A grounding physicalist solution to the causal exclusion problem

Synthese 198 (12):11775-11795 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,020

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Grounding mental causation.Thomas Kroedel & Moritz Schulz - 2016 - Synthese 193 (6):1909-1923.
Type Physicalism and Causal Exclusion.Joseph A. Baltimore - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Research 38:405-418.
Mental causation as joint causation.Chiwook Won - 2021 - Synthese 198 (5):4917-4937.
Minds, Causes and the Exclusion Argument.Edward Thomas Cox - 2000 - Dissertation, The University of Oklahoma
Why incompatibilism about mental causation is incompatible with non-reductive physicalism.Jonas Christensen & Umut Baysan - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (5):546-568.
Interventionism and the exclusion problem.Yasmin Bassi - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Warwick
Chancy Covariance and The Mind-Body Problem.Benjamin Eva - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 2:177-216.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-08-14

Downloads
132 (#168,638)

6 months
19 (#160,707)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

A nonreductive physicalist libertarian free will.Dwayne Moore - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Type-R Physicalism.Will Moorfoot - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Individualism and the mental.Tyler Burge - 1979 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1):73-122.
Guide to Ground.Kit Fine - 2012 - In Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical grounding: understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 37--80.

View all 84 references / Add more references