Mental Causation for Standard Dualists

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (4):978-998 (2024)
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Abstract

The standard objection to dualist theories of mind is that they seemingly cannot account for the obvious fact that mental phenomena cause our behaviour. On the plausible assumption that all our behaviour is physically necessitated by entirely physical phenomena, there appears to be no room for dualist mental causation. Some argue that dualists can address this problem by making minimal adjustments in their ontology. I argue that no such adjustments are required. Given recent developments in philosophy of causation, it is plausible that mental phenomena cause behaviour in standard dualist ontologies.

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Bram Vaassen
Umeå University

Citations of this work

Against causal arguments in metaphysics.Bram Vaassen - 2024 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):1-13.
On the causal arguments for physicalism.Wenjun Zhang - 2024 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):1-11.
A dualist theory of experience.Bradford Saad - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (3).
Modal Realism and the PSR.Tarik Tijanovic - 2024 - In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder, Facets of Reality — Contemporary Debates. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 772-779.
Dualism leads to Many Minds.Patrick McKee - 2025 - Synthese 205 (2):1-23.

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References found in this work

Physicalism, or Something Near Enough.Jaegwon Kim - 2005 - Princeton University Press.
Consciousness and Fundamental Reality.Philip Goff - 2017 - New York, USA: Oup Usa.
An Argument for the Identity Theory.David K. Lewis - 1966 - Journal of Philosophy 63 (1):17-25.
After Physics.David Z. Albert - 2015 - Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

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