In The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance, Jonardon Ganeri draws on the ancient Indian Cārvāka philosophy to delineate a “transformation” account of strong emergence, and argues that the account adequately addresses the well-known “causal exclusion problem” formulated by Kim. Ganeri moreover suggests that the transformation account is superior to the enactive account of emergence, developed by Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson for the latter merely “sidesteps” the exclusion problem. In this commentary, presented in an “author meets critics” panel (...) at the Pacific APA 2016, I suggest that, contrary to Ganeri’s claim, the enactive account does not merely sidestep the causal exclusion problem—the response the enactive account can offer is actually highly similar to the response offered by the transformation account. (shrink)

Applying a necessary condition communication theory formalism roughly similar to that of Dretske, but focused entirely on the statistical properties of long sequences of signals emitted by the interacting cognitive modules of human biology, we explore the regularities apparent in comorbid psychiatric and chronic physical disorders using an extension of recent perspectives on autoimmune disease. We find that structured psychosocial stress can literally write a distorted image of itself onto child development, resulting in a life course trajectory to characteristic forms (...) of comorbid mind/body dysfunction affecting both dominant and subordinate populations within a pathogenic social hierarchy. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Bird (in: Groff (ed.) Revitalizing causality: Realism about causality in philosophy and social science, 2007 ) has argued that some higher-order properties—which he calls “evolved emergent properties”—can be considered causally efficacious in spite of exclusion arguments. I have previously argued in favour of a similar position. The basic argument is that selection processes do not take physical categorical properties into account. Rather, selection mechanisms are only tuned to what such properties can do, i.e., to their causal (...) powers. This picture seems ultimately untenable in the light of further exclusion problems; but at the same time, it meets our explanatory demands. My purpose is therefore to show that there is a real antinomy with regard to evolved emergent properties. I develop a physicalist exclusion argument and then I go on to consider an argument that seems to establish that evolved emergent properties are causally efficacious, and propose a compatibilist solution. Finally, I very briefly consider what the proposed model may imply for the issue of mental causation. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a genealogical approach for investigating and evaluating conspiracy theories. I argue that conspiracy theories with an epistemically problematic genealogy are (in virtue of that fact) epistemically undermined. I propose that a plausible type of candidate for such conspiracy theories involves what I call ‘second-order conspiracies’ (i.e. conspiracies that aim to create conspiracy theories). Then, I identify two examples involving such conspiracies: the antivaccination industry and the industry behind climate change denialism. After fleshing out the mechanisms (...) by which these industries systematically create and disseminate specific types of conspiracy theories, I examine the implications of my proposal concerning the particularism/generalism debate and I consider the possibility of what I call local generalism. Finally, I tackle three objections. It could be objected that a problematic genealogy for T merely creates what Dentith (2022) calls ‘type-1’ (or ‘weak’) suspicion for T. I also consider a challenge according to which the genealogical method is meta-undermined, as well as an objection from epistemic laundering. (shrink)

This is the sequel to my paper 'Against One Form of Judgment-Determinism' ( IJPS , May 2001), wherein I argued that theoretical rationalization, that is, the forming of judgments by way of inference from other judgments, cannot simply be identified with any kind of predetermination of conclusion-judgments by premise-judgments. Taking 'free' to mean 'neither mechanistically explicable nor random' (where something is mechanistically explicable if and only if it is either predetermined or probabilified in a certain way, and is random if (...) and only if it is not why-explicable at all) I attempt here to establish that all judgments, whether rationalized or not, are necessarily free. (shrink)

In this paper I propose minimal criteria for a successful theory of the mechanisms of motivation, and argue that extant philosophical accounts fail to meet them. Further, I argue that a predictive processing framework gives us the theoretical power to meet these criteria, and thus ought to be preferred over existing theories. The argument proceeds as follows—motivational mental states are generally understood as mental states with the power to initiate, guide, and control action, though few existing theories of motivation explicitly (...) detail how they are meant to explain these functions. I survey two contemporary theories of motivational mental states, due to Wayne Wu and Bence Nanay, and argue that they fail to satisfactorily explain one or more of these functions. Nevertheless, I argue that together, they are capable of giving a strong account of the control function, which competing theories ought to preserve. I then go on to argue that what I call the ‘predictive theory’ of motivational mental states, which makes use of the notion of active inference, is able to explain all three of the key functions and preserves the central insights of Wu and Nanay on control. It thus represents a significant step forward in the contemporary debate. (shrink)

In her ‘Causality and Determination’, Anscombe argues for the strong thesis that despite centuries of philosophical assumption to the contrary, the supposition that causality and necessity have something essential to do with one another is baseless. In this paper, I assess Anscombe’s arguments and endorse her conclusion. I then attempt to argue that her arguments remain highly relevant today, despite the fact that most popular general views of causation today are firmly probabilistic in orientation and thus show no trace of (...) the assumptions Anscombe hoped to undermine. My suggestion is that Anscombe's interests in causality are distinct from those which mostly animate the modern debate about the general nature of causality and that in those specialized areas of philosophy in which those concerns still dominate, one can still see the effects of the fallacies and confusions to which she alerts us. I conclude by offering two possible complementary explanations of the tendency to suppose that causation is a variety of necessitation. (shrink)

Non-causal accounts of action explanation have long been criticized for lacking a positive thesis, relying primarily on negative arguments to undercut the standard Causal Theory of Action The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016). Additionally, it is commonly thought that non-causal accounts fail to provide an answer to Donald Davidson’s challenge for theories of reasons explanations of actions. According to Davidson’s challenge, a plausible non-causal account of reasons explanations must provide a way of connecting an agent’s reasons, not only to what (...) she ought to do, but to what she actually does. That is, such explanations must be truth-apt, not mere rationalizations. My aim in this paper is to show how a non-causal account of action can provide explanations that are truth-apt and genuinely explanatory. To make this argument, I take as a given an account of the practical syllogism discussed by Michael Thompson and Eric Wiland, according to which the practical syllogism is truly practical rather than propositional in nature. Next, I present my primary positive thesis: reasons for actions have explanatory power in virtue of being parts of a structure—the practical syllogism—that contains the action being explained. I then argue that structural action explanations can meet Davidson’s challenge and that they genuinely explain actions. Finally, I conclude by addressing some objections to my argument. (shrink)

According to the causal theory of photography (CTP), photographs acquire their depictive content from the world, whereas handmade pictures acquire their depictive content from their makers’ intentional states about the world. CTP suffers from what I call the Problem of the Missing Agent: it seemingly leaves no room for the photographer to occupy a causal role in the production of their pictures and so is inconsistent with an aesthetics of photography. In this paper, I do three things. First, I amend (...) CTP with Fred Dretske’s distinction between triggering and structuring causes, thereby overcoming the Problem of the Missing Agent. Second, I argue that CTP so amended in fact illuminates two aesthetic interests that we may take in photographs, focussing on photographic portraiture and street photography. Third, I show how reflection on the aesthetics of photography serves to support aesthetic anti-empiricism: the view that the aesthetic value of artworks consists, at least in part, in achievement rather than sensory pleasure. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop and defend a model of causation that allows for dualist mental causation in worlds where the physical domain is physically complete. In Part I, I present the dualist ontology that will be assumed throughout the thesis and identify two challenges for models of mental causation within such an ontology: the exclusion worry and the common cause worry. I also argue that a proper response to these challenges requires a thoroughly lightweight account of causation, i.e. an (...) account that allows for causes to be metaphysically distinct from the phenomena that produce or physically necessitate their effects. In Part II, I critically evaluate contemporary responses to these challenges from the philosophical literature. In particular, I discuss List and Stoljar’s criticism of exclusion worries, Kroedel’s alternative dualist ontology, concerns about the notion of causal sufficiency, and Lowe’s models of dualist mental causation. I argue that none of these proposals provide independent motivation for a thoroughly lightweight account of causation and therefore leave room for improvement. In the first four chapters of Part III, I develop a thoroughly lightweight model of causation, which builds on interventionist approaches to causation. First, I explain how so-called ‘holding fixed’-requirements in standard interventionist accounts stand in the way of dualist mental causation. I then argue that interventionist accounts should impose a robustness condition on causal correlations and that, with this condition in place, the ‘holding fixed’-requirements can be weakened such that they do allow for dualist mental causation. I dub the interventionist model with such weakened ‘holding fixed’-requirements ‘insensitive interventionism’, argue that it can counter the exclusion worry as well as the common cause worry, and explain under which circumstances it would predict there to be dualist mental causation. Importantly, these circumstances might, for all we know, hold in the actual world. In the final three chapters of Part III, I defend insensitive interventionism against some objections. I consider the objection that causation must be productive, the objection that causes must physically necessitate their effects, and the objection that insensitive interventionism is too permissive. I respond by drawing from the literature on causation by absences and on the relation between causation and fundamental physics. Overall, insensitive interventionism performs as well as standard interventionist accounts. I conclude that insensitive interventionism is a credible model of causation. (shrink)

Is there a problem of causal exclusion between micro- and macro-level physical properties? I argue (following Kim) that the sorts of properties that in fact are in competition are macro properties, viz., the property of a (macro-) system of 'having such-and-such macro properties' (call this a 'macro-structural property') and the property of the same system of 'being constituted by such-and-such a micro- structure' (call this a 'micro-structural property'). I show that there are cases where, for lack of reducibility, there is (...) a prima facie intra-level causal competition between the two kinds of properties. The problem can be resolved without giving up on the causal efficacy of the macro-structural properties if we understand instances of macro-structural properties to be parts of micro-structural property instances. The parthood relation between both kinds of property instances can be mapped onto the way physical theory deals with the relation of their descriptions in the framework of perturbation theory. The application of this framework to the problem of emergent properties is discussed. (shrink)

The thesis explores and suggests a solution to a problem that I identify in John McDowell’s and Lynne Rudder Baker’s approaches to mental and intention-dependent (ID) causation in the physical world. I begin (chapter 1) with a brief discussion of McDowell’s non-reductive and anti-scientistic account of mind and world, which I believe offers, through its vision of the unbounded conceptual and the world as within the space of reasons, to liberate and renew philosophy. However, I find an inconsistency in McDowell’s (...) criticism of Davidson’s anomalous monism (chapter 2), stemming from a tension between McDowell’s naïve common sense view of mental causation and an understanding of ordinary physical causation which I think McDowell ought to embrace, which portrays it as both objective, in the sense of being recognition- independent, and as belonging within the space of reasons. The question of the relation between these two concepts of causation is an aspect of the more general question of the relation between the space of reasons and the realm of law. In chapter 3 I begin examining the possibility that Baker’s account of material and property constitution could form the basis of a bridge between the two spaces, and find it generally promising. However, I find that her defence of her version of non-reductive monism against Kim’s causal arguments also runs into problems, which I attribute to the fact that she holds a view of causation as secondary to causal explanation. 2 3 In chapter 4 I develop an account of what I call manifest physical causation – of objective causal relations in the world of Sellars’s manifest image. Based upon McDowell’s transcendental empiricism, which takes the existence of the ordinary perceived world as a condition of the possibility of our possession of conceptual capacities, I contend that it is this picture of reality, rather than that of fundamental physics, that should be the starting point of our theorizing. Causation in the manifest image, I argue, covers the behaviour of the familiar physical world as well as that of its well-understood extensions into the special sciences and engineering. Manifest physical causation, on my account, is productive, acts through mechanisms which are almost entirely mechanical, electromagnetic, and/ or chemical, and is causally closed. In my view, normative, semantic, contentful property-instances are not part of the manifest physical causal nexus. In my final chapter I suggest a modification of Baker’s constitution account, which I call Constituted Causation, whereby higher-level – mental and other ID – causal relations are constituted, in favourable circumstances, by lower-level ones. ID causal relations belong in their own causal nexus but are connected to the manifest physical world through constitution, a relation of unity without identity. Causation and constitution are, respectively, intra- and inter-level relations, and they are non-overlapping. The constituted network of rational and normative relations bears, I believe, striking parallels with McDowell’s view of reality. According to Baker’s view of constitution, the essential properties of constituted entities subsume those of their constituters; extending this to my account enables us to say that the real cause and explanation of someone’s action is that they consciously performed it 4 rather than that certain manifest causal processes occurred at the lower level. (shrink)

Evolution is littered with polyphyletic parallelism: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose consciousness embodies one such example, and represent it here with an equivalence class structure that factors the broad realm of necessary conditions information theoretic realizations of Baars’ global workspace model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, highly tunable, and even simultaneous temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, (...) in fact, expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. The variety of possibilities suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations – bush phylogenies of consciousness pruned by selection and chance extinction. Although few traces of the radiations may be found in the fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind. (shrink)

The nature of experience has been held to be a major reason for accepting the A-theory of time. I argue, however, that experience does not favour the A-theory over the B-theory; and that even if the A-theory were true it would not be possible to perceive the passage of time. The main argument for this draws on the constraint that a satisfactory theory of perception must explain why phenomenal characters map uniquely onto perceived worldly features. Thus, if passage is perceived, (...) it must be explained what makes one phenomenal character rather than another a perception of passage; and it must also be explained why that phenomenal character is a perception of passage rather than of some other feature of the world. I argue that no such explanation can be given, and consequently that passage cannot be perceived. I conclude that the A-theory is rendered unintelligible, and should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument is a general ontological argument, applicable to any properties deemed supervenient on a microproperty basis, including biological properties. It implies that the causal power of any higher-level property must be reducible to the subset of the causal powers of its lower-level properties. Moreover, as Kim’s recent version of the argument indicates, a higher-level property can be causally efficient only to the extent of the efficiency of its micro-basis. In response, I argue that the ontology that aims (...) to capture experimentally based explanations of metabolic control systems and morphogenetic systems must involve causally relevant contextual properties. Such an ontology challenges the exclusiveness of micro-based causal efficiency that grounds Kim’s reductionism, since configurations themselves are inherently causally efficient constituents. I anticipate and respond to the reductionist’s objection that the nonreductionist ontology’s account of causes and inter-level causal relations is incoherent. I also argue that such an ontology is not open to Kim’s overdetermination objection. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a hypothetical model of mental causation that I call semantic pruning and which could be defined as the causal influence of contents and meanings on the spatial configuration of the network of synapses of an individual. I will be guided by two central principles: 1) the causal influence of the mental occurs by virtue of external semantic constraints and consists in the selective activation of certain physical powers, 2) when the selective activation is continual, it (...) triggers a process of synaptic pruning in the neural and neuromuscular network. (shrink)

This paper contrasts biomedical and epidemiological approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of disease, and uses Collingwoods principle of the relativity of causes to show how different approaches focus on different causal factors reflecting different interests. By distinguishing between the etiology of a disease and an epidemic, the paper argues that, from an epidemiological perspective, poverty is an important causal factor in the African AIDS epidemic and that emphasizing this should not be considered incompatible with recognizing the causal necessity of (...) HIV for the AIDS disease. (shrink)

I survey recent work on mental causation. The discussion is conducted under the twin presumptions that mental states, including especially what subjects believe and desire, causally explain what subjects do, and that the physical sciences can in principle give a complete explanation for each and every bodily movement. I start with sceptical discussions of various views that hold that, in some strong sense, the causal explanations offered by psychology are autonomous with respect to those offered by the physical sciences. I (...) then proceed to views that see the problem of mental causation as that of identifying where in the physical story about us and our world lie the parts that in effect tell us abut mental causation - the kind of position that is pretty much standard in the cognitive science community - and consider issues raised by various forms of functionalism and externalism. The general thrust of my discussion is sympathetic to the story about mental causation suggested by those type-type versions of the mind-brain identity theory that allow for the possiblity of multiple realisability. I include a brief discussion of how a map-system account of belief, by contrast with a language of thought one, should understand explanations of behaviour in terms of what a subject believes. (shrink)

Fred Dretske’s account of mental causation, developed in Explaining Behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to Dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. In this article, we argue that Dretske’s view is untenable: On closer examination, the real structuring causes of behavior turn out to be markedly different from Dretske’s meaning (...) facts. Our argument proceeds in three steps. First, we set forth the problem of meaning individuation: We argue that the proposal that meaning facts are structuring causes of behavior commits Dretske to a very fine-grained individuation of meanings that is deeply counterintuitive. In a second step, we show that even these finely individuated meaning facts cannot do the job that they are supposed to do, since information facts—which are constitutive of, but distinct from Dretske’s meaning facts—are better candidates for the role of structuring causes. Finally, we argue that it is not even information facts, but facts of co-instantiation which are the real structuring causes of behavior. In concluding, we briefly consider the options that are left for Dretske if our arguments succeed. (shrink)

Moderate holists like French, Copp :369–388, 2007), Hess, Isaacs and List and Pettit argue that certain collectives qualify as moral agents in their own right, often pointing to the corporation as an example of a collective likely to qualify. A common objection is that corporations cannot qualify as moral agents because they lack free will. The concern is that corporations are effectively puppets, dancing on strings controlled by external forces. The article begins by briefly presenting a novel account of corporate (...) moral agency and then demonstrates that, on this account, qualifying corporations do possess free will. Such entities possess and act from their own “actional springs”, in Haji’s :292–308, 2006) phrase, and from their own reasons-responsive mechanisms. When they do so, they act freely and are morally responsible for what they do. (shrink)

I examine the meaning and merits of a premise in the Exclusion Argument, the causal closure principle that all physical effects have physical causes. I do so by addressing two questions. First, if we grant the other premises, exactly what kind of closure principle is required to make the Exclusion Argument valid? Second, what are the merits of the requisite closure principle? Concerning the first, I argue that the Exclusion Argument requires a strong, “stringently pure” version of closure. The latter (...) employs two qualifications concerning the physical sufficiency and relative proximity of the physical cause required for every physical effect. The second question is addressed in two steps. I begin by challenging the adequacy of the empirical support offered by David Papineau for closure. Then I assess the merits of “level” and “domain” versions of stringently pure closure. I argue that a domain version lacks adequate and non-question-begging support within the context of the Exclusion Argument. And I argue that the level version leads to a puzzling metaphysics of the physical domain. Thus, we have grounds for rejecting the version of closure required for the Exclusion Argument. This means we can resist the Exclusion Argument while avoiding the implausible implications that come with rejecting one of its other premises. That is, because there are grounds to reject causal closure, one can reasonably affirm the non-overdeterminative causal efficacy of conscious mental states while denying that the latter are identical with physical states. (shrink)

Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion begins with the classic neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell in the first part of the paper, then (...) considers recent neo-Russellian versions in the second half. The chances for a revival of neutral monism are probably slight; its key ideas and starting points lie far from those in contemporary philosophy of mind. A better route might be through the philosophy of science and a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

Fred Dretske has recently argued, in a highly original book and a series of articles, that action explanations are a very special species of historical explanation, in opposition to the traditional view that action explanations cite causes of actions, which are identical with bodily movements. His account aims to explain how it is possible for there to be a genuine explanatory role for reasons in a world of causes, and, in particular, in a world in which we have available in (...) principle an explanation for any movement of our bodies in neurophysiological terms. While Dretske draws attention to an important, and overlooked, feature of the form of the explananda of action explanations, he draws the wrong conclusion from it. This paper argues argues that his account of the nature of action explanations, and the role of reasons in explaining behavior, cannot be right. This will force us to re©examine the assumptions that suggest that reason explanations and neurophysiological explanations of our movements cannot coexist. (shrink)

The overarching aim of this essay is to argue that moral realists should be "causalists" or claim that moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. To this end, I engage in two tasks. The first is to develop an account of the sense in which moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. After having sketched the concept of what I call a "configuring" cause, I contend that the exercise of the moral virtues is plausibly viewed as a configuring (...) cause. The second is to show that the causalist position I develop can withstand objections inspired by the work of Robert Audi and Jaegwon Kim. (shrink)

Robert Kane’s libertarian theory is often attacked on the grounds that undetermined self-forming actions are not amenable to contrastive explanation. I propose that we should understand contrastive explanations in terms of an appeal to structuring causes. Doing so reveals that Kane’s claim that there can be no contrastive explanation for self-forming actions is not an unwanted implication of his appeal to indeterminism, but is actually an implication of the fact that the agent’s will is not yet appropriately structured. I then (...) explain how this can assist Kane with the luck objection. (shrink)

Dwayne Moore raises the physical indeterminism luck objection to libertarian theories of free will, which claims that because agents lack control over the indeterministic physical processes that cause choices, agents lack control over those choices. Moore considers the libertarian strategy of identifying these processes with agential states, such as efforts of will, in order to secure agential control over the outcome of these processes. According to Moore, this strategy faces an insurmountable obstacle in the form of a quausation problem. He (...) argues that naturalistically minded libertarians like Kane are committed to the idea that agential states cause what they do only in virtue of their physical properties. This implies that the agential properties are causally irrelevant to the outcome of these indeterministic processes in which case they cannot help to secure agential control over the outcome. I argue that if Kane is a nonreductive physicalist, he has a way of dealing with the quausation problem. (shrink)

Fred Dretske’s teleofunctional theory of content aims to simultaneously solve two ground-floor philosophical puzzles about mental content: the problem of naturalism and the problem of epiphenomenalism. It is argued here that his theory fails on the latter score. Indeed, the theory insures that content can have no place in the causal explanation of action at all. The argument for this conclusion depends upon only very weak premises about the nature of causal explanation. The difficulties Dretske’s theory encounters indicate the severe (...) challenges involved in arriving at a robust naturalistic understanding of content. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the inherent temporal orientation of fear, a matter on which philosophers seem to have contrasting opinions. According to some, fear is inherently present-oriented; others instead maintain that it is inherently future-oriented or that it has no inherent temporal orientation at all. Despite the differences, however, all these views seem to understand fear’s temporal orientation as one-dimensional—that is, as uniquely determined by the represented temporal location of the intentional object of fear. By contrast, we present a (...) view that introduces a two-dimensional account of fear’s temporal orientation. On such a view, we can say that fear is inherently future-oriented, independently of its being about something in the present or in the future. (shrink)

In two recent articles and an earlier book Fred Dretske appeals to a distinction between triggering and structuring causes with the aim of establishing that psychological explanations of behavior differ from non-psychological ones. He concludes that intentional human behavior is triggered by electro-chemical events but structured by representational facts. In this paper I argue that while this underrated causalist position is considerably more persuasive than the standard causalist alternative, Dretske’s account fails to provide us with a coherent analysis of intentional (...) action and its explanation. (shrink)

Adapting Dretske's approach on the necessary conditions for mental process, we apply a communication theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to the global neuronal workspace, the emerging standard model for consciousness. Using an obvious canonical homology with statistical physics, the method, when iterated, generates a fluctuating dynamic threshold recognizably similar to phase transition in a physical system, but constrained to a manifold/atlas structure analogous to a tunable retina. The resulting 'General Cognitive Model' can be extended in a (...) straightforward manner to include the effects of psychosocial stress, culture, or other cognitive modules which constitute a structured, embedding hierarchy of contextual constraints acting at a slower rate than neuronal function itself. This produces a 'biopsychosociocultural' treatment of consciousness that, while otherwise remarkably similar to the standard development, meets compelling philosophical and other objections to brain-only descriptions. (shrink)