IX—Mental Causation and Mental Reality

Abstract

The Problems of Mental Causation. Functionalism in the philosophy of mind identifies mental states with their dispositional connections with other mental states, perceptions and actions. Many theories of the mind have sailed under the Functionalist flag. But what I take to be essential to Functionalism is that mental states are individuated causally: the reality of mental states depends essentially on their causal efficacy. But the very idea of mental causation has long been thought problematic, and has recently been challenged by a nuinber of new arguments. In their general outline, these arguments go like this. A cause has its effects only in virtue of some of its properties. When I bum my hand on a red hot poker, it is not the colour of the poker that causes the burn, but its heat. So when a mental cause has some effect, we can ask: does it have this effect in virtue of its mental properties, or in virtue of its non-mental properties? Is the mentality of the mental cause 'efficacious' in producing its effect? The opponents of mental causation argue that it is not. But if the mental properties of these causes are inefficacious, then there is strictly speaking no genuinely mental causation. Our thoughts and sensations never literally make things happen. If there is no mental causation, then Functionalism's causal conception of mental reality is mistaken. So it is crucial for Functionalists to understand why mental causes are supposed not to have their effects in virtue of their mental properties.