Abstract
Sydney Shoemaker has attempted to save mental causation by a new account of realization. As Brian McLaughlin argues convincingly, the account has to face two major problems. First, realization does not guarantee entailment. So even if mental properties are realized by physical properties, they need not be entailed by them. This is the first, rather general metaphysical problem. A second problem, which relates more directly to mental causation is that Shoemaker must appeal to some kind of proportionality as a constraint on causation in order to avoid redundant mental causation. I argue that, in addition, a “piling problem” arises, since causal powers seem to be bestowed twice. Then, I try to sketch an alternative view of the relation between causal powers and properties—a reductionist view—which fares better on some accounts. But it may have to face another and, perhaps, serious problem, the “problem of the natural unity of properties”. Finally, I will pose a question about the relation between causal powers and causation.
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Notes
See Shoemaker (2001). This is the text that Brian McLaughlin discusses, so I will restrict myself to this text as well.
See Jackson (1998).
McLaughlin (2007, p. 6), emphasis added.
See McLaughlin (2007, p. 11). Shoemaker notes that he is concerned only with the forward-looking causal features of properties, and he acknowledges that properties have backward-looking causal features as well. He remarks that he sees “no need to bring the backward-looking causal features into the account of realization.” (Shoemaker 2001, fn. 8, p. 94). This, however, leaves McLaughlin’s point about (the relation between realization and) entailment intact.
McLaughlin (2007, p. 19).
McLaughlin (2007, p. 21).
See McLaughlin (2007, pp. 14–16).
An entirely different view would be to say that causal powers are not ontologically serious at all. There are merely true attributions of causal powers (causal-powers truths), but the truthmakers are simply property instantiations (facts or tropes). This seems a very promising line of thought to me, but I do not have the space to discuss it here.
It remains to be clarified which kinds of causal powers make for a property, the forward-looking ones or the backward-looking ones or both.
References
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Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience. Mind, 102, 555–586.
Jackson, F. (1998). From metaphysics to ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
McLaughlin, B. (1992). The rise and fall of British Emergentism. In A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, & J. Kim (Eds.), Emergence or reduction? (pp. 49–93). Berlin: de Gruyter.
McLaughlin, B. (2007). Mental causation and Shoemaker-realization. Manuscript.
Shoemaker, S. (2001). Realization and mental causation. In G. Gillett & B. Loewer (Eds.), Physicalism and its discontents (pp. 74–98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yablo, S. (1992). Mental causation. Philosophical Review, 101, 245–280.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Christian Loew for very helpful discussions and comments.
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Hofmann, F. Causal Powers, Realization, and Mental Causation. Erkenn 67, 173–182 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-007-9070-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-007-9070-1