Problem Of Mental Causation Research Articles

The Epistemological Approach to Mental Causation

Epistemological approaches to mental causation argue that the notorious problem of mental causation as captured in the question “How can irreducible, physically realized, and potentially relational mental properties be causally efficacious in the production of physical effects?” has a very simple solution: One merely has to abandon any metaphysical considerations in favor of epistemological considerations and accept that our explanatory practice is a much better guide to causal relevance than the metaphysical reasoning carried out from the philosophical armchair. I argue that epistemological approaches to mental causation do not enjoy any genuine advantage over theories which treat the problem of mental causation as a genuinely metaphysical problem.

Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Causation

The paper argues for four claims: (1) The problem of mental causation and the argument for its solution in terms of the identity of mental with physical causes are independent of the theory of causation one favours. (2) If one considers our experience of agency as described by folk psychology to be veridical, one is committed to an anti-Humean metaphysics of causation in terms of powers that establish necessary connections. The same goes for functional properties in general. (3) A metaphysics of causation in terms of powers is compatible with physics. (4) If combined with the argument for mental causes being identical with physical causes, that metaphysics leads to a conservative reductionism.

Determinables, Determinates, and Causal Relevance

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.

Samuel Alexander’s Emergentism: Or, Higher Causation for Physicalists

Samuel Alexander was one of the foremost philosophical figures of his day and has been argued by John Passmore to be one of ‘fathers’ of Australian philosophy as well as a novel kind of physicalist. Yet Alexander is now relatively neglected, his role in the genesis of Australian philosophy if far from widely accepted and the standard interpretation takes him to be an anti-physicalist. In this paper, I carefully examine these issues and show that Alexander has been badly, although understandably, misjudged by most of his contemporary critics and interpreters. Most importantly, I show that Alexander offers an ingenious, and highly original, version of physicalism at the heart of which is a strikingly different view of the nature of the microphysical properties and associated view of emergent properties. My final conclusion will be that Passmore is correct in his claims both that Alexander is significant as one of the grandfather’s of Australian philosophy and that he provides a novel physicalist position. I will also suggest that Alexander’s emergentism is important for addressing the so-called ‘problem of mental causation’ presently dogging contemporary non-reductive physicalists.

Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and the Problem of Mental Causation

Non-Cartesian substance dualism (NCSD) maintains that persons or selves are distinct from their organic physical bodies and any parts of those bodies. It regards persons as ‘substances’ in their own right, but does not maintain that persons are necessarily separable from their bodies, in the sense of being capable of disembodied existence. In this paper, it is urged that NCSD is better equipped than either Cartesian dualism or standard forms of physicalism to explain the possibility of mental causation. A model of mental causation adopting the NCSD perspective is proposed which, it is argued, is consistent with all that is currently known about the operations of the human central nervous system, including the brain. Physicalism, by contrast, seems ill-equipped to explain the distinctively intentional or teleological character of mental causation, because it effectively reduces all such causation to ‘blind’ physical causation at a neurological level.

La ineficacia causal de lo mental y el éxito explicativo de la psicología

Las llamadas "estrategias deflacionistas" han constituido una alternativa relativamente popular para enfrentar el problema de la presunta ineficacia causal de los estados mentales en el marco del materialismo no reduccionista. Las propuestas de Lynn Baker y Tyler Burge, desarrolladas en el marco de esta estrategia, coinciden en señalar la necesidad de limitar la importancia de la reflexión metafísica y privilegiar el análisis de la explicación mentalista como fuente para la solución (o "disolución") de los problemas de la causación mental. En contra de esta pretensión, sostenemos que, aun cuando fuera posible reflexionar sobre la causación mental sin recurrir a la metafísica, las dificultades derivadas de lograr una caracterización de lo que constituye una explicación psicológica satisfactoria, sumadas a la competencia explicativa generalizada en la teorización psicológica, resultan obstáculos casi insalvables para estas estrategias.

Resisting ruthless reductionism: A comment on Bickle

Philosophy and Neuroscienceis an unabashed apologetic for reductionism in the philosophy of mind. Although we have learnt much from Bickle's work, we find his central claims unconvincing. Our comments have two central foci:Bickle's account of mental causation, and his single-cell account of consciousness. We argue that Bickle's attempt to solve the problem of mental causation is marred by his refusal to take multiple realizability seriously, and we suggest that his faith in single cell accounts of consciousness is misplaced. We remain unconvinced that the solutions to the problems of mental causation and consciousness are to be found in neuroscience.

The Problem of Mental Causation and the Nature of Properties

Despite the fact that the nature of the properties of causation is rarely discussed within the mental causation debate, the implicit assumption is that they are universals as opposed to tropes. However, in recent literature on the problem of mental causation, a new solution has emerged which aims to address the problem by appealing to tropes. It is argued that if the properties of causation are tropes rather than universals, then a psychophysical reductionism can be advanced which does not face the problem of multiple realizability. However, the 'trope solution' rests upon the assumption that one can combine a trope monism with a type dualism. I argue that such a combination cannot be allowed. Given a plausible interpretation of types within a trope ontology, trope monism in fact entails type monism. Consequently, if one identifies mental tropes with physical tropes, one must also identify mental and physical types and in doing so face a modified version of the multiple realizability argument.

Van Gulick’s solution of the exclusion problem revisited

The anti-reductionist who wants to preserve the causal efficacy of mental phenomena faces several problems in regard to mental causation, i.e. mental events which cause other events, arising from her desire to accept the ontological primacy of the physical and at the same time save the special character of the mental. Psychology tries to persuade us of the former, appealing thereby to the results of experiments carried out in neurology; the latter is, however, deeply rooted in our everyday actions and beliefs and despite the constant opposition of science still very much alive. Difficulties, however, arise from a combination of two claims that are widely accepted in philosophy of mind, namely, physical monism and mental realism, the acceptance of which leads us to the greatest problem of mental causation: the problem of causal exclusion. Since physical causes alone are always sufficient for physical effects mental properties are excluded from causal explanations of our behaviour, which makes them “epiphenomenal”. The article introduces Van Gulick’s solution to the exclusion problem which tries to prove that physical properties, in contrast to mental properties, do not have as much of a privileged status with respect to event causation as usually ascribed. Therefore, it makes no sense to say that physical properties are causally relevant whereas mental properties are not. This is followed by my objection to his argument for levelling mental and physical properties with respect to causation of events. I try to show that Van Gulick’s argument rests on a premise that no serious physicalist can accept.

Two types of mental causation

In this paper I distinguish two types of mental causation, called ‘higher-level causation’ and ‘exploitation’. These notions superficially resemble the traditional problematic notions of supervenient causation and downward causation, but they are different in crucial respects. My new distinction is supported by a radically externalist competitor of the so-called Standard View of mental states, i.e. the view that mental states are brain states. I argue that on the Alternative View, the notions of ‘higher-level causation’ and ‘exploitation’ can in combination dissolve the problem of mental causation as standardly discussed.

Personal Dualism and the Argument from Differential Vagueness

In Causing Actions, Pietroski defends a distinctive view of the relationship between mind and body which he calls Personal Dualism. Central to his defence is the Argument from Differential Vagueness. It moves from the claim that mental events have different vagueness of spatiotemporal boundaries from neural events to the claim that mental events are not identical to neural events. In response, I argue that this presupposes an ontological account of vagueness that there is no reason to believe in this context. I further argue that Pietroski's reasons for rejecting the possibility that mental events are vaguely constituted from neural events are inadequate. I go on to show how Pietroski's Personal Dualism is ill-equipped to deal with the problem of mental causation because of its apparently necessary appeal to ceteris paribus laws.

A “no causal rivalry” solution to the problem of mental causation

Stephen Yablo has recently argued for a novel solution to the mental causation problem: the mental is related to the physical as determinables are related to determinates; determinables are not causal rivals with their determinates; so the mental and the physical are not causal rivals. Despite its attractions the suggestion seems hard to accept. In this paper I develop the idea that mental properties and physical properties are not causal rivals. Start with property dualism, supervenience, multiple realizability, and the claim that no more than one supervenience base for a mental property can be had by a single instance of the mental property. Then a probabilistic account of causation will be unable to certify either mental properties or physical properties as causal factors for effect types. I suggest that this shows that we should not count mental properties as causal rivals with physical properties.

Physicalism and the Problem of Mental Causation

Physicalism and the Problem of Mental Causation

Reply to Noordhof on Mental Causation

In my paper ‘The Properties of Mental Causation’, PQ, 47 (1997), pp. 178–94. I proposed (as others have) a trope-based solution to a problem of mental causation. Noordhof in PQ, 48 (1998), pp. 221–6, has objected that the solution raises new problems just as intractable as the original. Some of his criticisms are based on misunderstandings of the role of tropes in the theory and of my general aim. He does, however, usefully develop an objection I addressed briefly in my paper: even if the trope solution explains how mental properties are causally relevant, does it explain how they are relevant qua mental? That is, does the problem appear again at the level of tropes? This kind of objection can be raised against any proposed solution to the problem, but it depends on the questionable assumption that properties themselves have properties. Noordhof also insists that the trope solution must provide a criterion of trope identity, but this is, I argue, a red herring in this context.

A nonreductivist solution to mental causation

Nonreductive physicalism provides an appealing solution to the nature of mental properties. But its success as a theory of mental properties has been called into doubt by claims that it cannot adequately handle the problems of mental causation, as it leads either to epiphenomenalism or to thoroughgoing overdetermination. I argue that these apparent problems for the nonreductivist are based in fundamental confusion about causation and explanation. I distinguish two different types of explanation and two different relations to which they appeal: causation and determination. I argue that these types of explanation do not compete with one another, nor do these relations jointly result in overdetermination. In closing I develop a nonreductivist solution to mental causation which avoids both the hazards of epiphenomenalism and of overdetermination and so demonstrates a way to save nonreductive physicalism from the problems of mental causation.

Mental causation

I survey recent work on mental causation. The discussion is conducted under the twin presumptions that mental states, including especially what subjects believe and desire, causally explain what subjects do, and that the physical sciences can in principle give a complete explanation for each and every bodily movement. I start with sceptical discussions of various views that hold that, in some strong sense, the causal explanations offered by psychology are autonomous with respect to those offered by the physical sciences. I then proceed to views that see the problem of mental causation as that of identifying where in the physical story about us and our world lie the parts that in effect tell us abut mental causation - the kind of position that is pretty much standard in the cognitive science community - and consider issues raised by various forms of functionalism and externalism. The general thrust of my discussion is sympathetic to the story about mental causation suggested by those type-type versions of the mind-brain identity theory that allow for the possiblity of multiple realisability. I include a brief discussion of how a map-system account of belief, by contrast with a language of thought one, should understand explanations of behaviour in terms of what a subject believes.

Mental Causation: What? Me Worry?

The problem of mental causation, broadly, is that of explaining how it is possible for mental events to enter into causal relations with other events, whether mental or physical. Somewhat more narrowly, it is the problem of explaining how it is possible for mental events to causally affect the (physical) behavior of physical systems. Although the problem was coeval with the mind-body problem (Descartes, arguably, invented both) and was thought to be a special difficulty of Cartesian substance dualism, it has recently re-emerged, with a vengeance, within the largely materialist/physicalist framework which most of us accept today. The problem has been under intense debate during the past dozen years or so; it has been one of the focal points of controversy in recent philosophy of mind and psychology. The outcome of the debate is often thought to have implications for some issues of fundamental importance, such as the reality of the mental, the nature of psychological explanation both in everyday life and in systematic psychology, the status of psychology as a science and its relation to the physical-biological sciences, and our conception of ourselves as deliberators and agents. To some of us, the problem of mental causation, along with the problem of the

Information, Semantics & Epistemology.

Information, semantics and epistemology: introduction, Enrique Villanueva meaning Frederick Dreske ways of establishing harmony, Daniel Dennet reply to Dretske's does meaning matter?, Jerry Fodor explanatory exclusion and the problem of mental causation, Jaegwon Kim content and rules in a natural world, Christopher Peacocke Fodor's character, Stephen Schiffer narrow aspects of intentionality and the information-theoretic approach to content, Hartry Field personal references, Brian Loar content, context and explanation, Dennis Stampe Frege, concepts and the design of language, James Higginbotham individuals in informational and intentional content, John Perry what Davidson should have said, Ernest LePore and Barry Loewer concepts, prototypes and information, Richard Grandy perception and reality, Ernest Sosa artificial intelligence as epistemology?, Marcelo Dascal.

IX—Mental Causation and Mental Reality

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.