Externalism and Mental Causation

In this paper I propose a hypothetical model of mental causation that I call semantic pruning and which could be defined as the causal influence of contents and meanings on the spatial configuration of the network of synapses of an individual. I will be guided by two central principles: 1) the causal influence of the mental occurs by virtue of external semantic constraints and consists in the selective activation of certain physical powers, 2) when the selective activation is continual, it (...) triggers a process of synaptic pruning in the neural and neuromuscular network. (shrink)

This article examines one argument in favour of the position that the relational properties of mental states do not have causal powers over behaviour. This argument states that we establish that the relational properties of mental states do not have causal powers by considering cases where intrinsic properties remain the same but relational properties vary to see whether, under such circumstances, behaviour would ever vary. The individualist argues that behaviour will not vary with relational properties alone, which means that they (...) don’t have causal powers. Four replies are presented which all reject the premise that under such conditions behaviour can never be different, and each of these are refuted. The article concludes by arguing that knowing about the relational properties of mental states gives no predictive advantage over (and, in fact, is predictively worse than) knowing about the intrinsic properties of mental states plus context. (shrink)

In this commentary on Gerard O’Brien’s “How does mind matter? —Solving the content causation problem”, I will investigate the notion of representational content presented in the latter. With this notion, O’Brien aims at giving an explanation of how mind matters in physicalist terms. His argumentation is motivated by, and supposedly directed towards, a problem he calls the content causation problem. Regarding this, I am most interested in reconstructing how his account relates to the presuppositions that make this problem so pressing (...) in philosophical enquiry. O’Brien provides a very interesting answer to the question of “ why mental content matters ”, as motivated by the content causation problem. In particular, I will try to show that by making use of the notion of dispositions, it provides an interesting way of avoiding the presupposition that understanding content causation always requires the reduction of individual relational properties to individual intrinsic properties —probably because it is presupposed that such a reduction is impossible. (shrink)

In cognitive neuroscience and in philosophy of mind, causation is a notion that is immensely important but usually not defined precisely enough to afford careful application. A widespread basic flaw is the confusion of causation with correlation. All empirical knowledge in the sciences is based on observing correlations; assigning causal relations to them or interpreting them causally always requires a theoretical background that is implicitly or (better) explicitly stated. This entails that differing theoretical approaches might lead to different interpretations of (...) correlations. In this special volume we attempt to contribute to an improved understanding of causation, in general, and its relationship to consciousness studies, specifically. (shrink)

Semantic externalism is the view that the meanings of referring terms, and the contents of beliefs that are expressed by those terms, are not fully determined by factors internal to the speaker but are instead bound up with the environment. The debate about semantic externalism is one of the most important but difficult topics in philosophy of mind and language, and has consequences for our understanding of the role of social institutions and the physical environment in constituting language and the (...) mind. In this long-needed book, Jesper Kallestrup provides an invaluable map of the problem. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the theories of descriptivism and referentialism and the work of Frege and Kripke, Kallestrup moves on to analyse Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, Burge’s arthritis argument and Davidson’s Swampman argument. He also discusses how semantic externalism is at the heart of important topics such as indexical thoughts, epistemological skepticism, self-knowledge, and mental causation. Including chapter summaries, a glossary of terms, and an annotated guide to further reading, _Semantic Externalism_ an ideal guide for students studying philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I review a widely accepted argument to the conclusion that the contents of our beliefs, desires and other mental states cannot be causally efficacious in a classical computational model of the mind. I reply that this argument rests essentially on an assumption about the nature of neural structure that we have no good scientific reason to accept. I conclude that computationalism is compatible with wide semantic causal efficacy, and suggest how the computational model might be modified to accommodate this possibility.

We argue that embedded cognition provides an argument against Jaegwon Kim’s neural reduction of mental causation. Because some mental, or at least psychological processes have to be cast in an externalist way, Kim’s argument can be said to lead to the conclusion that mental causation is as safe as any other form of higher-level of causation.

Externalism says that many ordinary mental contents are constituted by relations to things outside the mental subject’s head. An infl uential objection says that externalism is incompatible with our commonsense belief in mental causation, because such extrinsic relations cannot play the important causal role in producing behavior that we ordinarily think mental content plays.An extremely common response is that it is simply obvious, from examples of ordinary causal processes, that extrinsic relations can play the desired causal role. In this paper (...) I argue that such examples show no such thing, and that the only reason to think they do is to endorse an unacceptable principle concerning the sufficient conditions for causal efficacy. Internalists might be wrong that externalism is incompatible with mental causation; but the most common defense against that allegation should not move us at all. (shrink)

Externalism says that many ordinary mental contents are constituted by relations to things outside the mental subject’s head. An infl uential objection says that externalism is incompatible with our commonsense belief in mental causation, because such extrinsic relations cannot play the important causal role in producing behavior that we ordinarily think mental content plays.An extremely common response is that it is simply obvious, from examples of ordinary causal processes, that extrinsic relations can play the desired causal role. In this paper (...) I argue that such examples show no such thing, and that the only reason to think they do is to endorse an unacceptable principle concerning the sufficient conditions for causal efficacy. Internalists might be wrong that externalism is incompatible with mental causation; but the most common defense against that allegation should not move us at all. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has presented several arguments that seek to cast doubt on the idea that cognition can be factorized into internal and external components. In the first section of this paper, I attempt to evaluate these arguments. My conclusion will be that these arguments establish several highly important points, but in the end these arguments fail to cast any doubt either on the idea that cognitive science should be largely concerned with internal mental processes, or on the idea that cognition (...) can be analysed in terms of the existence of a suitable connection between internal and external components. I shall present an argument for the conclusion that cognition involves certain causal processes that are entirely internal. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish two types of mental causation, called 'higher-level causation' and 'exploitation'. These notions superficially resemble the traditional problematic notions of supervenient causation and downward causation, but they are different in crucial respects. My new distinction is supported by a radically externalist competitor of the so-called Standard View of mental states, i.e. the view that mental states are brain states. I argue that on the Alternative View, the notions of 'higher-level causation' and 'exploitation' can in combination dissolve (...) the problem of mental causation as standardly discussed. (shrink)

In ‘Mental Events’ Donald Davidson argued for the anomalism of the mental on the basis of the operation of incompatible constitutive principles in the mental and physical domains. Many years later, he has suggested that externalism provides further support for the anomalism of the mental. I examine the basis for that claim. The answer to the question in the title will be a qualified ‘Yes’. That is an important result in the metaphysics of mind and an interesting consequence of externalism.

Jerry Fodor argues for individualism and for narrow content by way of rejecting an argument based on the conceptual connections between reason-properties and action-properties. In this paper I show that Fodor’s argument fails. He is right that there is a New Logical Connections Argument to be made, and that it does show that water thoughts and XYZ thoughts are not different causal powers with respect to intentional properties of behaviors. However, the New Logical Connections Argument also shows that they are (...) not causal powers at all with respect to intentional properties ofbehaviors, and so Fodor’s argument to individualism and narrow content is unsound. Along the way I show that Fodor’s version of the New Logical Connections argument has serious problems of overkill. (shrink)

In discussions on mental causation and externalism, it is often assumed that extrinsic, or relational, properties cannot have causal efficacy. In this paper I argue that this assumption is based on a category mistake, in that causal efficacy (dependence among events or states of affairs) is confused with causal influence (persistence of and interaction among objects). I then argue that relational properties are indeed causally efficacious, which I explain with the help of Dretske's notion of a 'structuring cause'.

Internalism about mental content is the view that microphysical duplicates must be mental duplicates as well. This dissertation develops and defends the idea that only a strong version of internalism is compatible with our commonsense commitment to mental causation. ;Chapter one defends a novel necessary condition on a property's being causally efficacious---viz., that any property F that is efficacious with respect to event E cannot be instantiated in virtue of any property G that is itself ceteris paribus sufficient for E---and (...) shows that that necessary condition vindicates the idea that externalism is incompatible with our commonsense commitment to mental causation. ;The internalist's core intuition is that only intrinsic properties can be causally efficacious. Chapter two defends that intuition from the common externalist response that extrinsic properties abound. ;A popular "Middle Way" between externalism and internalism holds that although ordinary, "folk-psychological" contents of prepositional attitudes are extrinsic, there exists some other non-folk-psychological kind of content that is intrinsic. Chapter three argues that Jerry Fodor's influential argument for the Middle Way is incoherent. ;Chapter four identifies a weak but popular grade of internalism, endorsed by John Searle among others, and argues that it is untenable. ;The preceding defense of internalism can be believed only if there is something wrong with the canonical arguments for externalism developed by Hillary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and Saul Kripke. My postscript says what I think is wrong with the canonical externalist arguments: they assume the nonexistence of propositions that are truth-evaluable only relative to particular persons, places, or times; while I argue that our commonsense commitment to mental causation requires at least some such "indexical propositions". (shrink)

Mental causes are threatened from two directions: from below, since they would appear to be screened off by lower-order, e.g., neural states; and from within, since they would also appear to be screened off by intrinsic, e.g., syntactical states. A principle needed to parry the first threat -causes should be proportional to their effects- appears to leave us open to the second; for why should unneeded extrinsic detail be any less offensive to proportionality than excess microstructure? I say that the (...) second threat relies on a perversion of proportionality that would lay waste to all causal relations. (shrink)

In the ongoing debate, there are a set of mind-body theories sharing a certain physicalist assumption: whenever a genuine cause produces an effect, the causal efficacy of each of the nonphysical properties that participate in that process is determined by the instantiation of a well-defined set of physical properties. These theories would then insist that a nonphysical property could only be causally efficacious insofar as it is physically implemented. However, in what follows we will argue against the idea that fine-grained (...) mental contents could be physically implemented in the way that functional properties are. Therefore, we will examine the metaphysical conditions under which the implementing mechanism of a particular instance of a functional property may be individuated, and see how genuine beliefs and desires—insofar as they track the world—cannot meet such conditions. (shrink)

By effective thinkers I mean not people who think effectively, but people who understand “how it’s done,” i.e., people not paralyzed by the philosophical problem of epiphenomenalism. I argue that mental causes are not preempted by either neural or narrow content states, and that extrinsically individuated mental states are not out of proportion with their putative effects. I give three examples/models of how an extrinsic cause might be more proportional to an effect than the competition.

Non-reductive Physicalism together with environment-dependence of content has been thought to be incompatible with the claim that beliefs are efficacious partly in virtue of their possession of content, that is, in virtue of their intentional properties. I argue that this is not so. First, I provide a general account of property causation. Then, I explain how, even given the truth of Non-reductive Physicalism and the environment-dependence of content, intentional properties will be efficacious according to this account. I go on to (...) relate my discussion to that concerning whether Anomalous Monism is committed to epiphenomenalism. I close by considering how my proposal suggests we should conceive of different levels of causation in a layered world. (shrink)

Psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (i) that psychological states are individuated by their causal powers, and (ii) that causal powers supervene upon intrinsic physiological state. I distinguish two interpretations of individualism--the 'orthodox' and the 'alternative'--each of which is consistent with these motivating principles. I argue that the alternative interpretation is legitimately individualistic on the grounds that it accurately reflects the actual taxonomic practices of bona fide individualistic sciences. The classification of homeobox genes in developmental genetics provides an (...) illustration. When applied to the taxonomy of psychological kinds, alternative individualism has some surprising consequences. In particular, externalist taxonomies of thought are consistent with the alternative interpretation, and hence consistent with individualism. I conclude, on this basis, that the individualism/externalism dispute which has long preoccupied philosophy of psychology is an empty one. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has defended the claim that psychological theories should appeal to narrow rather than wide intentional properties. One of his arguments relies upon the cross contexts test, a test that purports to determine whether two events have the same causally relevant properties. Critics have charged that this test is too weak, since it counts certain genuinely explanatory relational properties in science as being causally irrelevant. Further, it has been claimed, the test is insensitive to the fact that special scientific (...) laws allow for exceptions which do not undermine those laws. This paper refines the cross contexts test to meet these objections while still allowing it to play its role in Fodor. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the worried view that intentional properties might be epiphenomenal. In naturalizing intentionality we ought to reject both the idea that causal powers of intentional states must supervene on local microstructures, and the idea that local supervenience justifies worries about intentional epiphenomenality since our states could counterfactually lack their intentional properties and yet have the same effects. I contend that what's wrong with even the good guys (e.g. Dennett, Dretske, Allen) is that they implicitly grant (...) that causal powers supervene locally. Finally, I argue that once we see the truth of an anti-individualism which sees cognition as a fundamentally embedded activity, it becomes clear both that granting local supervenience is granting too much, and that intentional properties do work that mere neurological properties could never do. I also suggest how a transcendental argument for intentional potency might go. (shrink)

Owens (1993) argues that one cannot accept the anti-individualistic conclusions of arguments inspired by Twin Earth thought experiments and still maintain that folk psychological states causally explain behavior. Saidel (1994) has argued that Owens' argument illegitimately individuates the contents of folk psychological states widely and causal powers narrowly. He suggests that causal powers may well be wide, and that the conditions that militate in favor of wide content also militate in favor of wide causal powers; mutatis mutandis for narrow content (...) and narrow causal powers. I argue that these suggestions are in error, and hence that Saidel's criticism is ineffective. Owens' original point is therefore likely to stand. (shrink)

The general thrust of the dissertation may be captured by the following two claims: some mental properties play a causal role in the production of purposive behaviour; and both the intrinsic and extrinsic features of those properties may be causally efficacious in the production of such behaviour, is a claim in favour of mental causation; I take to be a claim in favour of what I refer to as an 'anti-individualistic' version of the doctrine. In the first two chapters, I (...) defend , whereas the third chapter supports claim . In the fourth chapter, I argue that the extrinsic, relational features of some mental properties have their own implementation mechanisms by which they control and structure behaviour. The last chapter, which is also the conclusion of the dissertation, is turned towards future research. It offers a general framework from which to investigate the role of semantic properties in the production of behaviour. The chapter also attempts to delineate the general features of an etiological approach to those properties. (shrink)

The traditional picture of psychological explanation is that mental states cause behavior and that explanations which cite these states are causal in character. This venerable position is now being challenged by the recognition that content-bearing mental states are sensitive to external factors in such a way that they might vary across physically identical individuals. A number of philosophers have argued that if an explanatory schema is causal then it must classify explanatory states as the same just in case they share (...) the same causal powers. Some philosophers have also argued that mental states of physically identical individuals must agree in causal powers, leading them to conclude that psychological explanation cannot be causal if externalism if true. Other philosophers have tried to reconcile externalism with causality by maintaining that physically identical individuals may differ in their psychologically relevant causal powers. ;I advance an unexplored way of reconciling externalism with the causality of psychological explanation. Specifically, I question the fundamental assumption that causal explanation requires mental states to be individuated according to their causal powers. This assumption is backed by the presupposition that psychological explanations are offered by appealing to a psychological theory. In an attempt to avoid the principle connecting individuation with causal powers, I examine simulation theory, an alternative account of psychological explanation. According to simulation theory, we explain an individual's behavior by simulating the mental states of that person and running our own cognitive systems "off-line." Similarly, we attribute mental states to another person by imagining ourselves in her position and seeing what mental states our own cognitive systems would generate under those circumstances. ;Given the framework of simulation theory, I argue that individuals may give causal explanations of behavior by envisioning various counterfactual situations within the context of a simulation. I also argue that a simulation-theoretic account of mental state ascription can accommodate context dependence. I conclude that if simulation theory is a viable account of psychological explanation, then causal explanation need not require individuation according to causal powers, and psychological explanation may be causal in the face of externalism. (shrink)

Defends the supervenience of mental content under an externalist view of both contents and the supervenience base.

It is natural to think that our ordinary practices in giving explanations for our actions, for what we do, commit us to claiming that content properties are causally relevant to physical events such as the movements of our limbs and bodies, and events which these in turn cause. If you want to know why my body ambulates across the street, or why my arm went up before I set out, we suppose I have given you an answer when I say (...) that I wanted to greet a friend on the other side of the street, and thought that my arm's going up would be interpreted by him as a signal to stop for a moment. This widely held view might be disputed, but I shall not argue for it in this paper. I want to start with the view that our beliefs and desires and other propositional attitudes are causally relevant, in virtue of their modes and particular contents, to our movements, in order to investigate the consequences for analyses of thought content. For this purpose, I argue, in sec. II, for three necessary conditions on causal relevance: (a) a nomic sufficiency condition, (b) a logical independence condition, and (c) a screening-off condition. In sec. III, I apply these conditions to relational and functional theories of thought content, arguing that these theories cannot accommodate the causal relevance of content properties to our behaviour. I argue further that, on two plausible assumptions, one about the dependence of the mental on the physical, and the other about the availability in principle of causal explanations of our movements in terms of our non-relational physical properties, content properties can be causally relevant only if they are nomically type-correlated, relative to certain circumstances, with non-relational physical properties of our bodies. In sec. IV, I respond to a number of objections that might be advanced against this conclusion. (shrink)

Owens (1993) argues that a tension exists between our commonsense view of mental states and the scientific view that psychological explanations not contradict supervenience. He suggests that one cannot accept the anti-individualistic conclusions of Twin-Earth thought experiments and continue to use folk psychological states to explain behavior. I argue that his conclusions are based on individuating content widely and causal powers narrowly, and that such individuation violates consistency assumptions about the terms of his discussion. Thus, I argue, the tension he (...) points to evaporates when we adopt either a consistently wide view or a consistently narrow view. (shrink)

The paper discusses the criticism of externalist theories of content which, on the basis of "Twin Earth" considerations, claims that such theories cannot make intentional properties supervenient on basic, intrinsic properties of the organism -- while supervenience is a necessary condition for the causal efficacy of any macro-property. The paper accepts the supervenience requirement, understood as arising from a requirement that macro- properties should be explained by micro- properties. It points out, however, that as a consequence of this, the modality (...) in the concept of supervenience should be understood as "nomic", not conceptual. Then the paper attempts to show that the usual thought- experiments do not establish that such variety of supervenience does not hold for psychological properties -- at least with regard to a particular, teleo- functional way of interpreting them. (shrink)

What we do, intentionally, depends upon the intentional contents of our thoughts. For about ten years Fodor has argued that intentional behavior causally depends upon the narrow intentional content of thoughts (not broad). His main reason is a causal powers argument—brains of individuals A and B may differ in broad content, but, if A and B are neurophysically identical, their thoughts cannot differ in causal power, despite differences in broad content. Recently Fodor (Fodor, 1991) presents a new 'modal' version of (...) this causal powers argument. I argue that Fodor's argument (in old or new dress) is a non sequitur. It neither establishes the existence of narrow content nor the need for a content other than broad content to explain intentional behavior. (shrink)

In 'Fodor's Modal Argument' I claim that Fodor's latest defence of narrow content does not work. I claim that Fodor's modal argument is an unsuccessful resurrection of the Logical Connection Argument. Russow claims that my arguments fail because I confuse cause properties with causal powers, focus on events rather than properties, and overlook the fact that Fodor is trying only to explain narrow behavior. In this paper, I plead 'not guilty' to all of Fodor's charges. Narrow content still does not (...) exist. (shrink)

Argument for Epiphenomenalism [I]: (A) Mental event-tokens are identical with physical event-tokens. (B) The causal powers of a physical event are determined only by its physical properties; and (C) mental properties are not reducible to physical properties.