-identity theories of mind have been definitively discarded by Putnam’s multiple realizability argument and by Kripke’s thesis on necessary identities. My general goal is to challenge this opinion, even if under some conditions, and to provide an argument in support of a causal reading of sensations that will deflate the importance of their individuation via qualitative properties. The multiple realizability argument is generally taken to show that identity statements between mental properties (say, have pain) and their realizers (C-fibers firing) are not necessarily true. These are contrasted, famously by Putnam and Kripke, with statements such as “heat = molecular motion”, which are considered as necessarily true. However, I will argue, the latter identity statement is subject to the same kind of multiple realizability. Many authors have already noticed that there are many ways in which the supposed identity “heat = molecular motion” may be shaken. On the one hand the concept of heat can be applied to different states of the matter (gases, plasma, vacuum) and in some of these cases the supposed identity with molecular motion is no longer necessarily valid. On the other hand, inter-level identities allow for minimal variability: two objects having the same temperature may have different physical arrangements of moving molecules. Both these observations, though, do not exclude that the identity holds at least in some specific phase of the matter (say, gases). I want to argue that also in this case the supposed identity could be nevertheless multiply realized, and in a more serious way then individual variability. The main hallmark for having multiple realizability, and not just multiple instantiation, is the presence of different natural kinds fulfilling a given high order property. In this sense, heat is multiply realized by molecular motion because it can be realized by different kinds of molecules, which are different natural kinds. This shows that the supposed identity “heat = molecular motion” is nothing more than a schema of identification. In order to obtain an identity statement it is necessary to fill the logical form of the schema by introducing co-referential rigid designators on both sides of the identity sign. Once this is done, we can have necessarily true identity statements again, but these have a quite narrow scope of validity. The same reasoning can be applied in the case of the supposed identity between pain and C-fibers activation or, more in general, between mental states and physical states. In such case, we have to narrowing the scope of the physical realization conditions of the mental state or property in the same way in which this is done in the case of purely physicalistic statements. Once this is done, identity statements relating mental and physical properties are on the same boat of those concerning physical properties alone. In the second part of the paper, I argue that the way in which the multiple realizability argument is tackled with respect to identity statements on physical entities (heat = molecular motion) can be applied also to identities relating mental and physical properties. I argue that the previous strategy not only provides an answer to Putnam’s argument but that, if supplemented, blocks Kripke's intuition according to which pain states find their identity conditions in the phenomenological component of such sensations. To this end, I analyze what sensations are and what their phenomenological component is. I first maintain that sensations are stable relations with properties of the world fixed by token-reflexive conditions of the receptors. Secondly, in order to individuate their qualitative component, is sufficient to consider their distinctiveness, leaving any qualitative consideration apart. Applying the above analysis to the case of pain we notice that it fits well with the distinction found in the medical literature between feeling pain and detecting pain. The detection can be individuated in purely causal-functional terms, on the stability criterion, while the feeling is conveniently considered in evolutionary way, on the distinctness criterion. Such an individuation may be not metaphysically necessary but such a strong reading of necessity is not what is needed for our goals. The general upshot is that the identity thesis, as originally proposed by Smart, Place and others, is no longer viable. In its place we should introduce more narrow tailored identities, but these are not different from those that we should accept in case of purely physicalistic terms, such as heat and molecular motion. Having set all this, I conclude that the type-identity theory of mind can be vindicated.

Mind-brain Identity to the rescue of Multiple Realization

To counter the thesis of the identity of Types, Putnam raised the famous argument of the multiple realization of the mental. Having inserted into functionalist thesis, argument is weakened (i) by the reductionism of Kim and Armstrong / Lewis, and (ii) by option of disjunction of properties. To make the relation of realization and multiple realization more coherent, Shoemaker offers an alternative thesis. In a recent article , incorporating Yablo's thesis on determinable properties, he constructs an original account on realized properties that on one side avoids reductionism and on the other gives way to multiple realization. However, as this article aims to show, the use of Yablo's thesis, mainly qualifying relation between the mental and physical as a relation of determinable to determinate, added to the individuation of properties according to their causal profile, somehow reintroduces the Type identity thesis.

Two Myths of Psychophysical Reductionism

Open Journal of Philosophy, 2012

This paper focuses on two prominent arguments claiming that physicalism entails reductionism. One is Kim’s causal exclusion argument (CEA), and the other is Papineau’s causal argument. The paper argues that Kim’s CEA is not logically valid and that it is driven by two implausible justifications. One is “Edward’s dictum”, which is alien to non-reductive physicalism and should be rejected. The other is by endorsement of Papineau’s conception of the physical, immanent in Papineau’s causal argument. This argu- ment only arrives at the physical property-property identities by using a conception of the physical that licenses anything to be reductively physical, including putative core anti-physical entities; thus, leaving Papineau’s causal argument and Kim’s CEA without a reductive physicalist conclusion of philosophical interest.

Psychophysical Reductionism without Type Identitiies

American Philosophical Quarterly, 2012

Nonreductive physicalists have a causal exclusion problem. Given certain theses all physicalists accept, including psychophysical supervenience and the causal closure of the physical realm, it is difficult to see how irreducible mental phenomena could make a causal difference to the world. The upshot, according to those who push the problem, is that we must embrace reductive physicalism. Only then is mental causation saved. Grant the argument, at least provisionally. Here our focus is the conditional question: What form should one's reductionism take if it is motivated in part by the exclusion problem? Must one be a type identity theorist, or are alternative reductive views available, as Jaegwon Kim has suggested more than once?

Basic Ontology, Multiple Realizability and Mental Causation

Tropes, Universals and the Philoosphy of Mind - Essays at the Boundary of Ontology and Philosophical Psychology, 2008

In basic ontology philosophers dispute inter alia about the nature of properties and events.Two main rival views can be identified in the current debate. According to universalism, properties are universals and events are structured entities involving as constituents (in a typical case) a particular, a property qua universal and a time. In contrast, according to tropism, properties are tropes, abstract particulars that can also be viewed as events. This paper analyzes the resources that these two doctrines can offer in an attempt to construct a non- reductivist physicalist account of the mental that accommodates multiple realizability without falling prey to epiphenomenalism (in short, NENRP). The tropist resources allow for success by means of a strategy leading to a non- unitarian doctrine. This rules out the unitarian idea, according to which creatures with important physical differences can still have the very same experiences. This tropist strategy can be “simulated” in a version of universalism, with the same non-unitarian consequences. However, from the perspective of another, more natural, version of universalism, one can perhaps find another avenue for NENRP, which brings with it a unitarian point of view. The resulting approach strongly suggests, in contrast to one based on tropism, the possibility of something like self-acquaintance as understood by philosophers such as Russell or Chisholm. In sum, the paper shows ways in which basic ontology matters in philosophy of mind.

Multiple Realization, Reduction, and Mental Properties

The paper tries to remove some obstacles standing in the way of considering mental properties as both genuine natural kinds and causally efficacious rather than epiphenomena. As the case of temperature shows, it isn't justified to conclude from a property's being multiply realizable to its being irreducible. Yet argument to the effect that if a property is multiply realizable with a heterogeneous reduction base then it can't be a natural kind and possesses only derivative "epiphenomenal" causal efficacy isn't conclusive either. The fact that temperature is, but jade is not, a natural kind cannot be established by comparing the heterogeneity of their respective reduction bases, but rather by the fact that the former is and the latter isn't embedded in laws of nature.

Multiple Realization: A Thesis with Identity Issues

It is commonly held that the multiple realizability of the mental rules out a potential strict identity relation between the physical and the psychological. In recent years, important new work has been done on the subject of the relation between multiple realization and identity theory. Nevertheless, what remains overlooked by these newer accounts is that the argument from multiple realization against identity is founded on an ambiguity. At the heart of the multiple realization argument lies an entanglement of two very different notions of identity, notions which need to be understood in light of two distinct ways of identifying objects. As I will hope to show, properly evaluating the argument from multiple realization against strict identity requires first of all untangling these two notions of identity. The disentanglement leaves the argument from multiple realization facing a dilemma: either be a deductively valid argument, but give up on empirical aspirations; or be an empirically substantiated argument, but accept compatibility with a strict identity thesis.