Abstract

We defend J. Kim's principle of explanatory exclusion from a recent criticism advanced by A Marras. We show that the principle follows from a less controversial principle of causal exclusion together with the assumption that claims of explanation are factual. We resolve the tension produced by Marras' argument by drawing a distinction between causal and explanatory relevance. In cross-level explanations (mental-to-physical and physical-to-mental) the explanans property is not causally but explanatorily relevant to the explanandum. This calls for an account of how explanatorily relevant properties are grounded in causally relevant properties which in turn ultimately depend on causally efficacious properties. A.