Problems with the “Problems” with Psychophysical Causation

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 32-42
Author(s):  
Noah McKay ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Causal Powers ◽  
Causal Closure ◽  
Physical Causation

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation.

scholarly journals Problems with the "Problems" with Psychophysical Causation

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-43
Author(s):  
Noah McKay
Keyword(s):  
Causal Powers ◽  
Causal Closure ◽  
Physical Causation

In this essay, I defend a mind-body dualism, according to which human minds are immaterial substances that exercise non-redundant causal powers over bodies, against the notorious problem of psychophysical causation. I explicate and reply to three formulations of the problem: (i) the claim that, on dualism, psychophysical causation is inconsistent with physical causal closure, (ii) the claim that psychophysical causation on the dualist view is intolerably mysterious, and (iii) Jaegwon Kim’s claim that dualism fails to account for causal pairings. Ultimately, I conclude that these objections fail and that dualist interactionism is no more problematic or mysterious than physical causation.

Powers, Double Prevention and Mental Causation

Metaphysica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Davies
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Physical Domain ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Causal Closure ◽  
Mental Events

AbstractS. C. Gibb holds that some mental events enable physical events to take place by acting as ‘double preventers’ which prevent other mental events from effecting change in the physical domain. She argues that this enables a dualist account of psychophysical interaction consistent with the causal relevance of mental events, their distinctness from physical events, the causal closure of the physical and the exclusion of systematic overdetermination. While accepting the causal powers metaphysic, this paper argues that:

Could Mental Causation be Invisible?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robb
Keyword(s):  
Human Physiology ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Long Term Results ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Empirical Prediction ◽  
Causal Closure ◽  
Mental Events

E. J. Lowe proposed a model of mental causation on which mental events are emergent, thus exerting a novel, downward causal influence on physical events. Yet on Lowe’s model, mental causation is at the same time empirically undetectable, and in this sense is ‘invisible’. Lowe’s model is ingenious, but I don’t think emergentists should welcome it, for it seems to me that a primary virtue of emergentism is its bold empirical prediction about the long-term results of human physiology. Here I’ll try to restore emergentism’s empirical status, but my broader aim is to use Lowe’s model to explore some central topics in the mental causation debate, including the ‘causal closure’ of the physical world and the nature of causal powers.

The Social Furniture of Virtual Worlds

Disputatio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (55) ◽  
pp. 345-369
Author(s):  
Peter Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Large Class ◽  
Data Structures ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Virtual Objects ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
The Social

AbstractDavid Chalmers argues that virtual objects exist in the form of data structures that have causal powers. I argue that there is a large class of virtual objects that are social objects and that do not depend upon data structures for their existence. I also argue that data structures are themselves fundamentally social objects. Thus, virtual objects are fundamentally social objects.

Must Functionalists Be Aristotelians?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Koons ◽  
Alexander Pruss
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Computing System ◽  
Proper Function ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Normative Language ◽  
Functionalist Theory ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

Functionalism in the theory of mind requires an account of function that has a normative component—mere conditional connection (whether indicative or sub-junctive) is not enough. For instance, a component of a computing system isn’t an adder just in case its output is always or would always be the sum of the inputs, since any computing system in a world with as much indeterminism as ours can err or malfunction. Two general reductions of normative language have been proposed that one might wish to apply to the problem of defining proper function: the evolutionary reduction (Wright, Millikan) and the agential reduction (Plantinga). We argue that whatever the merits of the reductions in other contexts, a functionalist theory of mind that defines proper function in either of these ways must fail. The argument proceeds by first showing the agential reduction is viciously circular in the context of a functionalist theory of agency. Second, if functionalism about mind is true and proper function is reducible evolutionarily, then it is possible to have a situation in which the presence or absence of mental properties depends in an implausibly spooky, acausal way on remote facts. It is plausible that the only currently avail-able way for the functionalist to meet these challenges is to accept irreducible end-directed causal powers of minds and/or their functional parts, in accordance with a broadly Aristotelian tradition.

Causal Powers

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Metaphysics Of Mind

This collection brings together new and important work by both emerging scholars and those who helped shape the field on the nature of causal powers, and the connections between causal powers and other phenomena within metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. Contributors discuss how one who takes causal powers to be in some sense irreducible should think about laws of nature, scientific practice, causation, modality, space and time, persistence, and the metaphysics of mind.

The Ontology of E. J. Lowe’s Substance Dualism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Carruth ◽  
Sophie Gibb
Keyword(s):  
Substance Dualism ◽  
Causal Relata ◽  
Physical Causation

E. J. Lowe’s model of psychophysical causation offers a way of reconciling interactive substance dualism with the causal completeness principle by denying the homogeneity of the causal relata—more specifically, by invoking a distinction between ‘fact causation’ and ‘event causation’. According to Lowe, purely physical causation is event causation, whereas psychophysical causation involves fact causation, allowing the dualist to accept a version of causal completeness which holds that all physical events have only physical causes. But Lowe’s dualist model is only as plausible as the distinction between fact and event causation upon which it rests. In this chapter it is argued that a suitable distinction between fact and event causation is difficult to maintain within most common ontological systems. It is examined whether accepting the four-category ontology that Lowe defends can alleviate the problem, but it is argued that it is not clear that it can.

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