Nonreductive physicalism or emergent dualism? The argument from mental causation
| Abstract | Throughout the 1990s, Jaegwon Kim developed a line of argument that what purport to be nonreductive forms of physicalism are ultimately untenable, since they cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of mental states. His argument has received a great deal of discussion, much of it critical. We believe that, while the argument needs some tweaking, its basic thrust is sound. In what follows, we will lay out our preferred version of the argument and highlight its essential dependence on a causal-powers metaphysic, a dependence that Kim does not acknowledge in his official presentations of the argument.i We then discuss two recent physicalist strategies for preserving the causal efficacy of the mental in the face of this sort of challenge, strategies that (ostensibly) endorse a causal powers metaphysics of properties while offering distinctive accounts of the physical realization of mental properties. We argue that neither picture can be satisfactorily worked out, and that seeing why they fail strongly suggests that nonreductive physicalism and a causal powers metaphysic are not compatible, as our original argument contends. Since we also believe that robust realism concerning mental causation should not be abandoned, we take the argument of this paper to strongly motivate an account on which the mental is unrealized by and ontologically emergent from the physical. In a final section, we sketch what an ontologically emergentist account of the mental might look like. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,705 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesJaegwon Kim (1992). The Nonreductivist's Trouble with Mental Causation. In John Heil & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation. Oxford University Press.
Douglas E. Ehring (2003). Part-Whole Physicalism and Mental Causation. Synthese 136 (3):359-388.
Paul Raymont (2003). Kim on Overdetermination, Exclusion, and Nonreductive Physicalism. In Sven Walter & Heinz-Dieter Heckmann (eds.), Physicalism and Mental Causation. Imprint Academic.
Andrei A. Buckareff (2011). Intralevel Mental Causation. Frontiers of Philosophy in China 6 (3):402-425.
David Pineda (2002). The Causal Exclusion Puzzle. European Journal of Philosophy 10 (1):26-42.
David Pineda (2001). Functionalism and Nonreductive Physicalism. Theoria 16 (40):43-63.
Ausonio Marras (2007). Kim's Supervenience Argument and Nonreductive Physicalism. Erkenntnis 66 (3):305 - 327.
Randolph Clarke (1999). Nonreductive Physicalism and the Causal Powers of the Mental. Erkenntnis 51 (2-3):295-322.
R. Philip Buckley (2001). Physicalism and the Problem of Mental Causation. Journal of Philosophical Research 26 (January):155-174.
Jesper Kallestrup (2006). The Causal Exclusion Argument. Philosophical Studies 131 (2):459-85.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads69 ( #12,635 of 549,198 )Recent downloads (6 months)11 ( #6,121 of 549,198 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
