One goal of recent philosophy of mind has been to ‘naturalize’ intentionality by showing how a purely physical system could have states that represent or are about items (objects, properties, facts) in the world. The project is reductionist in spirit, the aim being to explain intentional relations—to say what they really are—and to do so in terms that do not themselves utilize intentional or semantic concepts. In this vein there are attempts to explain intentional relations in terms of causal relations, (...) informational relations, teleological or functional relations, relations involving abstract similarity or isomorphism, and various combinations thereof. What makes these accounts naturalistic is the presumed objectivity and scientific respectability of the properties appelated to in the explanans. What makes them all reductive is their shared presumption that intentionality can be explained in terms that have a wider application to intentional systems as well as to systems that have no mental properties at all. (shrink)

Worries about mental causation are prominent in contemporary discussions of the mind and human agency. Originally, the problem of mental causation was that of understanding how a mental substance (thought to be immaterial) could interact with a material substance, a body. Most philosophers nowadays repudiate immaterial minds, but the problem of mental causation has not gone away. Instead, focus has shifted to mental properties. How could mental properties be causally relevant to bodily behavior? How could something mental qua mental cause (...) what it does? After looking at the traditional Problem of Interaction, we survey various versions of the property-based problem and look at proposed solutions to them. (shrink)

I defend the view that strong psychophysical superveniences is necessary and sufficient to explain the causal efficacy of mental properties. I employ factual and counterfactual conditionals as defeasible criteria of causal efficacy. And I also deal with certain problems arising from disjunctive and conjunctive properties.

Donald Davidson has two central aims in his celebrated paper ‘Mental Events.’ First, he argues for the impossibility of ‘strict … laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained’. I shall call the resulting view ‘mental anomalism.’ Second, he argues, based partially on this impossibility, for a version of monism which holds that every mental event is token-identical with some physical event. This second aim puts constraints on how the argument for mental anomalism can plausibly (...) proceed. That argument cannot assume anything that presupposes monism or adversely affects the argument for it. When elaborated, this constraint by itself rules out otherwise attractive conceptions of how the argument for mental anomalism works. More generally, in order to be compelling, the overall argument for anomalous monism ought not to incorporate excessively controversial presuppositions even if they do not themselves beg any questions about monism. The argument needs to be built upon relatively intuitive premises. (shrink)

Reflection on the fine-grained information required for visual guidance of action has suggested that visual content is non-conceptual. I argue that in a common type of visually guided action, namely the use of manipulable artefacts, vision has conceptual content. Specifically, I show that these actions require visual attention and that concepts are involved in directing attention. In acting with artefacts, there is a way of doing it right as determined by the artefact’s conventional use. Attention must reflect our understanding of (...) the function and appropriate ways to use these artefacts, understanding that requires possession of the relevant concept. As a result, we attend to the artefact’s relevant functional properties. In these cases, attention is structured by concepts. This discussion has a bearing on the dual visual stream hypothesis. While it is often held that the two visual streams are functionally independent, the argument of this essay is that the constraints on attention suggest a functional interaction between them. (shrink)

The realization relation that allegedly holds between mental and physical properties plays a crucial role for so-called 'non-reductive physicalism' because it is supposed to secure both the ontological autonomy of mental properties and their ability to make a causal difference to the course of the causally closed physical world. For a long time however, the nature of the realization relation has largely been ignored in the philosophy of mind. It has only been a couple of years since accounts were proposed (...) according to which realization is understood against the background of the so-called 'causal theory of properties'. At least partially, the hope was to solve the problem of mental causation, in particular the kind of causal exclusion reasoning made famous by Jaegwon Kim, in a way acceptable to non-reductive physicalists. The paper asks whether a proper explication of the realization relation can indeed help explain how physically realized mental properties can be causally efficacious in the causally closed physical world and argues for a negative answer. (shrink)

Taking 'rationalized judgments' to be those formed by inference from other judgments, I argue against 'Extreme Determinism': the thesis that theoretical rationalization just is a kind of predetermination of 'conclusion-judgments' by 'premise-judgments'. The argument rests upon two key lemmas: firstly, that a deliberator - in this case, his/her assent to some proposition - to be predetermined (I call this the 'Openness Requirement'): secondly, that a subject's logical insight into his/her premise-judgments must enter into the explanation of any judgment s/he forms (...) that is rationalized by those judgments. My contention is that, given the Openness Requirement, no version of Extreme Determinsim can allow for the role played by logical insight in the rationalization of judgment. I end by indicating briefly how this result might figure in a wider argument against any form of determinism about rationalized judgment, and by explaining why I have focused specifically upon rebutting a deterministic view of theoretical as opposed to 'practical' rationalization. (shrink)

The problem this paper deals with is the problem of how dispositional properties can have causal relevance. In particular, the paper is focused on the question of how dispositions can have causal relevance given that the categorial bases that realise them seem to be sufficient to bring about the effects that dispositions explain. I show first that this problem of exclusion has no general solution. Then, I discuss some particular cases in which dispositions are causally relevant, despite of this exclusion (...) problem. My claim is that dispositions have causal relevance in selection or recruitment processes, when they are converted into teleological functions. (shrink)

Abstract This paper outlines the proposal that narratives can back up the claim that explanations by reasons are causal explanations. While drawing for inspiration on discussions in the philosophy of history, the proposal is here discussed in the context of the classical debate about reasons and causes. The far-reaching agreement of Davidson's causalist theory with an anti-causalist argument is shown to give rise to an epistemological difficulty that is not fixed simply by attending to his understanding of singular causal claims. (...) Elements for the outlined narrativist solution in turn can be discerned in the writings of the anti-causalist opposition and were further developed in the work of a philosopher who turned from anti-causalist to causalist about reasons?albeit not to defend the Davidsonian theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the notion of a “causal power”, particularly as it is relevant to a theory of properties whereby properties are individuated by the causal powers they bestow on the objects that instantiate them. I take as my target certain eliminativist positions that argue that certain kinds of properties (or relations) do not exist because they fail to bestow unique causal powers on objects. But the notion of a causal powers is inextricably bound up with our notion (...) of what an event is, and not only is there disagreement as to which theory of events is appropriate, but on the three prevailing theories, it can be shown that the eliminativists arguments do not follow. (shrink)

Phenomenal character is determined by representational content, which both hallucinatory and veridical experiences can share. But in the case of veridical experience, unlike hallucination, the external objects of experience literally have the properties one is aware of in experience. The representationalist can accept the common factor assumption without having to introduce sensory intermediaries between the mind and the world, thus securing a form of direct realism.

Many think that properties are powers. However, whilst some claim that properties are pure powers, others claim that properties are powerful qualities. In this paper, I argue that the canonical formulation of the powerful qualities view is no different from the pure powers view. Contrary to appearances, the two positions accept the same view of properties. Thus, the debate between them rests on an illusion. I draw out some consequences of this surprising result for issues over property individuation. Along the (...) way, I argue that all existing objections to the powerful qualities view fail. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss Kims powerful explanatory exclusion argument against the causal efficacy of mental properties. Baker and Burge misconstrue Kims challenge if they understand it as being based on a purely metaphysical understanding of causation that has no grounding in an epistemological analysis of our successful scientific practices. As I will show, the emphasis on explanatory practices can only be effective in answering Kim if it is understood as being part of the dual-explanandum strategy. Furthermore, a fundamental (...) problem of the contemporary debate about mental causation consists in the fact that all sides take very different examples to be paradigmatic for the relation between psychological and neurobiological explanations. Even if we should expect some alignment in the explanatory scope of neurobiology and psychology/folk-psychology, there is no reason to expect that all mental explanations are exempted by physical explanations, since they do not in general explain the same phenomena. (shrink)

In this essay, I will suggest ways of improving on Davidson’s conception of the explanatory autonomy of folk psychological explanations. For that purpose, I will appeal to insights from the recent theory of mind debate emphasizing the centrality of various forms of empathy for our understanding of another person’s mindedness. While I will argue that we need to abandon Davidson’s position of anomalous monism, I will also show that my account is fully compatible with Davidson’s non-reductive and interpretationist account of (...) meaning and mental content. Indeed, my account does more justice to the empathic capacities underlying our interpretive capacities, which Davidson himself has to acknowledge in thinking about the constitutive features of thought and meaning. More specifically, I will propose a new way of philosophically safeguarding the causal-explanatory autonomy of our ordinary action explanations by showing how our empathic capacities are involved in epistemically delineating the domain of rational agency. (shrink)

This essay will defend a causal conception of action explanations in terms of an agent’s reasons by delineating a metaphysical and epistemic framework that allows us to view folk psychology as providing us with causal and autonomous explanatory strategies of accounting for individual agency. At the same time, I will calm philosophical concerns about the issue of causal deviance that have been at the center of the recent debates between causalist and noncausalist interpretations of action explanations. For that purpose, it (...) is important to realize that the domain of folk-psychological action explanation is also the domain of skillful and goal-directed bodily movements, a domain to which we have independent epistemic access. (shrink)

Remember how Kim Mental causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993b) used to argue against non-reductive physicalism to the effect that it cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of the mental? The argument was that if physicalists accept the causal closure of the physical, they are faced with an exclusion problem. In the original version of the argument, the dependence holding between the mental and the physical was cashed out in terms of supervenience. Due to the work or Fine and others, we have (...) since come to realize that modal notions are not well-suited to perform the work of properly characterizing dependence. As a consequence of this, an increasingly larger community of contemporary metaphysicians prefer to spell out mental-physical dependence in terms of a non-causal and non-reductive notion called grounding, which is intended to target a particular sort of metaphysical relation that takes us from ontologically less fundamental features of the world to that which is more fundamental. In this paper I join forces with those who think that this shift in focus is on the right track. More specifically, I will argue that the grounding physicalist can solve the exclusion problem in a way that is preferable to the supervenience-based nonreductive physicalist solution, as well as in a way that is compatible with the externalist picture of the mental. (shrink)

In this article, I study, from the point of view of the analytic philosophy of mind, the compatibility of students’ ideas studies with radical constructivism. I demonstrate that RC is based on a psychology of narrow mental states; that is, the idea that the mental content of an individual can be fully characterised without any reference external to her or him. I show that this fact imposes some severe restrictions to SIS to be incorporated into RC. In particular, I argue (...) that only qualitative studies can comply with the requirement of narrowness. Nevertheless, I propose that quantitative works can be employed as sources of types in order to study token actual students. I use this type-token dichotomy to put forward an outline of a theory of the relation between school contents and mental contents. In this view, token mental contents regarding a given topic can be defined, and probed, only by resorting to typical school contents. (shrink)

Emergence is typically discussed in the context of mental properties or the properties of the natural sciences, and accounts of emergence within these contexts tend to look a certain way. The emergent property is taken to emerge instantaneously out of, or to be proximately caused by, complex interaction of colocated entities. Here, however, I focus on the properties instantiated by the elements of certain systems discussed in social ontology, such as being a five-dollar bill or a pawn-movement, and I suggest (...) that these properties emerge in a distinctive way. They emerge in part because of a system that is far beyond and typically before the object that instantiates them. I characterize how emergence occurs in these cases, juxtaposing it with how emergence is typically discussed. I then consider whether their emergence is best framed as weak or strong as these notions are characterized in the literature, and I reveal what debates are central to answering this question. Though I will not resolve these debates, I do show a collection of views that would vindicate these properties as strongly emergent and downwardly causing. (shrink)

Following Quine, Davidson, and Dennett, I take mental states and linguistic meaning to be individuated with reference to interpretation. The regulative principle of ideal interpretation is to maximize rationality, and this accounts for the distinctiveness and autonomy of the vocabulary of agency. This rationality-maxim can accommodate empirical cognitive-psychological investigation into the nature and limitations of human mental processing. Interpretivism is explicitly anti-reductionist, but in the context of Rorty's neo-pragmatism provides a naturalized view of agents. The interpretivist strategy affords a less (...) despondent view of constructive philosophical activity than Rorty's own. (shrink)

The publication of DSM-5 has been accompanied by a fair amount of controversy. Amongst DSM’s most vocal ‘insider’ critics has been Thomas Insel, Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health. Insel has publicly criticised DSM’s adherence to a symptom-based classification of mental disorder, and used the weight of the NIMH to back a rival research strategy aimed at a more biology-based diagnostic classification. This strategy is part of Insel’s vision of a future, more preventative psychiatry in which mental (...) disorders are not only understood as biological disorders of the brain, but also as neurodevelopmental disorders. This paper examines the interest and merit of Insel’s views of mental and neurodevelopmental disorder for the philosophy of psychopathology, with a special focus of his neurodevelopmental model of schizophrenia. Pitman’s ‘moderate materialism’ will be used both as a philosophical lens through which to examine Insel’s position, as well as an example of a philosophical framework that may require updating and revision in the light of moves towards a neurodevelopmental conception of mental disorder. (shrink)

It is argued that the recent revival of theakrasia problem in the philosophy of mind is adirect, albeit unforeseen result of the debate onaction explanation in the philosophy of science. Asolution of the problem is put forward that takesaccount of the intimate links between the problem ofakrasia and this debate. This solution is basedon the idea that beliefs and desires have degrees ofstrength, and it suggests a way of giving a precisemeaning to that idea. Finally, it is pointed out thatthe (...) solution captures certain intuitions of bothSocrates and Aristotle. (shrink)

According to a once influential view of selection, it consists of repeated cycles of replication and interaction. It has been argued that this view is wrong: replication is not necessary for evolution by natural selection. I analyze the nine most influential arguments for this claim and defend the replication–interaction conception of selection against these objections. In order to do so, however, the replication–interaction conception of selection needs to be modified significantly. My proposal is that replication is not the copying of (...) an entity, the replicator, but the copying of a property. Thus, we can have a replication process without there being a replicator that is being copied. (shrink)

A number of philosophers think that, while we cannot explain how the mind is physical, we can know that it is physical, nonetheless. That is, they accept both the explanatory gap between the mental and the physical and ontological physicalism. I argue that this position is unstable. Among other things, I argue that once one accepts the explanatory gap, the main argument for ontological physicalism, the argument from causation, looses its force. For if one takes physicaVnonphysical causation and ontological physicalism (...) to be equally mysterious, as physicalists who accept the explanatory gap are inclined to do, there is little justification for accepting ontological physicalism rather than rejecting the causal closure of the physical. (shrink)

With some regularity, cognitive scientists seem to introduce cognitive values into their explanations. After identifying examples of this practice, I sketch an account of psychological explanation that, under certain conditions, legitimizes value-laden cognitive explanations in which evaluative claims appear in the explanandum. I then present and discuss two applications of the proposed account in order to show its viability and explore its consequences.

The Humean theory of motivation remains the default position in much of the contemporary literature in meta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. Yet despite its widespread support, the theory is implausible as a view about what motivates agents to act. More specifically, my reasons for dissatisfaction with the Humean theory stem from its incompatibility with what I take to be a compelling model of the role of motivating reasons in first-person practical deliberation and third-person action explanations. So after first introducing (...) some assumptions about the nature of agency in section one, I will turn to articulating and defending this account of motivating reasons in sections two through four of the paper. Section five then provides some background on the Humean theory before I argue directly against it in section six and critically examine the leading arguments for the view in section seven. Given limitations of space, however, I save the task of developing a positive anti-Humean view for another occasion. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of mental causation concerns a clash between commonsense and scientific views about the causation of human behaviour. On the one hand, commonsense suggests that our actions are caused by our mental states—our thoughts, intentions, beliefs and so on. On the other hand, neuroscience assumes that all bodily movements are caused by neurochemical events. It is implausible to suppose that our actions are causally overdetermined in the same way that the ringing of a bell may be overdetermined by (...) two hammers striking it at the same time. So how are we to reconcile these two views about the causal origins of human behaviour? One philosophical doctrine effects a nice reconciliation. Neuralism, or the token-identity theory, states that every particular mental event is a neurophysiological event and that every action is a physically specifiable bodily movement. If these identities hold, there is no problem of causal overdetermination: the apparently different causal pathways to the behaviour are actually one and the same pathway viewed from different perspectives. This attractively simple view is enjoying a recent revival in fortunes. (shrink)

<b> </b>Abstract: It is generally accepted that the most serious threat to the possibility of mental causation is posed by the causal self-sufficiency of physical causal processes. I argue, however, that this feature of the world, which I articulate in principle I call Completeness, in fact poses no genuine threat to mental causation. Some find Completeness threatening to mental causation because they confuse it with a stronger principle, which I call Closure. Others do not simply conflate Completeness and Closure, but (...) hold that Completeness, together with certain plausible assumptions, _entails_ Closure. I refute the most fully worked-out version of such an argument. Finally, some find Completeness all by itself threatening to mental causation. I argue that one will only find Completeness threatening if one operates with a philosophically distorted conception of mental causation. I thereby defend what I call naïve realism about mental causation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that Kim’s ‚supervenience argument’ is at best inconclusive and so fails to provide an adequate challenge to nonreductive physicalism. I shall argue, first, that Kim’s argument rests on assumptions that the nonreductive physicalist is entitled to regard as question-begging; second, that even if those assumptions are granted, it is not clear that irreducible mental causes fail to␣satisfy them; and, third, that since the argument has the overall structure of a reductio, which of (...) its various premises one performs the reductio on remains open to debate in an interesting way. I shall finally suggest that the issue of reductive vs. nonreductive physicalism is best contested not in the arena of mental causation but in that in which the issues pertaining to theory and property reduction are currently being debated. (shrink)

Discussion of moral explanation has reached animpasse, with proponents of contemporaryethical naturalism upholding the explanatoryintegrity of moral facts and properties, andopponents – including both anti-realists andnon-naturalistic realists – insisting thatsuch robustly explanatory pretensions as moraltheory has be explained away. I propose thatthe key to solving the problem lies in thequestion whether instances of moral propertiesare causally efficacious. It is argued that,given the truth of contemporary ethicalnaturalism, moral properties are causallyefficacious if the properties of the specialsciences are. Certain objections are rebuttedinvolving (...) the nature of causation, on the onehand, and putative special features of themoral realm, on the other. (shrink)

Action explanations that cite dynamic beliefs and desires cannot be modelled as causal explanations. The contents of dynamic psychological states cannot be treated as the causal antecendents to behaviour. Behavioural patterns cannot be explained in virtue of the patterns of operations performed upon the intentional antecedents to behaviour. Dynamic intentional states are persisting regulatory devices for behaviour that provide couplings with the environment. Behavioural patterns emerge from choice couplings rather than being produced by patterns for operating upon intentional antecendents to (...) behaviour in cognition. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists of religion promise to lay bare the cognitive mechanisms that generate religious beliefs in human beings. Defenders of the debunking argument believe that the cognitive mechanisms studied in this field pose a threat to folk theism. A number of influential responses to the debunking argument rely on making two sets of distinctions: proximate/ultimate explanations and specific/general religious beliefs. I argue, however, that such responses have drawbacks and do not make room for folk theism. I suggest that a detour (...) through the literature in the philosophy of mind regarding the problem of mental causation regarding nonreductive physicalism can provide a way for preserving folk theism without doing violence to the way cognitive science of religion is being practiced today. More specifically, I believe there is a way of responding to the debunking argument that does not require a rejection of the causal premise. (shrink)

Normative links have been considered a problem for reductionist theories of mind, primarily because of lack of isomorphism between intentional and non-intentional conceptual schemes. The paper suggests a more radical tension between normative rationality and scientific naturalism. Normative explanations involve the recognition that agents are also subjects of experience. The distinctive form of intelligibility they bestow requires engagement with such subjectivity.

Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument says that if all physical effects have sufficient physical causes, and no physical effects are caused twice over by distinct physical and mental causes, there cannot be any irreducible mental causes. In addition, Kim has argued that the nonreductive physicalist must give up completeness, and embrace the possibility of downward causation. This paper argues first that this extra argument relies on a principle of property individuation, which the nonreductive physicalist need not accept, and second that (...) once we get clear on overdetermination, there is a way to reject the exclusion principle upon which the causal exclusion argument depends, but third that this should not lead to the belief that mental causation is easily accounted for in terms of counterfactual dependencies. (shrink)

Dual-attribute theories are alleged to face a problem with mental causation which commits them to either epiphenomenalism or overdetermination – neither of which is attractive. The problem, however, is predicated on assumptions about psychophysical relations that dual-attribute theorists are not obliged to accept. I explore one way they can solve the problem by rejecting those assumptions.

I survey recent work on mental causation. The discussion is conducted under the twin presumptions that mental states, including especially what subjects believe and desire, causally explain what subjects do, and that the physical sciences can in principle give a complete explanation for each and every bodily movement. I start with sceptical discussions of various views that hold that, in some strong sense, the causal explanations offered by psychology are autonomous with respect to those offered by the physical sciences. I (...) then proceed to views that see the problem of mental causation as that of identifying where in the physical story about us and our world lie the parts that in effect tell us abut mental causation - the kind of position that is pretty much standard in the cognitive science community - and consider issues raised by various forms of functionalism and externalism. The general thrust of my discussion is sympathetic to the story about mental causation suggested by those type-type versions of the mind-brain identity theory that allow for the possiblity of multiple realisability. I include a brief discussion of how a map-system account of belief, by contrast with a language of thought one, should understand explanations of behaviour in terms of what a subject believes. (shrink)

Since 1969, when Dennett introduced a distinction between personal and sub- personal levels of explanation, many philosophers have used 'sub- personal ' very loosely, and Dennett himself has abandoned a view of the personal level as genuinely autonomous. I recommend a position in which Dennett's original distinction is crucial, by arguing that the phenomenon called mental causation is on view only at the properly personal level. If one retains the commit-' ments incurred by Dennett's early distinction, then one has a (...) satisfactory anti-physicalistic, anti-dualist philosophy of mind. It neither interferes with the projects of sub- personal psychology, nor encourages ; instrumentalism at the personal level. (shrink)

We know what one dualist account of human action looks like, because Descartes gave us one. I want to explore the extent ot which presnet-day accounts of physical action are vulnerable to the charges that may be made against Descartes's dualist account. I once put forward an account of human action, and I have always maintained that my view about the basic shape of a correct ‘theory of aciton’ can be combined with a thoroughgoing opposition to dualism. But the possibility (...) of the combination has been doubted and it will remain doubtful until we have a better understanding of what makes an account objectionably dualistic. In this paper, I hope to deflect some of the criticims aimed what I shall call my account, and to show that when they are turned onto their proper path their actual target is some physicalist accounts. (shrink)

It was only in the last century of the past millennium that the Philosophy of Mind began to flourish as a part of philosophy with some autonomy, enough for students to face examination papers in it by itself. Despite an inclination in some places to give it the name of Philosophical Psychology, it is not any science of the mind. This is not to say that the Philosophy of Mind is unempirical, but that it is like the rest of philosophy (...) in being more taken up with good thinking about experienced facts than with establishing, elaborating or using them. Logic, if not formal logic, is the core of all philosophy, and so of the Philosophy of Mind. The discipline's first question is what it is for a thing to be conscious, whatever its capabilities. The discipline's second question is how a thing's being conscious is related to the physical world, including chairs, brains and bodily movements—the mind-brain or mind-body problem. (shrink)

The paper argues against the widely accepted assumption that the causal laws of (completed) physics, in contrast to those of the special sciences, are essentially strict. This claim played an important role already in debates about the anomalousness of the mental, and it currently experiences a renaissance in various discussions about mental causation, projectability of special science laws, and the nature of physical laws. By illustrating the distinction with some paradigmatic physical laws, the paper demonstrates that only law schemata are (...) strict whereas causal laws are generally non-strict. Several potential replies to this argument are discussed and rejected as unsound. (shrink)