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Looking at a wide range of causal closure principles of differing strengths, this chapter argues that the stronger principles are less plausible than the weaker while the weaker are less capable of playing an adequate role in any causal closure argument for physicalism. The upshot is that there is plenty of scope for a psychophysical dualist to accept a moderately strong principle of physical causal closure while also advocating a genuine and autonomous causal role for mental states in the genesis of intended physical behaviour. Such a dualist may consistently espouse a form of emergentism in the philosophy of mind, according to which non-physical mental states are causally autonomous and yet are themselves ultimately the products of prior physical evolution.

“Why There Are No Laws in the Special Sciences: Three Arguments” offers three arguments explaining why there are no laws, or “strict” laws, in the special sciences. The first of the arguments begins with a consideration of Donald Davidson's argument for his anomalism of the mental, the thesis that there are no laws about intentional mental phenomena. The second argument builds on some of J.J.C. Smart's observations concerning biology and its relationship to the fundamental science of physics. His claim is that, unlike physics, biology does not aim at the discovery of laws, and that engineering, not physics, is the correct model for understanding the status of biology. The argument yields a simple metaphysical argument for Davidson's anomalism of the mental. The last of the three arguments is based on the author's earlier work on multiply realizable properties and their projectibility. It argues that most special‐science properties are multiply realizable, and that multiply realizable properties, on account of their causal/nomological heterogeneity, are not inductively projectible and hence are not fit for laws.

This chapter critically examines the causal exclusion argument against non-reductive physicalism. It argues that a contrastive account of causation falsifies the exclusion principle when it is formulated in terms of causal sufficiency, but not when it is formulated in terms of difference-making causation. Nonetheless, the causal exclusion argument poses no threat to non-reductive physicalism. For a non-reductive physicalist is still able to reject its conclusion by challenging the principle of the causal closure of the physical. The principle's formulation in terms of difference-making causation makes a much stronger and less plausible claim than its formulation in terms of sufficient causation. For example, when a mental property is the difference-maker of a behavioural property, there may be a physical property that is causally sufficient for the behavioural property, but it need not be a difference-making cause of that property.

This chapter shows how, consistently with accepting a fairly strong principle of physical causal closure, a dualistic theory of mental causation can be made plausible by emphasizing the explanatory role that can be accorded to mental states in accounting for what would, in their absence, appear to be mysterious coincidences in the ways in which apparently unconnected physiological events give rise to coordinated bodily movements. It is argued that it is crucial to their occupying this kind of explanatory role that mental states are intentional states and that mental causation is distinctively intentional causation — the bringing about of intended effects.

The basic causal argument for materialism is that since physics is causally complete, conscious states must either be physical, or they must be epiphenomenal “danglers” with no causal influence on the physical world. Papineau explores this argument in detail, paying particular attention to the concept of causation, the meaning of “physical”, the relevance of functionalism and other versions of nonreductive physicalism, and the status of the claim that physics is causally closed.

This chapter introduces and precisely defines the view that will be explored and defended in the second half of the book: Russellian monism. Various categories of Russellian monism are explored—panpsychist, panprotopsychist, constitutive, emergentist, panqualityist—and ultimately seven kinds are distinguished. The chapter begins with an argument against causal structuralism (the view that the complete essence of a property is given by its causal profile), which leads into the motivation for Russellian monism. The superficial target of the first half of the book was pure physicalism: physicalism in conjunction with the view that fundamental reality can in principle be captured in the vocabulary of the physical sciences. This chapter shows how someone can be a physicalist without being a pure physicalist and how the arguments of the first half of the book apply to all forms of physicalism.

E. J. Lowe proposed a model of mental causation on which mental events are emergent, thus exerting a novel, downward causal influence on physical events. Yet on Lowe’s model, mental causation is at the same time empirically undetectable, and in this sense is ‘invisible’. Lowe’s model is ingenious, but I don’t think emergentists should welcome it, for it seems to me that a primary virtue of emergentism is its bold empirical prediction about the long-term results of human physiology. Here I’ll try to restore emergentism’s empirical status, but my broader aim is to use Lowe’s model to explore some central topics in the mental causation debate, including the ‘causal closure’ of the physical world and the nature of causal powers.

How are our scientific theories related to each other? Do they draw, together, a unified picture of the world, or should we infer from their disunity that reality is ontologically plural in some way? This chapter addresses the question of whether ontological pluralism is a defendable metaphysical thesis and whether philosophy of science has anything to say about it. It examines whether psychological phenomena possess an irreducible nature of their own that would be distinct from the nature of the phenomena studied by neuroscience. If, on the contrary, the explanatory gap between physics and special sciences is to be filled, the question is raised as to how it has to be done. Is conceptual analysis enough? Or should the explanatory gap be simply dismissed as being badly formulated? The chapter proposes a discussion of the current reductionist strategies.

A common metaphysical approach, generative atomism, is discussed together with generalizations such as Humean supervenience, and its merits and deficiencies are evaluated. Atomism requires that the atoms be immutable and individually distinguishable. It is suggested that claims of emergence are made when generative atomism fails. The difference between claims of emergence about models and claims about real systems is explored. A core example called Checkers World is used to motivate diachronic emergence. Four criteria for emergence are provided: development from, novelty, autonomy, and holism. It is argued that emergence is relational. The important distinction between causal closure and causal completeness of a domain is explained. A taxonomy of emergentist positions is provided, with ontological emergence, inferential emergence, and conceptual emergence each having synchronic and diachronic versions. Some core examples of emergence are discussed and the Rarity Heuristic is outlined.

This chapter explores and defends a form of cosmopsychism: the combination of panpsychism and priority monism (the latter being the view that there is only one fundamental individual). The crucial advantage of cosmopsychism is that it offers a solution to the Subject Irreducibility Problem, discussed in the last chapter. After developing the view in response to various challenges, an empirical argument is advanced against emergentism. If this argument is sound, then it leads to cosmopsychism as the only anti-emergentist view that can solve the Subject Irreducibility Problem. Finally, the chapter responds to “the incredulous stare”: the sense that cosmopsychism is just too crazy to be believed. It is argued that this reaction is due to cultural associations; in fact, both comospychism and physicalism are motivated by the same anti-emergentist instincts.

This chapter formulates a version of idealism and argues for it. Sections 2 and 3 explicate this version of idealism: the world is mental through-and-through. Section 2 spells this out precisely and contrasts it with rival views. Section 3 draws a consequence from this formulation of idealism: idealism is necessarily true if true at all. Sections 4 and 5 make the case for idealism. Section 4 is defensive: it draws from the conclusion of section 3 to reply to a central, perhaps the central, anti-idealist argument. Section 5 is on the offense: it develops a new argument for idealism based on the contemporary debate in philosophy of mind. The contemporary debate in philosophy of mind has been dominated by physicalism and dualism, with idealism almost totally neglected. This chapter rectifies this situation.

There is an argument for the existence of God from the incompleteness of nature that is vaguely present in Plantinga’s recent work. This argument, which rests on the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the philosophical deficiency of necessitarian conceptions of physical law, deserves to be given a clear formulation. The goal is to demonstrate, via a suitably articulated principle of sufficient reason, that divine action in an occasionalist mode is needed (and hence God’s existence is required) to bring causal closure to nature and render it ontologically functional. The best explanation for quantum phenomena and the most adequate understanding of general providence turns out to rest on an ontic structural realism in physics that is grounded in the immaterialist metaphysics of theistic idealism.