Determinables, Determinates, and Causal Relevance

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Walter
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Exclusion Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Manifest Image

Mental causation, our mind's ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our ‘manifest image’ of the world. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on Jaegwon Kim's so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, according to which mental events are ‘screened off’ or ‘preempted’ by physical events unless mental causation is a genuine case of overdetermination or mental properties are straightforwardly reducible to physical properties.

Mental causation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Loewer
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
Completeness Of Physics

Both folk and scientific psychology assume that mental events and properties participate in causal relations. However, considerations involving the causal completeness of physics and the apparent non-reducibility of mental phenomena to physical phenomena have challenged these assumptions. In the case of mental events (such as someone’s thinking about Vienna), one proposal has been simply to identify not ‘types’ (or classes) of mental events with types of physical events, but merely individual ‘token’ mental events with token physical ones, one by one (your and my thinking about Vienna may be ‘realized’ by different type physical states). The role of mental properties (such as ‘being about Vienna’) in causation is more problematic. Properties are widely thought to have three features that seem to render them causally irrelevant: (1) they are ‘multiply-realizable’ (they can be realized in an indefinite variety of substances); (2) many of them seem not to supervene on neurophysiological properties (differences in mental properties do not always depend merely on differences in neurophysiological ones, but upon relations people bear to things outside their skin); and (3) many of them (for example, ‘being painful’) seem inherently ‘subjective’ in a way that no objective physical properties seem to be. All of these issues are complicated by the fact that there is no consensus concerning the nature of causal relevance for properties in general.

Criticism of D.B Volkov’s Teleofunctional Solution to the Problem of Mental Causation

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Author(s):  
Anton V. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Factors ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Local Properties ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
First Editions

The articles examines the teleofunctional solution to the problem of mental causation, presented by Dmitry Volkov in his recently published book Free Will. An Illusion or an Opportunity. D.B. Volkov proposes solutions to three big metaphysical problems – mental causation, personal identity, and free will. Solving the first problem, Volkov creatively combines the advantages of Dennett’s teleofunctional model and Vasilyev’s local interactionism. Volkov’s teleofunctional model of mental causation seeks to prove the causal relevance of mental properties as non-local higher order properties. In my view, its substantiation is based on three points: (a) critics of the exclusion problem and Kim’s model of mental causation, (b) “Library of first editions” argument, (c) reduction of the causal trajectories argument (CTA 1) by Vasilyev to the counterpart argument (CTA 2) by Volkov. Each of these points faces objections. Kim’s criticism is based on an implicit confusion of two types of reduction – reduction from supervenience and from multiple realizability. The latter type does not threaten Kim’s ideas, but Volkov uses this very type in his criticism. The “Library of first editions” argument does not achieve its goal due to compositional features and because non-local relational properties are a type of external properties that cannot be causally relevant. The reduction of CTA 1 to CTA 2 is unsuccessful since, in the case of this reduction, important features of CTA 1 are lost – these are local mental properties, due to which the influence of non-local physical factors occurs. My main objection is that the concept of causally relevant non-local properties is incompatible with the very concept of cause. The set of causally relevant properties of cause can only be local.

scholarly journals Epiphenomenalism for Functionalists

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Beebee
Keyword(s):  
Functional Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Exclusion Problem ◽  
Mental Properties

This chapter focuses on an assumption implicitly made by most recent attempts to solve the exclusion problem for mental causation, that mental (and so multiply realized) properties are ‘distinct existences’ from their alleged effects. Without that assumption, no such solution can work, since we have excellent grounds for thinking that there is no causation between entities that are not distinct from one another. But, assuming functionalism—which, after all, constitutes the grounds for thinking that mental properties are multiply realized in the first place—mental properties are not distinct from the effects to which they are alleged to bear causal relevance, since functional properties are defined in terms of the causal roles of their realizers. The chapter argues, however, that the natural consequence—epiphenomenalism with respect to mental properties—is not as problematic as many philosophers tend to assume.

scholarly journals Double Prevention and Mental Causation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sean Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Exclusion Problem ◽  
Mental Events

<p>Double prevention is often mentioned in the causation literature but is not often discussed in depth. In this thesis my primary goal is to take a deep look at double prevention and evaluate one place it has been put to work. Briefly, a case of double prevention is a case where one event prevents another from preventing a third. While we have strong intuitions that such cases should be causally relevant at least, there is debate over whether they should be counted as fully causal. Sophie Gibb (2013) puts this concept to work by arguing that mental events act as double preventers to physical events. She frames this as an argument against the causal exclusion problem. I propose my own adaption of Gibb’s proposal which does not rest on the controversial premises the original does and as such has a wider appeal.</p>

scholarly journals Intervening in the Exclusion Argument

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Exclusion Argument

This chapter discusses Peter Menzies’ work on mental causation and the causal exclusion argument. It endorses Menzies’ claim that an interventionist account of causation can cast new light on this complex of issues, but diverges from Menzies’ position at several points, in particular in connection with the role of proportionality considerations in the characterization of causation. This chapter attempts to clarify Woodward’s views about mental causation and the exclusion argument, to respond to some recent criticisms of those views, and to contrast Woodward’s views with the somewhat different approach favored by Menzies. The differences between Woodward’s and Menzies’ views are traced in part to different assumptions about the semantics of counterfactuals.

Powers, Double Prevention and Mental Causation

Metaphysica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Davies
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Physical Domain ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Causal Closure ◽  
Mental Events

AbstractS. C. Gibb holds that some mental events enable physical events to take place by acting as ‘double preventers’ which prevent other mental events from effecting change in the physical domain. She argues that this enables a dualist account of psychophysical interaction consistent with the causal relevance of mental events, their distinctness from physical events, the causal closure of the physical and the exclusion of systematic overdetermination. While accepting the causal powers metaphysic, this paper argues that:

Anomalism and Supervenience: A Critical Survey

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oron Shagrir
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The One ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Mental Characteristics

The thesis that mental properties are dependent, or supervenient, on physical properties, but this dependence is not lawlike, has been influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. It is put forward explicitly in Donald Davidson's seminal ‘Mental Events.’ On the one hand, Davidson claims that the mental is anomalous, that ‘there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained’ (1970, 208), and, in particular, that there are no strict psychophysical laws. On the other hand, he insists that the mental supervenes on the physical; that ‘mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical characteristics’ (1970, 214).

scholarly journals Nonreductive Physicalism and Mental Causation

2017 ◽  
pp. 343
Author(s):  
Miguel Amen
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Nonreductive Physicalism ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Jaegwon Kim ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

In this work I articulate and defend a problem about the place of the mind in the causation of behaviour. Ask why someone did a certain action and you can see the problem arise, if only you assume certain plausible suppositions about the world. The suppositions are taken to be those of nonreductive materialism.I think that the argument from exclusion, originally developed by Jaegwon Kim, shows that unless there is overdetermination, the mental cannot be causally relevant in the causation of behaviour. It is my view, however, that a proper understanding of overdetermination shows that the overdetermination move is not available to the nonreductive physicalist. That is, he cannot escape exclusion by claiming that the mental overdetermines the physical in the causation of our actions.It is argued that neither appeals to economy nor to Bennett's counterfactual test are good ways to decide matters of overdetermination. That should be decided in terms of the ability of a theory to consistently permit such overdetermination, which however is shown not to be the case for nonreductive materialism.Moreover, in general all realized properties will face this problem - assuming them to be causally relevant will ignite exclusionary claims and in the competition for relevance, physical properties will have a better and more fundamental claim for relevance, threatening once again to relegate realized properties to the category of epiphenomena.

scholarly journals Double Prevention and Mental Causation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sean Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Exclusion Problem ◽  
Mental Events

<p>Double prevention is often mentioned in the causation literature but is not often discussed in depth. In this thesis my primary goal is to take a deep look at double prevention and evaluate one place it has been put to work. Briefly, a case of double prevention is a case where one event prevents another from preventing a third. While we have strong intuitions that such cases should be causally relevant at least, there is debate over whether they should be counted as fully causal. Sophie Gibb (2013) puts this concept to work by arguing that mental events act as double preventers to physical events. She frames this as an argument against the causal exclusion problem. I propose my own adaption of Gibb’s proposal which does not rest on the controversial premises the original does and as such has a wider appeal.</p>

Difference-making, Closure, and Exclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Weslake
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Difference Making ◽  
Exclusion Argument

This chapter discusses Peter Menzies’ work on mental causation and the causal exclusion argument. The author shares with Menzies the conviction that an interventionist account of causation can cast new light on this complex of issues, but his view diverges from Menzies at several points, including the role of proportionality considerations in the characterization of causation. This chapter seeks to clarify the role that proportionality considerations should play in the interventionist account of causation. The author develops a number of arguments for the claim that proportionality considerations belong not in the theory of causation but rather in the theory of explanatory value. These arguments help to situate the approach to mental causation favoured by Menzies in relation to the interventionist account of causation.

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