Search Results

Causal redundancy arguments allege that all the causal work attributed to ordinary macroscopic objects is really performed (jointly) by their microscopic parts, making ordinary objects epiphenomenal. Trenton Merricks holds that this shows there are no such things, since, if there were ordinary objects such as baseballs, they would be causally efficacious. It is argued, however, that Merricks' argument is either invalid or unsound, depending on how one understands “overdetermination”. This chapter makes the case that standard prohibitions against overdetermination do not apply where there are analytic entailments between the causal claims, so we can accept the causal claims of, for example, a baseball and of simples arranged baseballwise, without them being rivals in claims to causal efficacy or yielding redundant “double causation”.

The distinction between automatic and controlled cognitive processes was imported into social psychology, and formed the basis for a new generation of “dual-process” theories of social cognition and behavior. However, some social psychologists have gone further to claim that automatic processes dominate social interaction, leaving little room for anything like free will. For these theorists, human beings are machines — automatons — after all. However, no empirical evidence supports such a strong claim about human nature. In part, the automaticity juggernaut appears to reflect a reaction to the cognitive revolution in social psychology, with its implication that social interactions are mediated by conscious, deliberate, rational thought; in part, it may be a reflection of the biologization of social psychology. But it also seems to be a reflection of an emerging “People Are Stupid” trend within social psychology, as well as a throwback to the historical alliance between situationism and radical behaviorism. Finally, the emphasis on automaticity appears to be based on the “epiphenomenalist suspicion” that consciousness plays no role in human behavior, as well as the allure of the pinball determinism of classical physics.

This chapter looks at the claims of some philosophers and philosophically-minded psychologists that volitions or acts of will are merely epiphenomenal, in the sense that they do not actually play the causal role customarily assigned to them in the genesis of our intentional physical behaviour. These claims are allegedly supported by empirical studies supposedly showing that volitions are at best side-effects of the neurological processes which, according to these theorists, really initiate and sustain that behaviour. It is argued, however, that the empirical evidence in question not only does not, but could not, support the interpretation favoured by these theorists, because our very ability to conceive and investigate causal hypotheses in the sciences is predicated upon the fact that we are beings capable of actively intervening, at will, in the course of nature.

This chapter distinguishes between emergentist and epiphenomenalist strands in early Cārvāka theory, and demonstrates that Cārvāka emergentists are committed to supervenience. Emergentism seeks simultaneously to respect the idea that the mental is dependent on the physical and that it has causal autonomy with respect to it. These find expression in emergentism's commitment to a supervenience thesis and an irreducibility thesis. The leading idea in discussions about emergence is that systems of appropriate organisational complexity have causal powers which the components in the system, whether individually or together, do not. Jaegwon Kim has argued that the two key issues for the development of emergentism as a viable theory of mind are to give a positive characterisation of the relation of emergence, beyond the mere denial of reducibility, and to solve the problem of downward causation, otherwise known as the exclusion problem. This is the problem that an instantiation of the supervenience base is apparently a sufficient cause for any effect attributed to an instantiation of the supervening properties. One seems forced to choose between reductionism and epiphenomenalism: genuinely novel emergent causal power is excluded.

The mental–physical distinction is scrutinized, and the possibility (defended by Spinoza and by Davidson) that the distinction is not a ‘real distinction’, but one of conception only, is defended. Philosophical motives for property dualism are assessed and found wanting. Metaphysical infelicities inherent in property dualism are highlighted, and various options including epiphenomenalism, emergence, and panpsychism evaluated and rejected.

“Can Supervenience and ‘Non‐Strict’ Laws Save Anomalous Monism?” is a reply to Donald Davidson's defense of his anomalous monism against the charge that it leads to epiphenomenalism. In “Thinking Causes” (in Mental Causation, ed. John Heil and Alfred Mele, 1993), Davidson claims that non‐strict psychophysical laws are sufficient to underwrite mental causation, and also that mind‐body supervenience can vindicate the causal relevance of mentality. This paper argues that Davidson is mistaken in his claims, and that even if Davidson were successful in restoring mental causes to anomalous monism, he would run afoul of the problem of causal exclusion. Moreover, Davidson's defense introduces some unwelcome tensions into his overall view of the mind‐body problem.

This chapter targets functionalism as the most cogent form of contemporary materialism. In particular, it takes aim at ‘ontic’ or reductive functionalism: a theory that attempts to specify the essences of mental states, in a non-circular fashion, by means of physicalistic functional definitions (i.e., by means of the Ramsification of causal theories of the mind). The chapter points out that functionalism must account for thoughts that have psychological attitudes embedded within them. It effectively sets asides worries that the intensionality of the context of thought renders the argument invalid. It also draws attention to the devastating consequences of the other strategies for avoiding the dilemma. including language-of-thought functionalism. When the language-of-thought theorists attempt to define the content-of relation, they face a dilemma concerning the content of psychological predicates in the language. The language-of-thought theorist must either accept a definitional circularity incompatible with materialism, or resort again to Ramsified definitions that misdescribe the contents of self-conscious thoughts. In addition, such language-of-thought functionalism readily leads to epiphenomenalism. Finally, attempts to avoid the definitional circularity by means of something like a Tarskian hierarchy of distinct psychological attitudes founder on the type-free nature of introspection. The chapter concludes that the only viable functionalism is a non-reductive one that accepts mental properties as ontologically primary, on a par with physical properties.

Some essential properties are of course causal, as it is essential to footprints to have been caused by feet. But this chapter is less in causation's role in essence than the reverse: the bearing a thing's essence has on its causal powers. That essence might be causally relevant is hinted already by the counterfactual element in causation; and the hint is confirmed by the explanation essence offers of something otherwise mysterious, namely, how events exactly alike in every ordinary respect, like the bolt's suddenly snapping and its snapping per se, manage to disagree in what they cause. Some prior difference must exist between these events to make their causal powers unlike. Paradoxically, though, it can only be in point of a property, suddenness, which both events possess in common. Only by postulating a difference in the manner — essential or accidental — of the property's possession is the paradox resolved. Next, we need an account of causation in which essence plays an explicit determinative role. That account, based on the idea that causes should be commensurate with their effects, is that x causes y only if nothing essentially poorer would have done, and nothing essentially richer was needed.

Nietzsche is commonly thought to endorse a version of naturalism that debunks the traditional conception of the will; he is thought to deny that willing brings about or causes actions. BGE 19 is interpreted as supporting this understanding of Nietzsche, and Brian Leiter has so interpreted it. This chapter offers an alternative to Leiter's reading of BGE 19, which shows that while it sets out to debunk something about the traditional notion of the will, it is not the causality of the will that is debunked. It is argued that Nietzsche's discussion of the will in BGE 19 should be understood in connection with his discussion of the soul in BGE 12. These are intended to rehabilitate the traditional notions of the soul and the will in the face of the challenge posed by naturalism. Nietzsche argues for a conception of the soul and the will that is completely naturalistic, and rejects the naturalistic tendency to dismiss or debunk them. BGE 19 offers a conception of the will according to which a person's willing is constituted by the workings (the commanding and obeying) of the normative order of the drives, the order which Nietzsche calls ‘the soul’ in BGE 12. In accord with the traditional conception, Nietzsche takes the will to be the soul, insofar as the soul is involved in bringing about action. For Nietzsche, however, the will, like the soul, exists only in what Sellars calls ‘the space of reasons’. The chapter argues against two aspects of Leiter's interpretation of BGE 19: first, against his account of what belongs to that section's phenomenology of willing; and then, against his understanding of the function of that phenomenology. In the chapter's view, BGE 19 offers this phenomenology not to show that it misleads us about the causality of our actions, as Leiter thinks, but to provide a basis for its theory of what actually constitutes willing. Once this is recognized, it becomes implausible that the passage aims to show that willing is epiphenomenal. The chapter's account is also implausible, however, unless it accounts for what it is about the traditional conception of the will that Nietzsche is attempting to debunk in BGE 19. This is done in Section 3, in a way which leaves the causality of the will intact. Finally, in Section 4, the chapter defends the claim that Nietzsche believes in the causality of the will, against considerations Leiter brings forward from sources other than BGE 19 in favor of interpreting him as an epiphenomenalist.

This chapter offers a philosophical reconstruction of Nietzsche's theory of the will, focusing on: (i) Nietzsche's account of the phenomenology of ‘willing’ an action, the experience we have which leads us (causally) to conceive of ourselves as exercising our will; (ii) Nietzsche's arguments that the experiences picked out by the phenomenology are not causally connected to the resulting action (at least not in a way sufficient to underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility); and (iii) Nietzsche's account of the actual causal genesis of action. Particular attention is given to passages from Daybreak, Beyond Good and Evil, and Twilight of the Idols, and a revised version of Leiter's earlier account of Nietzsche's epiphenomenalism is defended. Finally, recent work in empirical psychology (Libet, Wegner) is shown to support Nietzsche's skepticism that our ‘feeling’ of will is a reliable guide to the causation of action.

Epiphenomenalism accepts the causal closure of the physical, hence the possibility of zombies. But it is argued, via consideration of the ‘redescription thesis’, that physicalism involves commitment to the ‘strict implication thesis’, according to which the narrowly physical truths about the world strictly imply the significant mental truths. This is an empirical thesis but depends on logical or conceptual relations, although physicalists are not therefore compelled to subscribe to any strong doctrine of conceptual analysis. It follows that if zombies are even barely possible, physicalism is false. It also follows that bald assertions of psycho-physical identity do not dispense physicalists from commitment to this conclusion, nor does a thesis of a posteriori necessity.

Although the zombie idea seems to fit in with some ‘natural and plain’ intuitions (Chalmers), it conflicts with others. Reinforced by the ‘jacket fallacy’, it both feeds on and feeds an incoherent conception of phenomenal consciousness. The ‘sole-pictures argument’ shows that a certain variety of epiphenomenalism is inconceivable in the relevant sense. Then it is argued that if zombies are conceivable, so is that kind of epiphenomenalism. If the reasoning is sound, the inconceivability of zombies follows. Among other corollaries of the main conclusion is that the idea of the inverted spectrum (transposed qualia) without physical differences is incoherent too.

The doctrine of materialism, or physicalism, is articulated and defended, based on the causal role of conscious states. Three objections are dealt with: epiphenomenalism, the explanatory exclusion argument, and an argument to the effect that naturalization is not required to secure the causal role of the mental.

I argue that anything a baseball causes—if baseballs exist—is also caused by the baseball's atoms working in concert. Moreover, a baseball is ‘causally irrelevant’ to what its atoms cause. These two claims imply that baseballs, if they existed, would be at best mere overdeterminers of whatever they cause. From this we can draw two conclusions. First, our perceptual reasons for believing in baseballs are no good and whether baseballs exist, just like whether arbitrary sums exist, can be decided only by philosophical argument.Second, there aren’t any baseballs. For, we should resist causal overdetermination and assume, unless forced to do otherwise, that effects are not systematically causally overdetermined. Baseballs would systematically causally overdetermine the effects of their constituent atoms. And so, the bias against systematic causal overdetermination gives a positive reason—in addition to those of Ch. 2—to deny that baseballs exist.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the heart of the problem of consciousness: qualia. It explores animal consciousness and shows that animals, mammals in particular, have qualia, which rules out the need to take seriously suggestions that consciousness began with the Greeks or requires human language or that its survival value (by way of sexual selection) lies in its contribution to specifically human intelligence or artistic sensitivity. The chapter then considers the possibility that consciousness actually has no real function: that it is an epiphenomenon.

Even if powers are not reducible to non-power properties, still a human agent's abilities to act might be reducible to microproperties, which would leave the agent himself devoid of a truly causal role. This worry is addressed by arguing that the human agent's abilities to act are systemic emergent properties, which are not reducible to the possession of microproperties by his parts. It is further shown that Jaegwon Kim's argument about downward causation does not establish that the agent's active powers must be epiphenomal.