Causal Exclusion without Causal Sufficiency

Synthese 198:10341-10353 (2021)
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Abstract

Some non-reductionists claim that so-called ‘exclusion arguments’ against their position rely on a notion of causal sufficiency that is particularly problematic. I argue that such concerns about the role of causal sufficiency in exclusion arguments are relatively superficial since exclusionists can address them by reformulating exclusion arguments in terms of physical sufficiency. The resulting exclusion arguments still face familiar problems, but these are not related to the choice between causal sufficiency and physical sufficiency. The upshot is that objections to the notion of causal sufficiency can be answered in a straightforward fashion and that such objections therefore do not pose a serious threat to exclusion arguments.

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Bram Vaassen
Umeå University

Citations of this work

Mental Causation for Standard Dualists.Bram Vaassen - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
Halfway Proportionality.Bram Vaassen - 2022 - Philosophical Studies (9):1-21.

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References found in this work

Physicalism, or Something Near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2005 - Princeton University Press.
Thinking About Consciousness.David Papineau - 2002 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
After Physics.David Z. Albert - 2015 - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

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