Correlation vs. causality: How/why the mind-body problem is hard

Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (4):54-61 (2000)
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Abstract

The Mind/Body Problem is about causation not correlation. And its solution will require a mechanism in which the mental component somehow manages to play a causal role of its own, rather than just supervening superflously on other, nonmental components that look, for all the world, as if they can do the full causal job perfectly well without it. Correlations confirm that M does indeed "supervene" on B, but causality is needed to show how/why M is not supererogatory; and that's the hard part

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Stevan Harnad
McGill University

Citations of this work

Minds, machines and Turing: The indistinguishability of indistinguishables.Stevan Harnad - 2000 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 9 (4):425-445.
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