Causal Powers, Realization, and Mental Causation (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the Metaphysics of Mental Causation
2021
In a series of recent papers, Cynthia MacDonald and Graham MacDonald offer a resolution to the twin problems of mental causation and mental causal relevance. They argue that the problem of mental causation is soluble via token monism— mental events are causally efficacious physical events. At the same time, the problem of mental causal relevance is solved by combining this causally efficacious mental property instance with the systematic co-variation between distinct mental properties of the cause and the action-theoretic properties of the effect in question. In other words, their model is an instance of the familiar strategy of yoking token monism with property dualism. MacDonald and MacDonald, however, endorse this nonreductive monism from within a property exemplification account of events. In this paper we argue that nonreductive monism, when yoked with the property exemplification account, faces significant difficulties in resolving the twin problems of mental causation and men...
Mental Causation and Shoemaker-Realization
Erkenntnis, 2007
Sydney Shoemaker has proposed a new definition of 'realization' and used it to try to explain how mental events can be causes within the framework of a nonreductive physicalism. I argue that it is not actually his notion of realization that is doing the work in his account of mental causation, but rather the assumption that certain physical properties entail mental properties that do not entail them. I also point out how his account relies on certain other controversial assumptions, including analytical fillerfunctionalism for mental properties, and the assumption that causes must be proportional to their effects. I conclude by pointing out that Shoemaker has provided no explanation of why, on his view, certain physical properties entail mental properties. The idea that there is a tenable doctrine of non-reductive physicalism currently enjoys considerable popularity. Such a doctrine is supposed to be non-reductive in that it entails that there are mental properties and that no mental property is a physical property; and it is supposed to be a kind of physicalism in that it entails that mental properties are realized by physical properties. To assess any such a doctrine, we must of course understand what is meant by the claim that mental properties are realized by physical properties. 'Realization' is a philosophical term of art. In this way, it differs from a term like 'causation'. We have fairly robust pre-analytic intuitions concerning what counts as causation; and, so, we are in a position to try to establish a reflective equilibrium between a theory of causation and our considered judgments about such matters. Philosophical thought-experiments can strain our intuitions to the breaking point, and even lead to their revision. Nevertheless, in discussing causation, we can typically rely on our shared conception of it. That conception provides common ground. The notion of realization, however, is like the notion of supervenience. Just as philosophers must
Mental causation and the metaphysics of causation
Erkenntnis, 2007
The paper argues for four claims: (1) The problem of mental causation and the argument for its solution in terms of the identity of mental with physical causes are independent of the theory of causation one favours.
Mental causation and mental properties
dialectica, 2005
The aim of this paper is to defend the causal homogeneity of functional, mental properties against Kim's attack. It is argued that (a) token identity is sufficient for mental causation, that (b) token identity implies a sort of functional reduction, but that (c) nonetheless functional, mental properties can be causally homogeneous despite being multiply realizable: multiple composition is sufficient for multiple realizability, but multiple composition does not prevent the realizers from having their pertinent effects in common. Thus, the causal exclusion problem provides no argument for abandoning the position that there are functional, mental properties that are natural kind properties.
Mental Causation and the Causal Completeness of Physics
Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology, 2002
This paper takes issue with a widely accepted view of mental causation. This is the view that mental causation is either reducible to physical causation or ultimately untenable, because incompatible with the causal completeness of physics The paper examines, first, why recent attempts to save the phenomena of mental causation by way of the notion of supervenient causation fail The result of t/us examination is the claim that any attempted specification of the most basic causal factors which supposedly underlie a causal transaction cannot account for the counterfactually necessary connections with the effect m question. By contrast, the specification of these factors at a higher-level would allow establishing such connections. The paper doses with a discussion of how the view of autonomous higher-level causation grounded on counterfactual relations can be made compatible with the physicalistic commitment to a complete specification of the particular causes of any physical effect excl...
Logic and Philosophy of Science, 2011
If we accept causal exclusion, property dualism and physical determinism, mental epiphenomenalism follows. According to Yablo (1992), we can save mental causation by rejecting causal exclusion and considering the mental/physical relation as an instance of the determinable/determinate relation. In this paper I examine Crane’s argument (2008) against the causal relevance of determinables, and I argue that we still have good reasons to think that determinables may be causally efficacious. As mental properties can be also considered as exhaustive disjunctions of physical realizers, the causal relevance of mental properties is also questioned by the widely shared opinion that disjunctive properties can not be causally efficacious. I consider Clapp’s arguments (2001) in favor of the causal relevance of disjunctive properties, and I conclude that disjunctive properties may survive both Armstrong’s famous objections (1978).
Causal Powers and the Necessity of Realization (IJPS, 2017)
Non-reductive physicalists hold that mental properties are realized by physical properties. The realization relation is typically taken to be a metaphysical necessitation relation. Here, I explore how the metaphysical necessitation feature of realization can be explained by what is known as " the subset view " of realization. The subset view holds that the causal powers that are associated with a realized property are a proper subset of the causal powers that are associated with the realizer property. I argue that the said explanation of the metaphysical necessitation feature requires a careful treatment of the relationship between properties and causal powers. (DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2017.1332081)
The experience of mental causation
Behavior and philosophy, 2004
Most of us have a very firm belief in mental causation; that is, we firmly believe that our own distinctly mental properties are causally efficacious in the production of our behavior. This belief is dominating in contemporary philosophy of mind as a part of the causal explanatory exclusion problem for non-reductive materialists. I do not discuss the exclusion problem; rather, I assess the conception of mental causation that is presupposed in the current debate. I propose that in order to make sense of our firm belief in mental causation we need to operate with a broader conception of it than is normally seen, focusing on common-sense aspects concerning the timing, awareness, control, and tracking of mental causation. However, prominent studies in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience show that mental causation is not as self-evident, robust, and pervasive as our firm belief in it would suggest. There is therefore a tension between the common-sense, broad conception of mental causation and our empirical evidence for mental causation. A full defense of mental causation is not just a matter of securing causal efficacy but also of situating our notion of mental properties in relation to difficult issues concerning awareness, control, and judgment.
Can Downward Causation Make the Mental Matter? A Reply to Meyering and Murphy
Center for Theology and Natural Science Bulletin, 1999
downward causation may be assigned a stable place in our picture of how the world is organized without upsetting our conception of the various domains of physics as constituting a closed and complete system of physical events at the physical level of description." --Theo Meyering 1 I While nonreductive physicalism is still the "most influential metaphysical position" in the philosophy of mind, there are indications that its days are numbered. 2 The idea was attractive: