Abstract

The task of assessing the relationship between the manifest and scientific images of the world is particularly troublesome in the philosophy of mind. For we have a great stake in maintaining our common-sense understanding of ourselves. It has appeared to many, however, as if the causal claims implicit in our everyday explanations of human behavior are incompatible with the descriptions of human beings provided by the natural sciences. One source of this appearance of incompatibility has yet to be adequately investigated. The causal explanations of common-sense psychology are compatible with the scientific image of human beings only if we allow what I call a natural overdetermination of events by their causes. In this study, I look at a pair of related principles that make this overdetermination look impossible, and I show how each threatens to undermine the view that there are any mental causes at all. My aim is to remove the stigma from natural overdetermination and make room for a naive realist approach to the philosophy of mind. ;Problems for mental causation are thought to stem from the fact that physical systems are causally complete, in that one can always account for what happens in them without mentioning other kinds of causes. And yet mental states must also interact causally with physical systems if they are to interact causally with anything. But according to what I call the Strong Principle of Non-Overdetermination, the completeness of physical systems entails that there is only physical causation. I show how this principle wreaks havoc on our common-sense view of the world. The intuition behind the Strong Principle of Non-Overdetermination takes a muted but still recognizable form in what I call the Weak Principle of Non-Overdetermination, according to which all causation is ultimately physical causation. I consider a variety of factors that contribute to the apparent plausibility of these principles, but none are such as to require that we accept them. By coming to see that we should reject both principles, we are able to leave our common-sense understanding of mental causation intact with a philosophically clear conscience.