Abstract
I have argued that conceptual pluralism challenges common formulations of the mind-body problem by insisting that the scope of reductive explanations is an open empirical question. This chapter discusses the objection that conceptual pluralism fails to provide a satisfying account of one important aspect of the mind-body problem: mental causation. First, I reject mental causation arguments that are based on the idea that the “real causal powers” and the “real causal work” are found only on the microphysical level. If we do not already presuppose a strong metaphysical notion of the priority of the physical, there to no reason to restrict causality to a fundamental physical level. However, I acknowledge that systematic overdetermination requires explanation if there are several metaphysically distinct causes for the same event. At the same time, I stress that conceptual pluralism rejects the idea that mental and physical causes are metaphysically distinct in a substantive sense. Conceptual pluralism therefore interprets overdetermination as a harmless form of linguistic overdetermination
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, this response does not provide a positive account of non-physical causation and may be combined with more specific proposals such as an interventionist framework. Indeed, interventionist responses to the problem of mental causation have become increasingly popular in recent years (e.g. Campbell 2007; Woodward 2008; Raatikainen 2010) and may be seen as natural allies of conceptual pluralism due to their permissive implications regarding non-physical causes (cf. Eronen 2011). At the same time, I think that it is helpful to distinguish my pluralist response from interventionist accounts as my response is not affected by some more recent objections against interventionist accounts of mental causation (e.g. Baumgartner 2009) and is also available to philosophers who find interventionism implausible.
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Ludwig, D. (2015). Mental Causation. In: A Pluralist Theory of the Mind. European Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22738-2_10
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