Double Prevention and Mental Causation

<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>

Double Prevention and Mental Causation

<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>

Levels of Being

This chapter articulates an egalitarian ontology of levels of composition and realization that provides a foundation for the rest of the book. I reject the widespread assumption that levels form an ontological hierarchy such that some levels are more fundamental than others. On the contrary, neither wholes nor their proper parts are more fundamental; neither higher-level properties nor lower-level properties are more fundamental. Instead, higher levels are just invariant aspects of lower levels. Whole objects are invariants over additions, subtractions, and rearrangements of some parts; higher-level properties are invariant aspects of their lower-level realizers. This egalitarian ontology solves the causal exclusion problem and does justice to the special sciences—including cognitive neuroscience.

The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness

Mental causation is vitally important to the integrated information theory (IIT), which says consciousness exists since it is causally efficacious. While it might not be directly apparent, metaphysical commitments have consequential entailments concerning the causal efficacy of consciousness. Commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and the nature of causation determine which problem(s) a view of consciousness faces with respect to mental causation. Analysis of mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind has brought several problems to the fore: the alleged lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem. This article surveys the threat each problem poses to IIT based on the different metaphysical commitments IIT theorists might make. Distinctions are made between what I call reductive IIT, non-reductive IIT, and non-physicalist IIT, each of which make differing metaphysical commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and nature of causation. Subsequently, each problem pertaining to mental causation is presented and its threat, or lack thereof, to each version of IIT is considered. While the lack of psychophysical laws appears unthreatening for all versions, reductive IIT and non-reductive IIT are seriously threatened by the exclusion problem, and it is difficult to see how they could overcome it while maintaining a commitment to the causal closure principle. Yet, non-physicalist IIT denies the principle but is therefore threatened by the pairing problem, to which I have elsewhere provided a response that is briefly outlined here. This problem also threatens non-reductive IIT, but unlike non-physicalist IIT it lacks an evident response. The ultimate aim of this survey is to provide a roadmap for IIT theorists through the maze of mental causation, by clarifying which commitments lead to which problems, and how they might or might not be overcome. Such a survey can aid IIT theorists as they further develop and hone the metaphysical commitments of IIT.