Abstract

In this dissertation I defend antireductive physicalism against the charge that it cannot provide a workable account of mental causation. I consider two forms of antireductive physicalism: Donald Davidson's anomalous monism and functionalism. The criticism that has been raised against these views is that, to the extent that they make mental properties irreducible to physical properties, they render mental properties causally impotent with respect to the physical world. ;My response to this attack is two-fold. In the first place I distinguish between classificatory mental properties and non-classificatory mental properties. Both AM and functionalism claim that general classificatory properties like being a desire, being a belief that p, being a pain, etc. cannot be reduced to the properties of physical theory. But how things are classified should not be expected to affect the causal efficacy of those things. Indeed, the classifications of the functionalist are based on the prior causal capacities of the physical events and properties that count as realizations of mentality. Hence, irreducibly mental properties of a classificatory sort do not, but also should not, be expected to have any causal efficacy. ;Non-classificatory mental properties however, like the painfulness of a burn or the itchiness of a mosquito bite ought to be expected to play a causal role if folk psychology is correct. But if these non-classificatory mental properties are identical with instances or "tropes" of physical properties, then there should be no special worry about the causal efficacy of the mental for the antireductive physicalist. Since such a property identification move is open to the antireductive physicalist, I argue that he has no special problem accounting for mental causation despite the protests of Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, Ted Honderich and others.