The Exclusion Problem
Edited by John Donaldson (University of Glasgow)
About this topic
Summary | Traditionally conceived, the exclusion problem is faced by non-reductive materialist views which hold that mental causes are distinct from physical causes. Many think that if materialism is true, then every physical effect must have a sufficient physical cause; but in that case the purportedly distinct mental causes can appear to be "excluded" as genuine causes because the physical causes "already" do all the "causal work". Exclusion can work both ways - some have argued that mental causes exclude physical causes - but most have thought that it is mental causes that are under threat. Some have taken the exclusion argument to demonstrate the falsity of non-reductive materialism, but most have tried to defend non-reductive materialism by contending that the exclusion argument is unsound. |
Key works | The exclusion argument was first proposed by Norman Malcolm (1968). After a brief flurry of interest in Malcolm's argument (e.g. Goldman 1969; Martin 1971), discussion of the issue largely died off until Jaegwon Kim resurrected the exclusion argument and used it as the central component of his sustained critique of non-reductive materialism (1989; 1998; 2005). Subsequent debates have had two main focal points: examining either the "horizontal" or "vertical" aspects of the non-reductive model (this distinction was first drawn in Donaldson 2019). The horizontal approach concerns the nature of the mental-physical causal relation (e.g. Horgan 1997; Crisp & Warfield 2001; Kim 2007; Loewer 2007; List & Menzies 2009; Zhong 2014). The vertical approach concerns the explaining of the holding of the mental-physical supervenience relation (e.g. Yablo 1992; Shoemaker 2007; Paul 2007; Walter 2007; Bennett 2008; Wilson 2009; Pereboom 2011). |
Introductions | Sophie Gibb's introduction to the volume she co-edited with Lowe and Ingthorsson (2013) is a good place to start, and that volume also contains much of the state of the art thinking on the exclusion problem. Kim 2005, or Kim 2007 alongside Loewer 2007, are also a good way in. Enyclopedia entries include Yoo 2007, Robb & Heil 2008 - although these survey the broader issue of mental causation, of which the exclusion problem is just one part. |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Anomalous Monism and Mental Causation (114)
- Causal Overdetermination (157)
- Causal Closure of the Physical (174)
- Downward Causation (234)
- Epiphenomenalism (206)
- Explanatory Role of Content (128)
- Externalism and Mental Causation (67)
- Functionalism and Mental Causation (26)
- Psychological Explanation (596)
- Reasons and Causes (688)
- Supervenient Causation (103)
- The Function of Consciousness (96)
- Mental Causation, Misc (391)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Esa Diaz-Leon Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |