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- Jesper Kallestrup (2006). The Causal Exclusion Argument. Philosophical Studies 131 (2):459-85.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 once we get clear on overdetermination, there is a way to reject the exclusion principle upon which the causal exclusion argument depends, but third that this should not lead to the belief that mental causation is easily accounted for in terms of counterfactual dependencies.In my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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In this note, I will discuss one issue concerning the main argument of Mind in a Physical World (Kim, 1998), the Causal Exclusion Argument. The issue is whether it is a consequence of the Causal Exclusion Argument that all macro level causation (that is, causation above the level of fundamental physics) is an illusion, with all of the apparent causal powers of mental and other macro properties draining into the bottom level of physics. I will argue that such a consequence (...)
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| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com ingentaconnect.com | 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 (...)
I argue that the completeness of physics is composed of two distinct claims. The first is the commonly made claim that, roughly, every physical event is completely causally determined by physical events. The second has rarely, if ever, been explicitly stated in the literature and is the claim that microphysics provides a complete inventory of the fundamental categories that constitute both the causal features and intrinsic nature of all the events that causally affect the physical universe. After showing that these (...)
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.. In a series of influential articles (Kim 1989b, 1992b, 1993a and 1998), Jaegwon Kim has developed a strong argument against nonreductive physicalism as a plausible solution to mental causation. The argument is commonly called the ’causal exclusion argument’, and it has become, over the years, one of the most serious threats to the nonreductivist point of view.
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com blackwell-synergy.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 (...)
I argue that an independently attractive account of causation and causal explanation provides a principled resolution of the exclusion problem.
Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit have defended a non-reductive account of causal relevance known as the ‘program explanation account’. Allegedly, irreducible mental properties can be causally relevant in virtue of figuring in non-redundant program explanations which convey information not conveyed by explanations in terms of the physical properties that actually do the ‘causal work’. I argue that none of the possible ways to spell out the intuitively plausible idea of a program explanation serves its purpose, viz., defends non-reductive physicalism against (...)
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| | Other links: transactionpub.metapress.com springerlink.com | Scholar | More.. In my reading list
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. 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, (...)
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