Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Anomalous Monism and Mental Causation: A Husserlian Reflection.Chang Liu - 2023 - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 54 (1):30-55.
    Drawing on material from Husserlian phenomenology, we can reconstruct a realist version of anomalous monism (rAM). According to such a view, mental events are identical to some physical events because they simultaneously exemplify mental and physical properties. rAM would have to confront the charge of epiphenomenalism because Husserl rejects psychophysical causal interaction. And as a form of nonreductive physicalism, rAM also faces the challenge of Kim’s supervenience argument and explanatory exclusion. Utilizing Husserl’s conception of mental motivation and contemporary elaborations of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Multi-Descriptional Physicalism, Level(s) of Being, and the Mind-Body Problem.Savvas Ioannou - 2022 - Dissertation, University of St. Andrews
    The main idea of this thesis is multi-descriptional physicalism. According to it, only physical entities are elements of our ontology, and there are different ways to describe them. Higher-level vocabularies (e.g., mental, neurological, biological) truly describe reality. Sentences about higher-level entities are made true by physical entities. Every chapter will develop multi-descriptional physicalism or defend it from objections. In chapter 1, I will propose a new conceptual reductive account that conceptually reduces higher-level entities to physical entities. This conceptual reductive account (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • If Naturalism is True, then Scientific Explanation is Impossible.Tomas Bogardus - forthcoming - Religious Studies:1-24.
    I begin by retracing an argument from Aristotle for final causes in science. Then, I advance this ancient thought, and defend an argument for a stronger conclusion: that no scientific explanation can succeed, if Naturalism is true. The argument goes like this: (1) Any scientific explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves a natural regularity. Next, I argue that (2) any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Pursuit of Neutrality in the Metaphysics of Emergence.Umut Baysan - 2022 - Analysis 82 (1):159-169.
    What marks emergence as a metaphysically interesting idea is that many macro-level entities and their properties are ontologically and causally autonomous in relation to the micro-level entities and properties they depend on---or so argues Jessica Wilson in Metaphysical Emergence (2021). To do so, she adopts a “metaphysically highly neutral” (p. 32) approach to questions about powers, causation, properties, and laws. That is, while explaining what emergence is and arguing that there is indeed emergence in the natural world, she doesn’t restrict (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Causal Reasoning and Meno’s Paradox.Melvin Chen & Lock Yue Chew - 2020 - AI and Society:1-9.
    Causal reasoning is an aspect of learning, reasoning, and decision-making that involves the cognitive ability to discover relationships between causal relata, learn and understand these causal relationships, and make use of this causal knowledge in prediction, explanation, decision-making, and reasoning in terms of counterfactuals. Can we fully automate causal reasoning? One might feel inclined, on the basis of certain groundbreaking advances in causal epistemology, to reply in the affirmative. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that one still has (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Mary does not learn anything new: Applying Kim's critique of mental causation to the knowledge argument and the problem of consciousness.Adam Khayat - 2019 - Stance 2019 (1):45-55.
    Within the discourse surrounding mind-body interaction, mental causation is intimately associated with non-reductive physicalism. However, such a theory holds two opposing views: that all causal properties and relations can be explicated by physics and that special sciences have an explanatory role. Jaegwon Kim attempts to deconstruct this problematic contradiction by arguing that it is untenable for non-reductive physicalists to explain human behavior by appeal to mental properties. In combination, Kim’s critique of mental causation and the phenomenal concept strategy serves as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Anti-reductionist Interventionism.Reuben Stern & Benjamin Eva - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):241-267.
    Kim’s causal exclusion argument purports to demonstrate that the non-reductive physicalist must treat mental properties (and macro-level properties in general) as causally inert. A number of authors have attempted to resist Kim’s conclusion by utilizing the conceptual resources of Woodward’s interventionist conception of causation. The viability of these responses has been challenged by Gebharter, who argues that the causal exclusion argument is vindicated by the theory of causal Bayesian networks (CBNs). Since the interventionist conception of causation relies crucially on CBNs (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Flat Emergence.Olivier Sartenaer - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (S1):225-250.
    The main contention of this article is that current approaches to ontological emergence are not comprehensive, in that they share a common bias that make them blind to some conceptual space available to emergence. In this article, I devise an alternative perspective on ontological emergence called ‘flat emergence’, which is free of such a bias. The motivation is twofold: not only does flat emergence constitute another viable way to fulfill the initial emergentist promise, but it also allows for making sense (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Reconciling Scientific Naturalism with the Unconditionality of the Moral Point of View: A Sellars-Inspired Account.Dionysis Christias - 2017 - Res Philosophica 95 (1):111-149.
    In this article, I investigate the possibility of reconciling a radically disenchanted scientific naturalism in ontology with the unconditional and non-instrumental character of the moral point of view. My point of departure will be Sellars’s philosophy, which attempts to satisfy both those, seemingly unreconcilable, demands at once. I shall argue that there is a tension between those two demands that finds expression both at the theoretical and practical level, and which is not adequately resolved from a strictly Sellarsian perspective. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Downward causation and supervenience: the non-reductionist’s extra argument for incompatibilism.Joana Rigato - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (3):384-399.
    Agent-causal theories of free will, which rely on a non-reductionist account of the agent, have traditionally been associated with libertarianism. However, some authors have recently argued in favor of compatibilist agent-causal accounts. In this essay, I will show that such accounts cannot avoid serious problems of implausibility or incoherence. A careful analysis of the implications of non-reductionist views of the agent (event-causal or agent-causal as they may be) reveals that such views necessarily imply either the denial of the principle of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Uncoupling Mereology and Supervenience: A Dual Framework for Emergence and Downward Causation.Marta Bertolaso - 2017 - Axiomathes 27 (6):705-720.
    The philosophical discussion of emergence is often focused on properties of ‘wholes’ that are evaluated as emergent with respect to the properties of ‘parts’. Downward causation is, consequently, evaluated as some kind of causal influence of whole properties over parts properties. Yet, several important cases in scientific practice seem to be pursuing hypotheses of parts properties emerging from wholes properties, inverting the instinctive association of emergence with wholes. Furthermore, some areas of reflection which are very important for emergence, e.g., the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Causal Exclusion Argument.Jesper Kallestrup - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 131 (2):459-485.
    Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument says that if all physical effects have sufficient physical causes, and no physical effects are caused twice over by distinct physical and mental causes, there cannot be any irreducible mental causes. In addition, Kim has argued that the nonreductive physicalist must give up completeness, and embrace the possibility of downward causation. This paper argues first that this extra argument relies on a principle of property individuation, which the nonreductive physicalist need not accept, and second that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • The Mind as Neural Software? Understanding Functionalism, Computationalism, and Computational Functionalism.Gualtiero Piccinini - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2):269-311.
    Defending or attacking either functionalism or computationalism requires clarity on what they amount to and what evidence counts for or against them. My goal here is not to evaluate their plausibility. My goal is to formulate them and their relationship clearly enough that we can determine which type of evidence is relevant to them. I aim to dispel some sources of confusion that surround functionalism and computationalism, recruit recent philosophical work on mechanisms and computation to shed light on them, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • Brain: Functionality, Dynamism and Intentionality.Pascual Martínez Freire - 2016 - Studia Poliana 18:13-26.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Brain and Mind.Cees van Leeuwen - 2013 - Philosophia Scientiae 17 (2):71-87.
    Le débat sur les relations esprit–cerveau a été centré sur des questions relatives au libre arbitre. J’examine ce débat et conclus que les neurosciences n’ont pas de raisons méthodologiques, ontologiques ou théoriques convaincantes, pas plus que de raisons empiriques, pour rejeter la notion de libre arbitre. Parallèlement, je reconnais que la question est très controversée, à la fois en science et dans la société. Le problème se situe dans l’incompatibilité entre notions scientifiques du cerveau et notions pré-scientifiques de l’esprit. Par (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Exclusion Problem Meets the Problem of Many Causes.Matthew C. Haug - 2010 - Erkenntnis 73 (1):55-65.
    In this paper I develop a novel response to the exclusion problem. I argue that the nature of the events in the causally complete physical domain raises the “problem of many causes”: there will typically be countless simultaneous low-level physical events in that domain that are causally sufficient for any given high-level physical event. This shows that even reductive physicalists must admit that the version of the exclusion principle used to pose the exclusion problem against non-reductive physicalism is too strong. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Causal Exclusion and Causal Bayes Nets.Alexander Gebharter - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2):353-375.
    In this paper I reconstruct and evaluate the validity of two versions of causal exclusion arguments within the theory of causal Bayes nets. I argue that supervenience relations formally behave like causal relations. If this is correct, then it turns out that both versions of the exclusion argument are valid when assuming the causal Markov condition and the causal minimality condition. I also investigate some consequences for the recent discussion of causal exclusion arguments in the light of an interventionist theory (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • The Super-Overdetermination Problem.John Donaldson - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Glasgow
    I examine the debate between reductive and non-reductive physicalists, and conclude that if we are to be physicalists, then we should be reductive physicalists. I assess how both reductionists and non-reductionists try to solve the mind-body problem and the problem of mental causation. I focus on the problem of mental causation as it is supposed to be faced by non-reductionism: the so-called overdetermination problem. I argue that the traditional articulation of that problem is significantly flawed, and I show how to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Making mechanism interesting.Alex Rosenberg - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):11-33.
    I note the multitude of ways in which, beginning with the classic paper by Machamer et al., the mechanists have qualify their methodological dicta, and limit the vulnerability of their claims by strategic vagueness regarding their application. I go on to generalize a version of the mechanist requirement on explanations due to Craver and Kaplan :601–627, 2011) in cognitive and systems neuroscience so that it applies broadly across the life sciences in accordance with the view elaborated by Craver and Darden (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Emergent Substances, Physical Properties, Action Explanations.Jeff Engelhardt - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (6):1125-1146.
    This paper proposes that if individual X ‘inherits’ property F from individual Y, we should be leery of explanations that appeal to X’s being F. This bears on what I’ll call “emergent substance dualism”, the view that human persons or selves are metaphysically fundamental or “new kinds of things with new kinds of causal powers” even though they depend in some sense on physical particulars :5–23, 2006; Personal agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008). Two of the most prominent advocates of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • A Physicalistic Account of Emergentism.Nicholas Schroeder - 2015 - Axiomathes 25 (4):479-494.
    Jaegwon Kim’s argument against non-reductive physicalism is well known. Many philosophers take Kim’s argument to also apply to emergentism. But this does not necessarily follow. In this paper, I will first briefly show why Kim’s argument against non-reductive physicalism need not apply to emergentism. Next, I will present a physicalistic account of emergentism offered by Jason Megill in his paper “A Defense of Emergence.” This will be followed by an examination of some of the limitations of Megill’s account, in particular, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Levels of organization: a deflationary account.Markus I. Eronen - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (1):39-58.
    The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   38 citations  
  • Two Myths of Psychophysical Reductionism.Restrepo Ricardo - 2012 - Open Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):75.
    This paper focuses on two prominent arguments claiming that physicalism entails reductionism. One is Kim’s causal exclusion argument (CEA), and the other is Papineau’s causal argument. The paper argues that Kim’s CEA is not logically valid and that it is driven by two implausible justifications. One is “Edward’s dictum”, which is alien to non-reductive physicalism and should be rejected. The other is by endorsement of Papineau’s conception of the physical, immanent in Papineau’s causal argument. This argument only arrives at the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Counterfactual Causation and Mental Causation.Jens Harbecke - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (2):363-385.
    Counterfactual conditionals have been appealed to in various ways to show how the mind can be causally efficacious. However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates about causation. The paper first identifies four approaches that seem to commit precisely this mistake. The arguments discussed involve erroneous assumptions about the connection of counterfactual dependence and genuine causation, as well as a disregard of the requisite evaluation conditions of counterfactuals. In a second step, the paper uses (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Psychophysical Reductionism without Type Identities.Justin Tiehen - 2012 - American Philosophical Quarterly 49 (3):223-236.
    Nonreductive physicalists have a causal exclusion problem. Given certain theses all physicalists accept, including psychophysical supervenience and the causal closure of the physical realm, it is difficult to see how irreducible mental phenomena could make a causal difference to the world. The upshot, according to those who push the problem, is that we must embrace reductive physicalism. Only then is mental causation saved. -/- Grant the argument, at least provisionally. Here our focus is the conditional question: What form should one's (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Consciousness, Supervenience, and Identity: Marras and Kim on the Efficacy of Conscious Experience.Liam P. Dempsey - 2012 - Dialogue 51 (3):373-395.
    In this paper, I argue that while supervenience accounts of mental causation in general have difficulty avoiding epiphenomenalism, the situation is particularly bad in the case of conscious experiences since the function-realizer relation, arguably present in the case of intentional properties, does not obtain, and thus, the metaphysical link between supervenient and subvenient properties is absent. I contend, however, that the identification of experiential types with their neural correlates dispels the spectre epiphenomenalism, squares nicely both with the phenomenology of embodiment (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Emergence, Downwards Causation and the Completeness of Physics.David Yates - 2009 - Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234):110-131.
    The 'completeness of physics' is the key premise in the causal argument for physicalism. Standard formulations of it fail to rule out emergent downwards causation. I argue that it must do this if it is tare in a valid causal argument for physicalism. Drawing on the notion of conferring causal power, I formulate a suitable principle, 'strong completeness'. I investigate the metaphysical implications of distinguishing this principle from emergent downwards causation, and I argue that categoricalist accounts of properties are better (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • (1 other version)Questioning the Causal Inheritance Principle.Ivar Hannikainen - 2010 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 25 (3):261-277.
    Mental causation, though a forceful intuition embedded in our commonsense psychology, is difficult to square with the rest of commitments of physicalism about the mind. Advocates of mental causation have found solace in the causal inheritance principle, according to which the mental properties of mental statesshare the causal powers of their physical counterparts. In this paper, I present a variety of counterarguments to causal inheritance and conclude that the conditions for causal inheritance are stricter than what standing versions of said (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Construction area (no hard hat required).Karen Bennett - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (1):79-104.
    A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   175 citations  
  • Levels, orders and the causal status of mental properties.Simone Gozzano - 2008 - European Journal of Philosophy 17 (3):347-362.
    In recent years Jaegwon Kim has offered an argument – the ‘supervenience argument’ – to show that supervenient mental properties, construed as second- order properties distinct from their first-order realizers, do not have causal powers of their own. In response, several philosophers have argued that if Kim’s argument is sound, it generalizes in such a way as to condemn to causal impotency all properties above the level of basic physics. This paper discusses Kim’s supervenience argument in the context of his (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • From nihilism to monism.Jonathan Schaffer - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):175 – 191.
    Mereological nihilism is the view that all concrete objects are simple. Existence monism is the view that the only concrete object is one big simple: the world. I will argue that nihilism culminates in monism. The nihilist demands the simplest sufficient ontology, and the monist delivers it.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   115 citations  
  • Mental causation and mental properties.Michael Esfeld - 2005 - Dialectica 59 (1):5-18.
    The aim of this paper is to defend the causal homogeneity of functional, mental properties against Kim’s attack. It is argued that (a) token identity is sufficient for mental causation, that (b) token identity implies a sort of functional reduction, but that (c) nonetheless functional, mental properties can be causally homogeneous despite being multiply realizable: multiple composition is sufficient for multiple realizability, but multiple composition does not prevent the realizers from having their pertinent effects in common. Thus, the causal exclusion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Exclusion again.Karen Bennett - 2008 - In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 280--307.
    I think that there is an awful lot wrong with the exclusion problem. So, it seems, does just about everybody else. But of course everyone disagrees about exactly _what_ is wrong with it, and I think there is more to be said about that. So I propose to say a few more words about why the exclusion problem is not really a problem after all—at least, not for the nonreductive physicalist. The genuine _dualist_ is still in trouble. Indeed, one of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   77 citations  
  • Emergence: Core ideas and issues.Jaegwon Kim - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):547-559.
    This paper explores the fundamental ideas that have motivated the idea of emergence and the movement of emergentism. The concept of reduction, which lies at the heart of the emergence idea is explicated, and it is shown how the thesis that emergent properties are irreducible gives a unified account of emergence. The paper goes on to discuss two fundamental unresolved issues for emergentism. The first is that of giving a “positive” characterization of emergence; the second is to give a coherent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   150 citations  
  • Emergence and reduction: Reply to Kim.Ausonio Marras - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):561-569.
    In this paper I examine Jaegwon Kim’s view that emergent properties are irreducible to the base properties on which they supervene. Kim’s view assumes a model of ‘functional reduction’ which he claims to be substantially different from the traditional Nagelian model. I dispute this claim and argue that the two models are only superficially different, and that on either model, properly understood, it is possible to draw a distinction between a property’s being reductively identifiable with its base property and a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Kim’s Supervenience Argument and Nonreductive Physicalism.Ausonio Marras - 2007 - Erkenntnis 66 (3):305 - 327.
    The aim of this paper is to show that Kim’s ‚supervenience argument’ is at best inconclusive and so fails to provide an adequate challenge to nonreductive physicalism. I shall argue, first, that Kim’s argument rests on assumptions that the nonreductive physicalist is entitled to regard as question-begging; second, that even if those assumptions are granted, it is not clear that irreducible mental causes fail to␣satisfy them; and, third, that since the argument has the overall structure of a reductio, which of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Against functional reductionism in cognitive science.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 2005 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (3):319 – 333.
    Functional reductionism concerning mental properties has recently been advocated by Jaegwon Kim in order to solve the problem of the 'causal exclusion' of the mental. Adopting a reductionist strategy first proposed by David Lewis, he regards psychological properties as being 'higher-order' properties functionally defined over 'lower-order' properties, which are causally efficacious. Though functional reductionism is compatible with the multiple realizability of psychological properties, it is blocked if psychological properties are subdivided or crosscut by neurophysiological properties. I argue that there is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Determinables, determinates, and causal relevance.Sven Walter - 2007 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2):217-244.
    Mental causation, our mind's ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our ‘manifest image’ of the world. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on Jaegwon Kim's so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, according to which mental events are ‘screened off’ or ‘preempted’ by physical (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Causal modeling in multilevel settings: A new proposal.Thomas Blanchard & Andreas Hüttemann - 2024 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 109 (2):433-457.
    An important question for the causal modeling approach is how to integrate non‐causal dependence relations such as asymmetric supervenience into the approach. The most prominent proposal to that effect (due to Gebharter) is to treat those dependence relationships as formally analogous to causal relationships. We argue that this proposal neglects some crucial differences between causal and non‐causal dependencies, and that in the context of causal modeling non‐causal dependence relationships should be represented as mutual dependence relationships. We develop a new kind (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Interventionism and Supervenience: A New Problem and Provisional Solution.Markus8 Eronen & Daniel Brooks - 2014 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28 (2):185-202.
    The causal exclusion argument suggests that mental causes are excluded in favour of the underlying physical causes that do all the causal work. Recently, a debate has emerged concerning the possibility of avoiding this conclusion by adopting Woodward's interventionist theory of causation. Both proponents and opponents of the interventionist solution crucially rely on the notion of supervenience when formulating their positions. In this article, we consider the relation between interventionism and supervenience in detail and argue that importing supervenience relations into (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Emergence, Closure and Inter-level Causation in Biological Systems.Matteo Mossio, Leonardo Bich & Alvaro Moreno - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (2):153-178.
    In this paper, we advocate the idea that an adequate explanation of biological systems requires appealing to organizational closure as an emergent causal regime. We first develop a theoretical justification of emergence in terms of relatedness, by arguing that configurations, because of the relatedness among their constituents, possess ontologically irreducible properties, providing them with distinctive causal powers. We then focus on those emergent causal powers exerted as constraints, and we claim that biological systems crucially differ from other natural systems in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Rendering Interventionism and Non‐Reductive Physicalism Compatible.Michael Baumgartner - 2013 - Dialectica 67 (1):1-27.
    In recent years, the debate on the problem of causal exclusion has seen an ‘interventionist turn’. Numerous non-reductive physicalists (e.g. Shapiro and Sober 2007) have argued that Woodward's (2003) interventionist theory of causation provides a means to empirically establish the existence of non-reducible mental-to-physical causation. By contrast, Baumgartner (2010) has presented an interventionist exclusion argument showing that interventionism is in fact incompatible with non-reductive physicalism. In response, a number of revised versions of interventionism have been suggested that are compatible with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • And So On. Two Theories of Regress Arguments in Philosophy.Jan Willem Wieland - 2012 - Dissertation,
    This dissertation is on infinite regress arguments in philosophy. Its main goals are to explain what such arguments from many distinct philosophical debates have in common, and to provide guidelines for using and evaluating them. Two theories are reviewed: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Emerging from the causal drain.Richard Corry - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (1):29-47.
    For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If causation is simply counterfactual dependence, for example, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Does the supervenience argument generalize?Suzanne Bliss & Jordi Fernández - 2011 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (4):321-346.
    We evaluate the scope of Jaegwon Kim's “supervenience argument” for reduction. Does its conclusion apply only to psychology, or does it generalize to all the special sciences? The claim that the supervenience argument generalizes to all the special sciences if it goes through for psychology is often raised as an objection to the supervenience argument. We argue that this objection is ambiguous. We distinguish three readings of it and suggest that some of them make it a plausible claim, whereas other (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Tomasello, Vygotsky, and the Phylogenesis of Mind: A Reply to Potapov’s “Objectification and the Labour of the Negative in the Origin of Human Thinking”.Chris Drain - 2021 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 10 (6):23-29.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • (1 other version)Program explanations and causal relevance.Sven Walter - 2005 - Acta Analytica 20 (3):32-47.
    Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit have defended a non-reductive account of causal relevance known as the ‘program explanation account’. Allegedly, irreducible mental properties can be causally relevant in virtue of figuring in non-redundant program explanations which convey information not conveyed by explanations in terms of the physical properties that actually do the ‘causal work’. I argue that none of the possible ways to spell out the intuitively plausible idea of a program explanation serves its purpose, viz., defends non-reductive physicalism against (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Abduction and Modality.Stephen Biggs - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (2):283-326.
    This paper introduces a modal epistemology that centers on inference to the best explanation (i.e. abduction). In introducing this abduction-centered modal epistemology, the paper has two main goals. First, it seeks to provide reasons for pursuing an abduction-centered modal epistemology by showing that this epistemology aids a popular stance on the mind-body problem and allows an appealing approach to modality. Second, the paper seeks to show that an abduction-centered modal epistemology can work by showing that abduction can establish claims about (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • The Supervenience Argument, Overdetermination, and Causal Drainage: Assessing Kim’s Master Argument.Sven Walter - 2008 - Philosophical Psychology 21 (5):673 – 696.
    This paper examines Jaegwon Kim's Supervenience Argument (SA) against nonreductive physicalism, concentrating on Kim's response to two of the most important objections against the SA: First, the Overdetermination Argument, according to which Kim has no convincing argument against the possibility that mental causation might be a case of genuine or systematic overdetermination; second, the Generalization Argument, according to which the SA would entail that causation at any level gives way to causation at the next lower level, thereby leading to an (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • (1 other version)Nonreductive physicalism or emergent dualism : the argument from mental causation.John Ross Churchill - 2010 - In Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The waning of materialism. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Throughout the 1990s, Jaegwon Kim developed a line of argument that what purport to be nonreductive forms of physicalism are ultimately untenable, since they cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of mental states. His argument has received a great deal of discussion, much of it critical. We believe that, while the argument needs some tweaking, its basic thrust is sound. In what follows, we will lay out our preferred version of the argument and highlight its essential dependence on a causal-powers metaphysic, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations