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- Istv (2008). Excluding Exclusion: The Natural(Istic) Dualist Approach. Philosophical Explorations 11 (1):67 – 78.The exclusion problem for mental causation is one of the most discussed puzzles in the mind-body literature. There has been a general agreement among philosophers, especially because most of them are committed to some form of physicalism, that the dualist cannot escape the exclusion problem. I argue that a proper understanding of dualism - its form, commitments, and intuitions - makes the exclusion problem irrelevant from a dualist perspective. The paper proposes a dualist approach, based on a theory of event causation, according to which events are medium-grained, namely parsed into mental and physical property components. A theory of contrastive mental causation is built upon this theory of events, for which the problem of exclusion does not arise.No categoriesIn my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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The exclusion problem for mental causation is one of the most discussed puzzles in the mind-body literature. There has been a general agreement among philosophers, especially because most of them are committed to some form of physicalism, that the dualist cannot escape the exclusion problem. I argue that a proper understanding of dualism --its form, commitments, and intuitions?makes the exclusion problem irrelevant from a dualist perspective. The paper proposes a dualist approach, based on a theory of event causation, according to (...)
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| | Other links: pdfserve.informaworld.com | Scholar | More.. I think that there is an awful lot wrong with the exclusion problem. So, it seems, does just about everybody else. But of course everyone disagrees about exactly _what_ is wrong with it, and I think there is more to be said about that. So I propose to say a few more words about why the exclusion problem is not really a problem after all—at least, not for the nonreductive physicalist. The genuine _dualist_ is still in trouble. Indeed, one of (...)
In this paper I develop a novel response to the exclusion problem. I argue that the nature of the events in the causally complete physical domain raises the “problem of many causes”: there will typically be countless simultaneous low-level physical events in that domain that are causally sufficient for any given high-level physical event (like a window breaking or an arm raising). This shows that even reductive physicalists must admit that the version of the exclusion principle used to pose the (...)
The anti-reductionist who wants to preserve the causal efficacy of mental phenomena faces several problems in regard to mental causation, i.e. mental events which cause other events, arising from her desire to accept the ontological primacy of the physical and at the same time save the special character of the mental. Psychology tries to persuade us of the former, appealing thereby to the results of experiments carried out in neurology; the latter is, however, deeply rooted in our everyday actions and (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: transactionpub.metapress.com springerlink.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: transactionpub.metapress.com springerlink.com | Scholar | More.. I argue that an independently attractive account of causation and causal explanation provides a principled resolution of the exclusion problem.
The issue of downward causation (and mental causation in particular), and the exclusion problem is discussed by taking into account some recent advances in the philosophy of science. The problem is viewed from the perspective of the new interventionist theory of causation developed by Woodward. It is argued that from this viewpoint, a higher-level (e.g., mental) state can sometimes truly be causally relevant, and moreover, that the underlying physical state which realizes it may fail to be such.
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| | Other links: mv.helsinki.fi philsci-archive.pitt.edu | Scholar | More.. This paper is about the causal exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism. Many philosophers think that this argument poses a serious problem for non-reductive theories of the mind — some think that it is decisive against them. In the first part I will outline non-reductive physicalism and the exclusion argument. Then I will distinguish between three versions of the argument that address three different versions of non-reductive physicalism. According to the first, the relation between mental and physical events is token-identity. According (...)
The basic form of the exclusion problem is by now very, very familiar. 2 Start with the claim that the physical realm is causally complete: every physical thing that happens has a sufficient physical cause. Add in the claim that the mental and the physical are distinct. Toss in some claims about overdetermination, give it a stir, and voilá—suddenly it looks as though the mental never causes anything, at least nothing physical. As it is often put, the physical does all (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. “Let us now turn to an argument designed to show that mind-body supervenience itself leads to apparent difficulties with mental causation,” says Kim (1998: 39). This is something of a reversal, for Kim (1984: 103) had earlier argued that supervenient causation is a legitimate form of causation. I prefer Kim’s earlier way of thinking. The problem that Kim, in his more recent writings, sees emerging from supervenience is that of causal exclusion. But I think that supervenience by itself does not (...)
Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument says that if all physical effects have sufficient physical causes, and no physical effects are caused twice over by distinct physical and mental causes, there cannot be any irreducible mental causes. In addition, Kim has argued that the nonreductive physicalist must give up completeness, and embrace the possibility of downward causation. This paper argues first that this extra argument relies on a principle of property individuation, which the nonreductive physicalist need not accept, and second that (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: springerlink.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: springerlink.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. 
