Andersen, Holly (2014) Mental Causation. Springer Handbook of NeuroEthics, ed. Levy and Clausen.

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Abstract

The problem of mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind concerns the possibility of holding two different views that are in apparent tension. The first is physicalism, the view that there is nothing more to the world than the physical. The second is that the mental has genuine causal efficacy in a way that does not reduce to pure physical particle-bumping. This article provides a historical background to this question, with focus on Davidson’s anomalous monism and Kim’s causal exclusion problem. Responses to causal exclusion are categorized in terms of six different argumentative strategies. In conclusion, caution is advised regarding the inclination to reduce the mental to the physical and sketch a positive direction for substantively characterizing mental causation by recourse to well-confirmed accounts of causation coupled with empirical research.

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Item Type:	Published Article or Volume
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Andersen, Holly holly_andersen@sfu.ca
Keywords:	causation, mind, physicalism, reduction, causal exclusion, anomalous monism
Subjects:	General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
Depositing User:	Dr. Holly Andersen
Date Deposited:	05 Jun 2014 13:07
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2017 20:15
Item ID:	10722
Journal or Publication Title:	Springer Handbook of NeuroEthics, ed. Levy and Clausen
Publisher:	Springer
Subjects:	General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
Date:	2014
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/10722

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