By Brandon Towl
Some readers of Brains will be familiar with Kim’s causal exclusion argument. Roughly, the argument goes:
1) Every physical effect has a sufficient cause that is a physical cause.
2) Mental states (properties) are causes.
3) Mental states (properties) are realized by physical states (properties).
4) Mental states (properties) are not identical to physical states (properties).
Given (3), every mental state will be accompanied by some physical realizer or other which will be sufficient for the mental state (true given the definition of realization). But then, since the mental state is not identical to that physical realizer (4), the mental state and the physical state “compete” for causal efficacy. And it appears, given (1), that the physical state will win every time– to put it in Kim’s words, “There is nothing left for the mental to do.” (There is a lot more to say about this argument, but I am trying to keep this post to a minimum.)
I wonder if causal exclusion reasoning could not also be used to show that some *mental* states exclude other mental states. Consider these examples:
A) I try to open a door and cannot because something is blocking it. As soon as I realize this, I also see that it is a chair that is blocking the door. And so, I simulatenously have the belief that “something is blocking the door” and “a chair is blocking the door”, and act accordingly.
I have a pain. Specifically, I have a sharp pain in my right arm. The latter is a determinate property, while the former is a determinable. But both would lead me to alleviate the pain, say “ouch”, etc.
C) I am hungry and have the desire to eating something. Upon entering the kitchen, I see a sandwhich and immediately form the more specific desire to eat the sandwhich. These are not identical desires, but it seems that each is motivating me to, in this specific circumstance, move towards the sandwhich (given my set of beliefs).
These example all need more cashing out, of course. But they point to the following idea: the main thing generating causal exclusion arguments is not realization per se, but the fact that there are two properties/states that have an assymetric dependence. As long as property A is sufficient for property B, and property B depends on, but is not identical to, A, we have the potential for a causal exclusion argument. Or so I believe.
I can go into more details, but this post is long enought– reactions?
I can’t see how point 2) would be true in any case, or how such truth could be ascertained. How can thoughts cause anything if cause is a physical description? Re-assigning thoughts to the quasi-physical domain of mental “states” isn’t going to convince even the scientists that thoughts can cause physical events.
There’s certainly a kind of logical asymmetric dependence between the respective mental states, but I can occurrently believe a chair is blocking the door yet only dispositionally or tacitly believe something is (just by our custom of ascribing beliefs that can be immediately inferred). Likewise, my hunger for something motivates me to go to the kitchen but not go for the sandwich in particular (or anything else for that matter); the second belief is needed for that, even though the first is logically entailed by it. Of course, this all presumes the original causal exclusion argument doesn’t work, which I’m setting aside for the moment. (You also might look at Yablo’s article on mental causation, if you haven’t already. Maybe he can help you develop the examples.)
Thank you for the replies!
@John: I am entirely sympathetic to your point. There is a pretty long-standing tradition of thinking that thoughts are causes, however, and this can be backed up by some pretty commonplace examples. The question is how they can be causal but not type-identical with physical causes.
@ Carrie: You raise issues I’ve been thinking about as well. True, perhaps some of the beliefs are tacit; but all that is needed for the argument is for there to be some instances of co-occurent beliefs. If so, such cases would be enough to get the exclusion reasoning off the ground. As for the desire example, I guess I don’t share the same intuition. Desiring something to eat is motivating me to get the sandwhich, though other things could satisfy this desire as well. If our desires are as fine grained as you suggest, it would mean that no “over-arching” desires cause us to do anything. My desire to write a book, for instance, would not cause me sit and type at the computer; only my desire to type at the computer would do that. But that seems really counter-intuitive. Indeed, we would likely explain my behavior in terms of the first desire, and not the second (which I guess brings use to Yablo’s view, which you mention). But this position seems to put us smack in the middle of the exclusion argument again… or am I missing something?
Actually, I do desire to write a book! But there’s a gap here that’s worth exploring between such standing desires and what we do to satisfy them. An analogy would be to (government) laws, which then require regulations for them to be enacted. I wasn’t supposing there was a reply to the exclusion argument, though. That’s a bigger issue.
I am mystified, and worried. Is it that developments in philosophy can take us beyond any supposed limits of natural understanding?
Surely, types are not subject to the rules that govern tokens. Types are not, for example, identical with, similar to, or different than “other” types. There is no similarity or difference between, for example, colour and sound, but there is among their respective tokens.
Accordingly, to claim that causality comes in different types is to invert the type/token distinction.
If we want to cast that into common parlance then we might restate the general understanding that causality is physical. Any use of the sign “causality” that doesn’t follow that understanding at best employs causation as a metaphor. I could not see how the examples that were given came to more than that. Have I missed something?
But even if it is used as a metaphor for thoughts physical causality is of little use. We can say, for example, “that made me think of..” but there is no need to employ physical causality as a metaphor for what it is to be “made to think”, even less to audaciously re-employ all the participants of the metaphor as interactive ontological agents.
For we could, if we so wanted, turn the dubious enterprise of establishing a link between mental and physical events on its head, by claiming that physical events, based on the metaphor of mental events, vanish and appear without any consideration of a causal redress.