The concept of mental causation plays a central role in how we think of the mind and of human agency. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Wide causation 1 stephen yablo university of michigan, ann arbor 1. Third, i show that there are alternative nonreductive approaches to mental causation which reject the idea of causal competition, and which thus are able to allow for disproportional mental causation. Project muse determinables, determinates, and causal relevance. On the one hand, the original motivation for physicalism was the need to explain the place of mental causation in the. D, as formulated, gives only necessary conditions, yablo 1992, 253n23 shies away from presenting sufficient conditions, citing difficulties about conjunctive properties and impossible properties. Mental causation, our minds ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our manifest image of the world. More importantly, how can a mental action or event in the mind be the cause of a physical action by the body. At the intersection of philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Indeed, mental causation turns out to be one of the most difficult philosophical. Free will and mental quausation university of toronto. Externalism is true here only in part because knowledge requires veridical contents. The questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are clearly connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be ef.
The core idea that unifies several approaches under the term new compatibilism is that mental and physical phenomena are neither identical nor wholly distinct. Stephen yablo massachusetts institute of technology abstract. Jul 15, 2015 this paper argues that the exclusion problem for mental causation can be solved by a variant of nonreductive physicalism that takes the mental not merely to supervene on, but to be grounded in, the physical. Counterfactual conditionals have been appealed to in various ways to show how the mind can be causally efficacious. Mental causation occurs when a mental property or state causes another property or a behavior. Counterfactual causation and mental causation, philosophia.
Oct 02, 20 counterfactual causation and mental causation counterfactual causation and mental causation harbecke, jens 201002 00. Mindworld interaction is taken for granted in everyday experience and in scientific practice. The metaphysics of mental causation 5 this conviction seems to be deeply embedded in the discussion of mental causation. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. Reply to child by tim crane in the mental causation debate 1995, i pointed out the parallel between the premises in some traditional arguments for physicalism and the assumptions which give rise to the problem of mental causation.
Tim crane 2008 has sustained that yablo s proposal can be easily reject. This book collects together eleven rich and rewarding articles by stephen yablo. Yablo suggests that we can understand the possibility of mental causation by supposing that mental properties determine physical properties, in the classic sense of determination according to. Mental causation martin abreu zavaleta june 12, 2014 1 an argument against mental causation earlier in the course, we examined the argument from causal overdetermination as an argument against interactionist dualism. Recommended textbooks include danial stoljars physicalism, routledge 2010 p, tom cranes elements of mind, oxford university press, 2001 eom, and jaegwon. Introduction are physical events subject to mental influence. Mental causation and the new compatibilism twenty years ago stephen yablo developed his original theory of mental causation, which has drawn much attention ever since. Mental causation stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Folk psychology is almost entirely based on mental causation, so that if it were not real our entire personal and social lives would have to be rethought at the personal, social, and legal levels. An additional qualification is needed to rule out impossible properties as determinates of pain. The problem of mental causation has been with us at least since rene descartes claimed that mind and body are separate substances. The arguments discussed involve erroneous assumptions about the connection.
David robb has argued in the properties of mental causation, the philosophical quarterly, 47 1997, pp. Agreeing that the question which your highness raises is one which can most reasonably be asked, descartes. There is currently no known strategy of response to the metaphysical charge that wide mental states bring in factors too far away to bear on the causation happening here and now. New work from an international team of leading experts. This is what the externalism debate on mental content is. It is argued that a token identity is sufficient for mental causation, that b token identity implies a sort of functional reduction, but that c. Mental causation the minds causal interaction with the world, and in particular, its influence on behavioris central to our conception of ourselves as agents. Nonetheless, token physicalism still faces problems accounting for mental causation. Structures for mental causation connecting repositories. Tim crane remarks on this connection between anomalous monism and a principle of closure in the mental causation debate, proceedings of the aristotelian society. I suppose one may plausibly assert that mental causation is a moorean fact, but deny the same status to the relevant cases of causation by omission. Briefly, call not remembering, not wanting, not feeling, etc mental omissions. Mental causationthe minds causal interaction with the world, and in.
The paper first identifies four approaches that seem to commit precisely this mistake. Its enough to consider the titles of seminal books like c. That problem, in short, is how to account for the commonsense idea that intentional thoughts or intentional mental states are causes of intentional actions. A no causal rivalry solution to the problem of mental causation. The exclusion problem and yablo on mental causation here is one version of the famous exclusion problem.
Imagine a paranoiac who thinks that every time someone is shot, there are in fact two causally independent shooters. This, i argue, is a significant advantage for such noncompetitive accounts. Nonetheless, the free will and mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of. Other rationales for proportionality may fare better. Mental causation internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Yablo s writings on these topics have been deservedly influential, and it is helpful to have these papers collected together in a. Determination, realization and mental causation jessica wilson published online. Mental causation and mental properties mental causation and mental properties esfeld, michael 20050301 00. The pain you feel when you sprain your ankle causes you to open the freezer in. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one.
What is controversial is whether externalism extends to mental states belonging to psychological types which do not have such a requirement, e. Cox1 abstract 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. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on jaegwon kims socalled 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. Free will and mental quausation journal of the american. Pdf this article aims to provide a brief overview of the mental.
Available formats pdf please select a format to send. Even to raise the question suggests what the answer had better be. Consider sophie, a pigeon trained to peck at red triangles to the exclusion of all other colours. The question is almost always asked in terms of how the mind can have a place in the physical world. Week 10 chalmers zombie argument week 11 jacksons knowledge argument.
Identifying a relationship between mental and physical entities that is both consistent with their causal interaction and independently plausible is one of the perennial problems in the philosophy of mind. As mental properties can be also considered as exhaustive disjunctions of physical realizers, the causal relevance of mental properties is also questioned by the widely shared opinion that disjunctive properties can not be causally efficacious. By providing a detailed reconstruction of yablo s approach, this paper first demonstrates that a certain line of critique that has repeatedly been brought forward against yablo. Yablo suggests that we can understand the possibility of mental causation by supposing that mental properties determine physical properties, in the classic sense of determination according to which red determines scarlet. Stephen yablo has recently argued for a novel solution to the mental causation problem. W riting to descartes in 1643, princess elisabeth of bohemia requests an explanation of how mans soul, being only a thinking substance, can determine animal spirits so as to cause voluntary actions. If the body is only physical and material, how can a nonphysical and immaterial mind possibly act on the body. The idea is implicit in yablo 1992a, 1992b, where the relation between mental and physical events is described as metaphysical determination. Counterfactual causation and mental causation springerlink. With so much effort gone into distinguishing these threats in recent years, no one seems to have noticed that they are connected, and in a way that makes them more formidable as a package than taken separately. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma.
A no causal rivalry solution to the problem of mental. Six essays are concerned with modal epistemology, and four with mental causation. Traditionally the problem of mental causation has been that of understanding how a mental substance thought to be immaterial could interact with the body, a physical substance. Tim crane 2008 has sustained that yablos proposal can be easily reject. This chapter presents three lines of response with a chance of success. On the one hand, the original motivation for physicalism was the need to explain the place of mental causation in the physical world. Mental causation and the new compatibilism harbecke. Wide 1causation stephen yablo university of michigan, ann arbor appeared in philosophical perspectives 11 1997, 251281 1. Yablos writings on these topics have been deservedly influential, and it is helpful to have these papers collected together in a single volume. Project muse determinables, determinates, and causal. A structure for mental causation june 28, 2009 abstract this paper suggests a structure that makes room for a class of solutions to the mental causation problem. Proportionality and omissions analysis oxford academic. The dissertation committee for justin thomas tiehen.
However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates about causation. However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates. He specializes in the philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics he is married to fellow mit philosopher sally haslanger. A grounding relation between events can be used to establish a principle that links the causal relations of grounded events to those of grounding events. In the contemporary mental causation debate, there is not one single problem of mental causation, but several. To fully capture the traditional intuition here, we would need to require that a determinable. The problem divides into several distinct subproblems, including the problem of causal exclusion, the problem of anomalism, and the problem of externalism. Mental causation and mental properties, dialectica 10. Stephen yablo, in his paper mental causation 1992, offers an elegant solution to this problem of mental causation one of few causal compatibilist solutions on offer to date. Skinner professor of philosophy at the massachusetts institute of technology mit, and taught previously at the university of michigan, ann arbor. Mental phenomenon an overview sciencedirect topics. Who says the factors making a state wide are too far away. Free download mental causation pdf, common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference.
This is what the externalism debate on mental content is about. Moreover, yablo thinks that not even token mental events are identical to token physical events, so we better explain how mental events can cause physical events. We saw that, if the argument was sound, the only escape for the dualist was some version of epiphenomenalism. Mental causation and consciousness devising an account of mental causation has been, for the past three decades, one of the main preoccupations of philosophers of mind who are committed to physicalism in one form or another. All but one have been published previously, and some of them are already classics. Yablo offers penetrating discussions of such topics as the relation between the mental and the physical, mental causation, the possibility of disembodied existence, the relation between conceivability and possibility, varieties of necessity, and issues in the theory of content arising out of the foregoing. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on jaegwon kims socalled causal. Mental, moral, and epistemic concern causation and the mental. Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation. But if the rationale for believing proportionality is that it allows mental causation and the reason for wanting mental causation is to respect folk intuitions, then this outcome might not be so welcome. Externalism about mental content stanford encyclopedia of. A defence 479 jority of properties are amenable to further determination the large majority of properties turn to be epiphenomenal. Mental causation and consciousness princeton university. This article aims to provide a brief overview of the mental causation problem and its proposed solutions.
Determinables, determinates, and causal relevance1. Despite its attractions the suggestion seems hard to accept. While mental events are one thing, the mental properties in virtue of which those events are efficacious are another. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. How yablo can get proportionality from gunk roy sorensen to escape epiphenomenalism, stephen yablo 1992 appeals to the principle that causes be proportional to their effects. Mental causationthe minds causal interaction with the world, and in particular, its influence on behavioris central to our conception of ourselves as agents. Determinates and their determinables do not compete for causal relevance, so if mental and physical properties are related as determinable and determinates, they should not. One could, of course, reject the conceptual analysis approach and still claim that proportionality solves the problem of profligate omissions. Cause and essence deep blue university of michigan. Deny mental causation and you are denying that anyone ever does anything. A puzzle for physicalism this paper is about a puzzle which lies at the heart of contemporary physicalist theories of mind.
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