Problem Of Mental Causation Research Articles

Irruption and Absorption: A 'Black-Box' Framework for How Mind and Matter Make a Difference to Each Other.

Cognitive science is confronted by several fundamental anomalies deriving from the mind-body problem. Most prominent is the problem of mental causation and the hard problem of consciousness, which can be generalized into the hard problem of agential efficacy and the hard problem of mental content. Here, it is proposed to accept these explanatory gaps at face value and to take them as positive indications of a complex relation: mind and matter are one, but they are not the same. They are related in an efficacious yet non-reducible, non-observable, and even non-intelligible manner. Natural science is well equipped to handle the effects of non-observables, and so the mind is treated as equivalent to a hidden 'black box' coupled to the body. Two concepts are introduced given that there are two directions of coupling influence: (1) irruption denotes the unobservable mind hiddenly making a difference to observable matter, and (2) absorption denotes observable matter hiddenly making a difference to the unobservable mind. The concepts of irruption and absorption are methodologically compatible with existing information-theoretic approaches to neuroscience, such as measuring cognitive activity and subjective qualia in terms of entropy and compression, respectively. By offering novel responses to otherwise intractable theoretical problems from first principles, and by doing so in a way that is closely connected with empirical advances, irruption theory is poised to set the agenda for the future of the mind sciences.

Kim and the Pairing Problem for Dualism

The philosophical history of metaphysics of mind can be narrowed into two problems: Mind and body causation and issues of the self or persons. Due to the rise of the scientific revolution the nature of mental states and its possessors has been reduced to brain and cognitive functioning or eliminated instead of the ontological basic substance of a soul. The other criticism of soul identity or substance dualism is the problem of mental causation. In The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism (2018), Jaegwon Kim argues against the intelligibility of Cartesian dualism and further extends that argument to any form of substance dualism by raising the question of mental causation or the traditional mind-body problem. His main attack comes from the essence of mind and the causal closure of the physical, together these provide an argument against the non-physical view of persons. The question, “can mental events cause physical events?” Is a problem for the dualist which he calls “the pairing problem.” Since causation requires a spatiotemporal relation between two bodies, and mind and body are distinct substances or properties, there’s no cause-and-effect pairing relation between minds and physical objects or bodies. Thus, according to Kim, the essence of an immaterial thinking substance, such as a soul, is unintelligible and should be rejected since it fails to answer the pairing problem. However, Kim has a misunderstanding of substance dualist views of the independent ontological status of a substantial self or soul. Further, Kim’s challenge does not take into account a causal powers ontology in which primitive is the free agentive causal subject. I’ll argue that a soul, though embodied, is a non-material primitive substance that has basic faculties to exemplify mental properties. One of the faculties of the soul is the instantiation of active agency. Further, the postulation of Gods existence, having a metaphysical internal structure and powers, is grounds for the existence of a soul with its own metaphysical, unified structure in which the dispositional properties of consciousness are located and exemplified. I conclude that mental causation is a coherent notion especially in light of the active powers of agent causation. Thus, Kim’s problem of mental causation becomes no problem at all.

INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGY AND THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Questions about the nature of the mind and process of education originate in ancient Greek philosophers. What is the role of language? What is the relation between the structure and function in education? Are people free in their choices? Important ancient philosophers, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and Lucretius, had tried to provide answers to these questions in different ways, while Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant and many others continued where the former stopped at the end of late antiquity. Even today, in the age of technology, contemporary researchers from the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, neurobiology, and artificial intelligence ask similar, albeit technologically informed, questions. Among them are questions about the relation between human and machine or between teachers/students and learning environment and the implications they carry for solving traditional problems inside education, i.e., the problem of mental causation, or the problem of consciousness as well as various mental activities, for instance, decision-making, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Metaphysical Emergence

<i>Metaphysical Emergence</i>

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

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.

HYLOMORPHISM, EXPLANATORY PRACTICE, AND THE PROBLEM OF MENTAL CAUSATION

AbstractThe problem of mental causation epitomizes problems in the metaphysics of mind. Tyler Burge once suggested that it could be solved by taking ordinary explanatory practice more seriously. Jaegwon Kim criticized this suggestion: a solution to the problem requires a workable metaphysics of mental causation, and taking ordinary explanatory practice seriously falls short of providing that. Burge replied by gesturing toward a metaphysics that takes mental and physical causation to be different, noncompeting forms of causation. But what does it mean for there to be different forms of causation? How are they identified and distinguished? And what ensures that mental and physical causation are different and noncompeting? I attempt to answer these questions by appeal to hylomorphism, a metaphysical framework that takes structure to be a basic ontological and explanatory principle. I argue that hylomorphism enables us to develop Burge’s basic insights into a workable metaphysics of mental causation that solves the problem.

Mental causation via neuroprosthetics? A critical analysis

Some recent arguments defending the genuine causal efficacy of the mental have been relying on empirical research on neuroprosthetics. This essay presents a critical analysis of these arguments. The problem of mental causation, and the basic idea and results of neuroprosthetics are reviewed. It is shown how appealing to the research on neuroprosthetics can be interpreted to give support to the idea of mental causation. However, it does so only in a rather deflationary sense: by holding the mental identical with the neural. So contrary to what the arguments have been assuming, neuroprosthetics cannot be used to argue for nonreductive physicalism. It can rather be taken to illustrate just the opposite: how the mental and the physical are identical.

Causal Relevance of Mental Properties: A Refutation of Kim’s Exclusion Argument

Non-reductive physicalism is attacked by Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument. Kim argues that if mental and physical properties are distinct, then mental properties are causally irrelevant. My task in this paper is to refute this argument and to provide a solution for the problem of mental causation. Taking mental properties as higher-order properties, I attempt to propose a property-exemplification account of events that is compatible with the thesis of token identity. I then attempt to refute the exclusion argument by arguing that mental causation and physical causation are not homogeneous; that is, they are two different kinds of causation. Kim’s exclusion argument only demonstrates the impossibility of a productive conception of mental causation; however, only a difference-making conception is appropriate for mental causation and human agency. If these results are plausible, they would serve as a metaphysical basis for an autonomy approach to mental causation, which attempts to save the causal relevance of mental properties by arguing that there is only intra-level causal relevance.

A double face view on mind-brain relationship: the problem of mental causation

Abstract: Interpreting results of contemporary neuroscientif studies, I present a non-reductive physicalist account of mind-brain relationship from which the criticism of unintelligibility ascribed to the notion of mental causation is considered. Assuming that a paradigmatic criticism addressed to the notion of mental causation is that presented by Jaegwon Kim’s analysis on the theory of mind-body supervenience, I present his argument arguing that it encompasses a formulation of the problem of mental causation, which leads to difficulties by him pointed. To ask "how mental events, being a non-physical property of the brain, could act causally on brain structure and functioning?", is not to treat the mind as a property of the brain, but as a Cartesian substance. I argue that, rather than asking "how does mind could act causally on the brain?", as if the mind were something apart and independent of the brain, it would be more in line with a non-reductive physicalist view to ask "how the brain, guided by its mind, could act causally on itself?". To justify this last formulation of the problem of mental causation, I propose a "double face view", which consists in considering the consciousness as the essential property of the mind, and mind and brain as inseparable, dependent and irreducible faces. It means, in general terms, that the conscious mind is the result of brain structure and activity - "conscious mind as brain" - and that the brain, using its conscious mind as a guide to its actions, interacts with its body, and with the physical and sociocultural environment, constructing and being constructed by both - "brain as conscious mind".

COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION AND FOLK THEISTIC BELIEF

AbstractCognitive scientists of religion promise to lay bare the cognitive mechanisms that generate religious beliefs in human beings. Defenders of the debunking argument believe that the cognitive mechanisms studied in this field pose a threat to folk theism. A number of influential responses to the debunking argument rely on making two sets of distinctions: (1) proximate/ultimate explanations and (2) specific/general religious beliefs. I argue, however, that such responses have drawbacks and do not make room for folk theism. I suggest that a detour through the literature in the philosophy of mind regarding the problem of mental causation regarding nonreductive physicalism can provide a way for preserving folk theism without doing violence to the way cognitive science of religion is being practiced today. More specifically, I believe there is a way of responding to the debunking argument that does not require a rejection of the causal premise.

Property Reductive Emergent Dualism

This paper sketches and motivates a metaphysics of mind that is both substance dualist and, to a large extent, property reductive. Call it “property reductive emergent dualism”. Section “Emergent Dualism” gives the broad outlines of the view. Sections “Problems of Mental Causation” and “Theoretical Virtues” argue that it can claim several advantages over non-reductive physicalist theories of mind. Section “Problems of Mental Causation” considers metaphysical challenges to mental causation in detail. Section “Theoretical Virtues” considers overall theoretical virtues: ontological and ideological economy, unification with physical sciences, the promise of explanatory gain. On these grounds, I propose that the view coupling substance dualism with property reductivism deserves further philosophical attention.

Do MacDonald and MacDonald Solve the Problem of Mental Causal Relevance?

Ever since Davidson first articulated and defended anomalous monism, nonreductive physicalists have struggled with the problem of mental causation. Considerations about the causal closure of the physical domain and related principles about exclusion make it very difficult to maintain the distinctness of mental and physical properties while securing a causal role for the former. Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the underlying metaphysics and ontology of the mental causation debate to gain traction on this issue. Cynthia MacDonald and Graham MacDonald have followed suit and argue that the solution to the nonreductivist’s troubles lies in a particular metaphysical view of events. They claim that an appropriately formulated property exemplification account of events resolves the problem and secures the causal relevance of mental properties. I argue that while this approach might get us the causal efficacy of mental events, it does not provide the sought-after causal relevance of mental properties. I show that the reason MacDonald and MacDonald stumble on the problem of causal relevance is—ironically—due to features of their view of events.

Philosophy of mind: a comprehensive introduction

Preface. 1. Mind-Body Theories and Mind-Body Problems. Overview. 1.1 Mind and brain. 1.2 Mind-body theories. 1.3 Mind-body problems. 1.4 The problem of psychophysical emergence. 1.5 The problem of other minds. 1.6 The problem of mental causation. Further reading. 2. The Mental-Physical Distinction. Overview. 2.1 Mental vs. physical. 2.2 Physical phenomena. 2.3 First-person authority and subjectivity. 2.4 Qualia and phenomenal consciousness. 2.5 Intentionality, mental representation, and propositional attitudes. 2.6 Rationality. Further reading. 3. Substance Dualism. Overview. 3.1 Substance dualism: its claims and motivations. 3.2 The argument for substance dualism. 3.3 Objections to the argument for substance dualism. 3.4 Substance dualism and the problem of other minds. 3.5 The problem of interaction. 3.6 Noninteractionist views: parallelism and occasionalism. 3.7 The problem of explanatory impotence. 3.8 Substance dualism in perspective. Further reading. 4. The Physicalist Worldview. Overview. 4.1 What physicalism claims. 4.2 Varieties of physicalism: eliminative, reductive, and nonreductive. 4.3 Implications of physicalist theories. 4.4 Motivations for physicalism. 4.5 The argument for physicalism: past scientific success. 4.6 Hempel s dilemma. 4.7 The knowledge argument. 4.8 Absent and inverted qualia. 4.9 Representational, higher-order, and sensorimotor theories of consciousness. Further reading. 5. Reductive Physicalism. Overview. 5.1 Behaviorism. 5.2 Arguments for and against behaviorism. 5.3 The theory model of psychological discourse. 5.4 The psychophysical identity theory. 5.5 Smart s argument for the identity theory: Ockham s razor. 5.6 Lewis s argument for the identity theory: transitivity of identity. 5.7 Reductivism. 5.8 The multilevel worldview. Further reading. 6. Nonreductive Physicalism. Overview. 6.1 The multiple-realizability argument. 6.2 Reductivist responses to the multiple-realizability argument. 6.3 Functionalism. 6.4 Higher-order properties. 6.5 Functionalism versus the identity theory. 6.6 Functionalism and the nonreductivist consensus: realization physicalism. 6.7 Troubles with functionalism: liberalism and qualia. 6.8 The Chinese room. 6.9 The embodied mind objection to functionalism. 6.10 Kim s trilemma. 6.11 Supervenience physicalism. 6.12 The exclusion argument. 6.13 Nonreductive physicalism in perspective. Further reading. 7. Eliminative Physicalism, Instrumentalism, and Anomalous Monism. Overview. 7.1 The argument for eliminativism. 7.2 The argument against eliminativism. 7.3 Instrumentalism. 7.4 Arguments for and against instrumentalism. 7.5 Anomalous monism. 7.6 The argument for anomalous monism. 7.7 Arguments against anomalous monism. Further reading. 8. Dual-Attribute Theory. Overview. 8.1 Dual-attribute theory vs. physicalism and substance dualism. 8.2 Nonorganismic dual-attribute theories. 8.3 Epiphenomenalism. 8.4 The argument for epiphenomenalism. 8.5 Do qualia exist?. 8.6 Dennett s argument against qualia. 8.7 Wittgenstein s private language argument. 8.8 Arguments against epiphenomenalism. 8.9 Explaining emergence: panpsychism, panprotopsychism, psychophysical laws and structure. 8.10 Emergentism. 8.11 Arguments for and against emergentism. 8.12 Dual-attribute theory in perspective. Further reading. 9. Idealism, Neutral Monism, and Mind-Body Pessimism. Overview. 9.1 Varieties of idealism. 9.2 The motivation and argument for ontological idealism. 9.3 Arguments against idealism. 9.4 Neutral monism . 9.5 The arguments for and against neutral monism. 9.6 Mind-body pessimism. Further reading. 10. The Hylomorphic Worldview. Overview. 10.1 What is hylomorphism?. 10.2 The hylomorphic worldview. 10.3 Organic composition and functional analysis. 10.4 The concept of organization. 10.5 Hylomorphism and the multilevel worldview. 10.6 Hylomorphism vs. physicalism and classic emergentism. 10.7 Causal pluralism. 10.8 The argument for hylomorphism. Further reading. 11. A Hylomorphic Theory of Mind. Overview. 11.1 Patterns of social and environmental interaction. 11.2 Rejecting inner minds. 11.3 Externalism. 11.4 Inner experiences versus sensorimotor exploration. 11.5 Disjunctivism. 11.6 Direct access, pattern recognition, and the problem of other minds. 11.7 Psychological language: pattern expression versus the theory model. 11.8 Hylomorphism versus behaviorism. 11.9 Embodiment. 11.10 Hylomorphism and the mental-physical dichotomy. 11.11 Hylomorphism and the problem of mental causation. 11.12 Hylomorphism and the problem of psychophysical emergence. 11.13 Arguments for and against a hylomorphic theory of mind. Further Reading. 12 Persons [Available online at www.wiley.com/go/jaworski]. 13 Free Will [Available online at www.wiley.com/go/jaworski]. Glossary. References. Acknowledgments. Index.

Theseus, Incorporated: Philosophy of Mind, Material Constitution, and the Ontology of the Criminal Law

Recent attacks on corporate criminal liability employ reductionistic reasoning familiar to the exclusion problem of mental causation and eliminative solutions to the problem of material constitution. Recent defenses of non-reductive physicalism and other solutions to the problem of material constitution, however, offer a way for the criminal law to make sense of corporate properties that are multiply realizable in the actions of a corporation’s employees. The criminal law is an appropriate vehicle for correcting replacement-of-employees-survivable, reasons-responsive teleological structures that contribute to the commission of crimes by a corporation’s employees. Group psychology has good claim to be a legitimate special science, and the criminal law presupposes higher-order entities and rejects the sort of exclusion principle that would put different-level entities in competition. However, corporate criminal liability should be subject to a good-faith-compliance (“bad apple”) defense that would preclude corporate punishment if a corporation can show that its policies, custom, climate, and culture did not contribute to a crime. Various objections to corporate criminal liability, rooted in various theories of punishment, can be resisted. The criminal law can act against corporate existence, liberty, property, and reputation just as it can act against these interests of individuals. The teleology of a corporate culture can be deterred, embody moral norms, instantiate virtues and vices, and receive communication just as can the mind of a conscious human being. Corporations with changing culture have the functional equivalent of emotions like remorse. Corporate culture lies downstream of presumably-free human actions in a way analogous to the way character traits for which most libertarians would allow individuals to be responsible lie downstream of presumably-free earlier actions. The genuine existence of corporations and corporate actions, while consistent with corporate rights or corporate “personhood,” does not require them in all contexts and for all purposes. Theories of corporate law such as the nexus of contracts and shareholder-, director-, or stakeholder-primacy, while relevant to the distribution of control and/or benefits within a corporation and the extent to which such law should be mandatory or simply a default rule, do not undermine the justification for corporate punishment here.

Realisierung und mentale Verursachung

AbstractThe realization relation that allegedly holds between mental and physical properties plays a crucial role for so-called 'non-reductive physicalism' because it is supposed to secure both the ontological autonomy of mental properties and their ability to make a causal difference to the course of the causally closed physical world. For a long time however, the nature of the realization relation has largely been ignored in the philosophy of mind. It has only been a couple of years since accounts were proposed according to which realization is understood against the background of the so-called 'causal theory of properties'. At least partially, the hope was to solve the problem of mental causation, in particular the kind of causal exclusion reasoning made famous by Jaegwon Kim, in a way acceptable to non-reductive physicalists. The paper asks whether a proper explication of the realization relation can indeed help explain how physically realized mental properties can be causally efficacious in the causally closed physical world and argues for a negative answer.

Determination, realization and mental causation

How can mental properties bring about physical effects, as they seem to do, given that the physical realizers of the mental goings-on are already sufficient to cause these effects? This question gives rise to the problem of mental causation (MC) and its associated threats of causal overdetermination, mental causal exclusion, and mental causal irrelevance. Some (e.g., Cynthia and Graham Macdonald, and Stephen Yablo) have suggested that understanding mental-physical realization in terms of the determinable/determinate relation (henceforth, ‘determination’) provides the key to solving the problem of MC: if mental properties are determinables of their physical realizers, then (since determinables and determinates are distinct, yet don’t causally compete) all three threats may be avoided. Not everyone agrees that determination can do this good work, however. Some (e.g., Douglas Ehring, Eric Funkhauser, and Sven Walter) object that mental-physical realization can’t be determination, since such realization lacks one or other characteristic feature of determination. I argue that on a proper understanding of the features of determination key to solving the problem of MC these arguments can be resisted.

Explanatory Exclusion and Causal Exclusion

Given Kim’s principle of explanatory exclusion (EE), it follows that in addition to the problem of mental causation, dualism faces a problem of mental explanation. However, the plausibility of EE rests upon the acceptance of a further principle concerning the individuation of explanation (EI). The two methods of defending EI—either by combining an internal account of the individuation of explanation with a semantical account of properties or by accepting an external account of the individuation of explanation—are both metaphysically implausible. This is not, however, to reject the problem of mental explanation, for EE can be replaced with a far weaker principle, which does not require the acceptance of EI, but which generates a similar problem for dualism.

心的因果の問題とシューメイカーの性質の形而上学(&lt;特集&gt;性質の形而上学と因果性(1))

心的因果の問題とシューメイカーの性質の形而上学(&lt;特集&gt;性質の形而上学と因果性(1))

Crimson Brain, Red Mind: Yablo on Mental Causation

Stephen Yablo offers a solution to the problem of mental causation by claiming that the physical is a determinate of the mental's determinable, and therefore the mental and physical do not compete for causal relevance. I present Yablo's solution and argue that the mental-physical relation cannot meet three necessary conditions for determination. That relation fails to meet the requirements that determinates of the same determinable be incompatible and that no property can be a determinate of more than one determinable. Further, the mental and physical do not fall under the same series of scope inclusions as determinables and their determinates must. Yablo's conception of determination might be rendered more general to avoid these objections, but doing so would prevent it from functioning as a competitor to extant theories of the mental-physical relation. Thus, Yablo's solution to the problem of mental causation cannot be both adequately specific and correct.

Mopes, Dopes, and Tropes: A Critique of the Trope Solution to the Problem of Mental Causation

ABSTRACTA popular strategy for resolving Kim's exclusion problem is to suggest that mental and physical property tropes are identical despite the non-identity of the mental and physical properties themselves. I argue that mental and physical tropes can be identified without losing the dispositional character of mentality only if a dual-character hypothesis regarding the intrinsic characters of tropes is endorsed. But even with this assumption, the causal efficacy of the wrong dispositions is secured.