Abstract
Jaegwon Kim argues that unreduced mental causes are excluded from efficacy because physical causes are sufficient in themselves. One response to this causal exclusion argument is to embrace some form of overdetermination. In this paper I consider two forms of overdetermination. Independent overdetermination suggests that two individually sufficient causes bring about one effect. This model fails because the sufficiency of one cause renders the other cause unnecessary. Dependent overdetermination suggests that a physical cause is necessary and sufficient for a given effect, but it necessitates a mental cause of the effect as well. This model fails because the necessity of the mental cause renders the physical cause individually insufficient.
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Notes
Notoriously, the principle of irreducibility and the principle of mental causation have two different readings. For the Kimian, irreducibility implies that mental events are not physical events; while mental causation implies that mental events cause some physical events. For Kim, if a mental property is distinct from a physical property, then a mental event, which is the instantiation of the mental property in an object, must be distinct from a physical event, which is the instantiation of the physical property in an object (Kim 1993a, 35; 2005, 42). I will follow this Kimian articulation of irreducibility and mental causation, since the problem of causal exclusion originates with, and largely centres on, Jaegwon Kim. On the contrary, those sympathetic with Donald Davidson and/or Jerry Fodor contest that mental events are physical events but mental properties of the event are not physical properties of the event (Fodor 1974, 100; Davidson 1993, 3). This Davidsonian/Fodorian position is ruled out a priori by Jaegwon Kim’s model; a fact which has troubled a number of critics (Marras and Yli-Vakkuri 2008). At the same time, however, Jaegwon Kim and a number of others have lodged the quausal problem against the Fodorian/Davidsonian position (Horgan 1989; Sosa 1984, 277–278; Kim 1993b, 21). According to the quausal problem, events cause in virtue of one of their properties. In order to secure mental causation, therefore, mental/physical events must cause their effects in virtue of their mental properties. Since physical causal completeness suggests that events cause in virtue of their physical properties, mental properties of the events are left without any work to do. Therefore, acceptance of the Davidsonian/Fodorian position on irreducibility will not dodge the problems discussed in this paper. Rather, acceptance of the Davidsonian/Fodorian position on irreducibility merely relocates the issue from being a problem where mental events are excluded by physical events to being a problem where mental properties of events are excluded by physical properties of events. For this reason, the difficulties presented in this paper, though framed within a Kimian model of irreducibility, will apply to the Davidsonian/Fodorian model as well.
The firing squad example is commonly used in the literature as an example of what is called independent overdetermination here. There is, however, a sense in which the two bullets are not independent, as the firing of the two bullets both have their origin in the same order issued by the same commander. We could avoid this problem by modifying the example to read that two random murderers decide to shoot the same person at the same time. Alternatively, we could note that although these two gun shots are dependent in the sense that they are caused by the same command, they remain independent in the sense that nothing about the first bullet caused the second bullet to fire, or vice versa. Though they depend on the same origin, they are themselves independent of each other.
The taxonomy of independent overdetermination and dependent determination is not consistently followed in the literature. Jaegwon Kim, for example, distinguishes between genuine cases of overdetermination, and (presumably) non-genuine cases of overdetermination, where genuine cases of overdetermination correspond to independent overdetermination. Similarly, Sven Walter contrasts “genuine overdetermination” with what he calls “systematic overdetermination” (Walter 2008, 678), where genuine overdetermination once again corresponds to independent overdetermination. Alyssa Ney talks of “redundant overdetermination” versus “non-redundant overdetermination” (Ney 2007, 488). Ney then points to those who speak of “pejorative” versus “nonpejorative overdetermination” as well (Ney 2007, 488), where redundant overdetermination corresponds to independent overdetermination. Finally, Jens Harbecke speaks of “exotic overdetermination” versus “pervasive overdetermination” (Harbecke 2008, 28), where exotic overdetermination corresponds to independent overdetermination. I use the independent overdetermination versus dependent overdetermination taxonomy for its informational value.
Perhaps an appeal to a realization relation between the physical cause and the mental event can give us the necessity of the mental event along with the sufficiency of the physical cause (Melnyk 2003; Gillett 2003). For example, if mental properties are the second-order properties of having some particular physical property, then the mental property necessarily exists whenever this particular physical realizing property does (Melnyk 2003, 169). While the realization relation renders the presence of the mental event necessary, there remains reason to doubt the causal efficacy of the mental event. To see why, consider ‘being jade’ as the second-order property of ‘being some particular member of jadeite or nephrite’, which is then realized as, for example, jadeite. Being jadeite, however, “exhaustively fixes [the stone’s] causal potential, so that nothing is left for being jade to do” (Walter 2008, 691). The second-order property, though necessarily present, does not necessarily cause the effect, so we do not have mental causation. We may be able to get around this problem by arguing that the causal powers of the second-order property are the causal powers of its realizer. For example, the second-order property of ‘being jadeite or nephrite’ is realized by an instance of jadeite, so it inherits all of the causal powers of jadeite on this occasion. This solution, which is similar to Kim’s solution, appears to surrender unreduced mental causation. And, of course, the difficulties associated with endorsing reduced mental causation have been noted above.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Neil Campbell, Andrew Bailey, Rockney Jacobsen, William Seager and Ausonio Marras for reading over early versions of this paper and providing valuable comments. I would also like to thank the audience of the 2010 CPA symposium for their valuable feedback on an early version of this paper, as well as Paul Raymont for his helpful commentary during this session. Finally, I would like to thank several anonymous referees for a number of valuable suggestions that have significantly improved this paper. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Moore, D. Causal Exclusion and Dependent Overdetermination. Erkenn 76, 319–335 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9283-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9283-1