Mental Causation
Mental causation concerns how mental states such as beliefs and desires can cause physical events like bodily movements.
Definition
Mental causation is the causation of effects, especially physical effects, by mental states or events; the central problem is to explain how the mental can be causally efficacious given the causal closure of the physical.
Scope
This area covers the problem of mental causation in a physical world: the causal exclusion argument, anomalous monism and non-reductive physicalism, the proportionality and difference-making approaches, and the bearing of mental causation on free will and agency.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How can mental states cause physical movements in a causally closed physical world?
- Does the causal exclusion argument show that mental properties are epiphenomenal?
- Can the mental be causally relevant without being reducible to the physical?
- What does mental causation imply for free will and agency?
Key concepts
- causal closure
- exclusion principle
- overdetermination
- epiphenomenalism
- proportionality
- difference-making
Key theories
- Causal exclusion argument
- If every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause and the mental is not identical to the physical, mental properties threaten to be excluded as causally redundant.
- Anomalous monism
- Mental events are token-identical to physical events and so cause through their physical descriptions, even though there are no strict psychophysical laws.
History
Davidson's anomalous monism (1970) framed mental causation for token physicalism, but raised the worry that the mental does its causal work only qua physical. Kim (1998) sharpened this into the exclusion problem, prompting replies such as Yablo's proportionality account and List and Menzies's interventionist defense of non-reductive causation.
Debates
- Causal exclusion
- Whether non-reductive mental properties are excluded from causal work by their physical realizers or can avoid exclusion.
- Causal relevance of the mental
- Whether mental properties are causally relevant in their own right or only the physical properties realizing them do the causing.
Key figures
- Jaegwon Kim
- Donald Davidson
- Stephen Yablo
- Christian List
Related topics
Seminal works
- davidson1970
- yablo1992
- kim1998
Frequently asked questions
- Why is mental causation a problem?
- Because if the physical world is causally closed, every bodily movement already has a complete physical cause, which seems to leave no causal work for non-physical mental states to do.