Mental Causation: Investigating the Mind's Powers in a Natural World

435 Pages·2009·1.773 MB·English

by  Jens Harbecke

Jens Harbecke
Mental Causation
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Jens Harbecke
Mental Causation
Investigating the Mind’s Powers in a Natural World
M E T A P H Y S I C A L R E S E A R C H

Herausgegeben von / Edited by

Uwe Meixner • Johanna Seibt
Barry Smith • Daniel von Wachter

Band 8 / Volume 8
Jens Harbecke

Mental Causation

Investigating the Mind’s Powers
in a Natural World

on tos

verlag
Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick
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Table of contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1 The Problem of Mental Causation: premises and central principles . 13
1.1 Formulations of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.2 Supervenience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
1.3 Multiple realization and functional states . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
1.4 Epiphenomena and the Eleatic Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
1.5 Theoretical economy and explanatory strength . . . . . . . . . 82
1.6 The neutrality of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
2 Canonical solutions to the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
2.1 Dualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
2.2 Physicalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
2.3 Special cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
2.4 Summary and conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
3 New compatibilism and mental causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3.1 The “constitutionalist” approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
3.2 The “determinationist” approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
3.3 Theories inspired by the “determinationist” approach . . . . . 211
3.4 Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
3.5 Summary and conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
4 Open solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
4.1 Introductory remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
4.2 Reviewing the solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
4.3 Overdeterminationism Lite pursued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
4.4 Plural Determinism pursued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
4.5 Overdeterminationism Lite vs. Plural Determinism . . . . . . 405
4.6 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Acknowledgements
This work was accepted as a PhD dissertation by the department of philos-
ophy of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland in 2007. It has since been
slightly modified. I would like to thank, first and foremost, Michael Esfeld
for his support and encouragement during the years of the development of this
book. Furthermore, I am indebted to Stephen Yablo, David Papineau, and Al-
bertNewenforinspiringdiscussionsandvaluablecriticism. Iwouldalsoliketo
thank Vera Hoffmann, Vincent Lam, Christian Sachse, Patrice Soom, Michael
Sollberger, and Georg Sparber for helpful comments and criticism on earlier
versions of this work. Furthermore, I am grateful to the Swiss National Science
Foundation for having made possible my research through the funding of the
project “Mental Causation and Reductionism” (grant no.: 100011-105218/1),
to Raphael Hu¨ntelmann for his patience and editorial collaboration, and to the
editors of the “Metaphysical Research” series for having accepted my work.
Special thanks go to Gisela Harbecke, Peter Harbecke, and Petra Thiemann for
support and encouragement during the years in which I was writing this book.
Lausanne, March 2008 Jens Harbecke
Introduction
After 50 years1 of debate on the problem of mental causation, one may wonder
whether there is really anything left to be said on the topic. Some of the best
minds of our time have been concerned with the question of how the mind can
causally engage in a physical world, and there can be no doubt that consider-
able progress has been achieved. The number of candidate solutions has both
been reduced and many details have been made more precise over the time.
Furthermore, from the 1970’s onwards, something of a mainstream position
has gradually worked itself up to the surface of the debate. And whilst there is
probably no such thing in philosophy as the ultimate evidence for the truth or
adequacy of a theory, a majority vote of the philosophical community surely
counts as a strong indication for its likeliness. The mainstream position we are
hinting at here is the doctrine of non-reductive physicalism, which in either one
of its various forms has managed to gain the support of the bigger part of the
philosophical community, and is therefore reasonably called the contemporary
“orthodoxy” in the philosophy of mind. Looked at from this perspective, the
twentieth century debate on mental causation appears as yet another success
story of cooperative philosophical problem solving.
However, only slightly closer examination of the matter reveals that the im-
age of philosophy’s steady convergence towards the truth displays some insub-
ordinate stains. Although it is probably true that most contemporary philoso-
phers of mind still characterize their views as a “non-reductive physicalism”,
there is virtually no agreement on the question of what the general philosoph-
ical framework captured by this term ultimately amounts to.2 Furthermore, in
yet another ironic twist of modern Geistesgeschichte, the so-called “causal ar-
gument”, which for long was believed to supply the most powerful motivation
for physicalism, has recently raised suspicion of endangering the fundamental
tenet of all non-reductive physicalist positions at the very same time (cf. Crane
(1995)). Close examination of the very recent debate also reveals that a slowly
but steadily growing number of authors shows tendencies to deviate from the
orthodoxy. One the one hand, attempts to re-establish a reductive strategy to
1It is commonly held that the mind-body problem and, together with it, the problem of
mental causation were introduced into mainstream metaphysics in the twentieth century by
Feigl(1958)andSmart(1959). Cf. alsoKim(1997),andchapter1,introduction.
2Forthedifferentversionsofnon-reductivephysicalism,cf. section2.2.4.1.
8 JENS HARBECKE
include the mind into a physical world have gained momentum.3 On the other
hand, it appears that increasingly many authors have come to be unsatisfied by
what they consider a stalemate situation between reductive and non-reductive
physicalism. As a result, a number of fallback strategies have gradually gained
popularity again. These include positions that try to mediate between reductive
and non-reductive physicalism4 and theories that once again choose to chal-
lenge the ratio for physicalism by re-introducing different versions of a dualist,
or pluralistic, framework.5 In light of the non-reductive physicalist consensus
that remained in place virtually uncontested for almost two decades, it is clear
thatthesedevelopmentsareessentiallynovel,andperhapssomewhatsurprising
as well.
The philosophical mainstream with its orthodox tenets has reacted rather
differently to the two major lines of challenge just mentioned, i.e. to reductive
physicalism on the one side and intermediate, dualistic, or pluralistic mod-
els on the other. The majority of authors seems to consider the main threat
for non-reductive physicalism as stemming from the new reductionist theories,
and, consequently, the larger part of the literature during the last years has been
concerned with parrying the reductionist arguments. The responses to the re-
ductive threat can be roughly divided into two lines of argument, one of which
has a negative, or reductio character, the other of which consists in a positive
strategy. The negative response usually points out that the reductionist line
of thought, despite the appeal it has with respect to local contexts, ultimately
leads to absurd and unacceptable consequences, such as the elimination not
only of the mental, but of all special science properties.6 This reductio is taken
to show that something must be wrong with the reductionist argument, even
3The most prominent defense of this line or argument, namely a strategy of conservative
reductionism, has been launched by Jaegwon Kim. Cf. Kim (1993c), (1997), (1998), (2005).
Further conservative reductionist works include Esfeld&Sachse (2007) and Heil (2003a) (cf.
sections 2.2.4.2. and 2.2.4.4.) Conservative reductionism is to be distinguished in its aims
from eliminative reductionism. The latter is defended, among other others, by Bickle (1998),
Churchland (1981), (1985), and (less obviously) by Hooker (1981) and Marras (2002). Cf.
section2.2.5.
4Cf. Bennett, K. (2003), Loewer (2001), (forthcoming), Pereboom (2002). For more de-
taileddiscussionseesections3.1and3.3.3.
5Cf. Baker (1993), (2006-manuscript), Bishop (2006), Gibbons (2006), (2007-
manuscript), Meixner (2006-manuscript), Schaffer (2003), Shoemaker (2003c), Sturgeon
(1998), Yablo (1992a/b), (2001). Some of these, namely those that realize the program of
new compatibilism (cf. chapter 3), can also be interpreted as intermediate positions between
reductiveandnon-reductivephysicalism.
6The difficulty pointed at here is commonly called the “eliminativist consequence”, or the
“generalizationproblem”. Cf. Bontly(2002),Marras(2002),Loewer(2001),(forthcoming).
INTRODUCTION 9
though many seem to find it difficult to point out where exactly the alleged mis-
take lies in the modus operandi of the reductionist argument. The other line of
response usually aims to show that non-reductive physicalism has much more
to offer than previously thought and that it should therefore not be rejected too
hastily. Recent overdeterminationist approaches can be subsumed under this
line of response, as well as arguments demonstrating the explanatory power of
non-reductive physicalism with respect to notions of projectability and natural-
ness of properties, and to the truthmaking of laws.7
In contrast to the recent reductionist arguments, the challenges stemming
from the newer intermediate or dualist positions have so far stayed more at
the periphery of the debate. Whilst the threat from the reductive approaches
is widely considered a genuine one, the arguments against dualistic, or plural-
istic, approaches are commonly believed to be still well in place. As a result,
these less canonical approaches have widely failed to enter the more centered
territory of the debate.
The main aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the deprivation of atten-
tion to the newer approaches just mentioned is less justified than commonly
supposed. It will be argued that, contrary to popular belief, the functionalist
version of non-reductive physicalism in probably all of its forms faces prob-
lems that shatter the foundations of the entire program. This, in fact, is a line
of argument that is increasingly being recognized, whereby a pendulum swing
to reduction has begun to develop during the recent years. However, it will
also be argued that reductive physicalism is an uncomfortable refuge due to the
fact that it typically fails to block an elimination of the mental. In a further
step, it will be shown that many of the intermediate, or moderately dualistic,
or pluralistic positions as they have re-entered the debate during the last fifteen
years have been underestimated in their theoretical virtues so far and that, in
the end, a specific version of pluralist ontology may actually manage to outplay
the contemporary orthodoxy in explanatory strength.
Inparticular, theultimate goalofthis essayisto providetwogeneral waysof
explaining mental causation that cannot straightforwardly be subsumed under
any of the canonical strategies, i.e. neither under conventional non-reductive,
nor reductive functionalist and eliminativist theories, nor under the various
compatibilist or overdeterminationist approaches as they are offered in the re-
cent literature. However, there are reasons to believe that the theories to be
elaborated are also not instances of a classical psychophysical dualism or a
classical causal parallelism. Given all that the approaches to be investigated
7Cf. Block(1997),Fodor(1997),Meyering(2000). Cf. alsosection2.2.4.3.1.