Why incompatibilism about mental causation is incompatible with non-reductive physicalism

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe exclusion problem is meant to show that non-reductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: if mental properties are not identical with physical properties, then they are not causally efficacious. Defenders of a difference-making account of causation suggest that the exclusion problem can be solved because mental properties can be difference-making causes of physical effects. Here, we focus on what we dub an incompatibilist implementation of this general strategy and argue against it from a non-reductive physicalist perspective. Specifically, we argue that incompatibilism undermines either the non-reductionist or the physicalist aspirations of non-reductive physicalism.