Counterfactuals, Overdetermination and Mental Causation

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (3pt3):469-477 (2011)
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Abstract

The Exclusion Problem for mental causation suggests that there is a tension between the claim that the mental causes physical effects, and the claim that the mental does not overdetermine its physical effects. In response, Karen Bennett puts forward an extra necessary condition for overdetermination : if one candidate cause were to occur but the other were not to occur, the effect would still occur. She thus denies one of the assumptions of EP, the assumption that if an effect has two sufficient causes, it is overdetermined. If sound, her argument does two things: it solves EP, and it shows how to use counterfactuals in order to make the notion of overdetermination precise. However, the argument is not sound

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Simona Aimar
University College London

Citations of this work

An equivocation in the simple argument for downward causation.Matthew Rellihan - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (4):249-256.
Exclusion.Daniel Lim - 2015 - In God and Mental Causation. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.

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References found in this work

Physicalism, or Something Near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2005 - Princeton University Press.
Two concepts of causation.Ned Hall - 2004 - In John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals. MIT Press. pp. 225-276.
Physicalism, or Something near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (223):306-310.

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