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Author : Thomas Kroedel
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2019-12-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781108487146
Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.
Author : S. C. Gibb,Sophie C. Gibb,E. J. Lowe,R. D. Ingthorsson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2013-03-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199603770
This book demonstrates the importance of ontology for a central debate in philosophy of mind. Mental causation seems an obvious aspect of the world. But it is hard to understand how it can happen unless we get clear about what the entities involved in the process are. An international team of contributors presents new work on this problem.
Author : Jaegwon Kim
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 0262611538
This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.
Author : Anthony Dardis
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Causation
ISBN : 9780231144179
Two thousand years ago, Lucretius said that everything is atoms in the void; it's physics all the way down. Contemporary physicalism agrees. But if that's so how can we--how can our thoughts, emotions, our values--make anything happen in the physical world? This conceptual knot, the mental causation problem, is the core of the mind-body problem, closely connected to the problems of free will, consciousness, and intentionality. Anthony Dardis shows how to unravel the knot. He traces its early appearance in the history of philosophical inquiry, specifically in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and T. H. Huxley. He then develops a metaphysical framework for a theory of causation, laws of nature, and the causal relevance of properties. Using this framework, Dardis explains how macro, or higher level, properties can be causally relevant in the same way that microphysical properties are causally relevant: by their relationship with the laws of nature. Smelling an orange, choosing the orange rather than the cheesecake, reaching for the one on the left instead of the one on the right-mental properties such as these take their place alongside the physical "motor of the world" in making things happen.
Author : Sven Walter,Heinz-Dieter Heckmann
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2015-11-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781845405830
Physicalism—the thesis that everything there is in the world, including our minds, is constituted by basic physical entities—has dominated the philosophy of mind during the last few decades. But although the conceptual foundations of the physicalist agenda—including a proper explication of notions such as ‘causation’, ‘determination’, ‘realization’ or even ‘physicalism’ itself—must be settled before more specific problems (e.g. the problems of mental causation and human agency) can be satisfactorily addressed, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on the relationships between the various key concepts of the debate on physicalism is yet missing. This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency, written by established and leading authors in the field.
Author : Neil Campbell
Publisher : Broadview Press
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2003-01-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1551115093
Since Descartes’s division of the human subject into mental and physical components in the seventeenth century, there has been a great deal of discussion about how—indeed, whether or not—our mental states bring about our physical behavior. Through historical and contemporary readings, this collection explores this lively and important issue. In four parts, this anthology introduces the problem of mental causation, explores the debate sparked by Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism, examines Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument for the view that qualia are epiphenomenal, and investigates attempts to employ the controversial concept of supervenience to explain mental causation.
Author : Anthony Dardis
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2008-09-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780231513517
Two thousand years ago, Lucretius said that everything is atoms in the void; it's physics all the way down. Contemporary physicalism agrees. But if that's so how can we—how can our thoughts, emotions, our values—make anything happen in the physical world? This conceptual knot, the mental causation problem, is the core of the mind-body problem, closely connected to the problems of free will, consciousness, and intentionality. Anthony Dardis shows how to unravel the knot. He traces its early appearance in the history of philosophical inquiry, specifically in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and T. H. Huxley. He then develops a metaphysical framework for a theory of causation, laws of nature, and the causal relevance of properties. Using this framework, Dardis explains how macro, or higher level, properties can be causally relevant in the same way that microphysical properties are causally relevant: by their relationship with the laws of nature. Smelling an orange, choosing the orange rather than the cheesecake, reaching for the one on the left instead of the one on the right-mental properties such as these take their place alongside the physical "motor of the world" in making things happen.
Author : Neil Campbell
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 1433103745
How do mental events such as choices and decisions lead to physical action? The problem of mental causation is one of the most important and intriguing philosophical issues of our time and has been at the centre of debates in the philosophy of mind for the past fifty years. In opposition to the recent wave of reductionist theories, this book argues that it is possible to account for mental causation within a nonreductive framework as it adopts a broadly Davidsonian approach to mental causation: reasons cause actions because they are identical to physical events. This work then defends this approach from the frequently raised criticism that it entails epiphenomenalism - the inefficacy of the mental. Moreover, Mental Causation moves beyond Davidson's views by reconsidering the question of whether reasons causally explain actions, arguing in opposition to Davidson, that explanations appealing to reasons represent a distinct category of explanation from causal explanation. Essential reading for anyone interested in debates about mental causation, this is an excellent text for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and professional philosophers.
Author : Jens Harbecke
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783110324846
This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analyzed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the 'new compatibilist’s' approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterized by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of 'causal proportionality' that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal overdeterminationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation.
Author : Daniel Lim
Publisher : Springer
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2015-06-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783662474266
This book lies at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion and operates on the assumption that dialogue between the two disciplines can be fruitful. In particular it focuses on how debates in the philosophy of mind regarding the nature of mental causation relate to debates in the philosophy of religion regarding divine action, creaturely causation, and existence of God. The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with Jaegwon Kim’s so-called Supervenience Argument (SA) against non-reductive physicalism. One important observation is that the structural similarities between non-reductive physicalism and ‘orthodox’ theism make it convenient to co-opt non-reductive physicalist solutions to the SA in defending the possibility of creaturely causation in the philosophy of religion. The SA is used as a foil to discuss the relative merits of Malebranche’s so-called Conservation is Continuous Creation Argument for Occasionalism (CCCA). Moverover, the so-called compatibilist strategy (Karen Bennett 2003, 2009) for developing a non-reductive physicalist response to the Supervenience Argument is defended and developed. This strategy is then deployed in the philosophy of religion to defend the possibility of creaturely causation against the CCCA.
Author : Terence Horgan,Terry Horgan,Marcelo Sabates,David Sosa
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2015-03-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781107077836
A collection of new essays that develop themes from the work of the philosopher Jaegwon Kim.
Author : Peter Tse
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 473 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780262019101
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
Author : Dwayne Moore
Publisher : American University Studies
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Causation
ISBN : 1433122677
In The Causal Exclusion Problem, the popular strategy of abandoning any one of the principles constituting the causal exclusion problem is considered, but ultimately rejected. The metaphysical foundations undergirding the causal exclusion problem are then explored, revealing that the causal exclusion problem cannot be dislodged by undermining its metaphysical foundations - as some are in the habit of doing. Finally, the significant difficulties associated with the bevy of contemporary nonreductive solutions, from supervenience to emergentism, are expanded upon. While conducting this survey of contemporary options, however, two novel approaches are introduced, both of which may resolve the causal exclusion problem from within a nonreductive physicalist paradigm. The Causal Exclusion Problem, which relentlessly motivates the vexing causal exclusion problem and exhaustively surveys its metaphysical assumptions and contemporary responses, is ideal for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in the philosophy of mind.
Author : Michele Paolini Paoletti,Francesco Orilia
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781317271444
Downward causation plays a fundamental role in many theories of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is strictly connected with many topics in philosophy, including but not limited to: emergence, mental causation, the nature of causation, the nature of causal powers and dispositions, laws of nature, and the possibility of ontological and epistemic reductions. Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation brings together experts from different fields—including William Bechtel, Stewart Clark and Tom Lancaster, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Robin F. Hendry, Max Kistler, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum —who delve into classic and unexplored lines of philosophical inquiry related to downward causation. It critically assesses the possibility of downward causation given different ontological assumptions and explores the connection between downward causation and the metaphysics of causation and dispositions. Finally, it presents different cases of downward causation in empirical fields such as physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences. This volume is both a useful introduction and a collection of original contributions on this fascinating and hotly debated philosophical topic.
Author : Alberto Peruzzi
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2004-02-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789027295859
Which causal patterns are involved in mental processes?On what mechanisms does the self-organisation of cognitive structure rest? Can a naturalistic view account for the basic resources of intentionality, while avoiding the objections to reductive materialism? By considering the developmental, phenomenological and biological aspects linking mind and causality, this volume offers a state-of-the art theoretical proposal emphasising the fine-tuning of cognition with the complexity of bodily dynamics.In contrast to the de-coupling of mind from the physical environment in classical information-processing models, growth of brain’s architecture and stabilisation of perception–action cycles are considered decisive, with no need for an eliminative approach to representations pursued by neural network models. The tools provided by physics and biology for the description of massive causal interactions, on top of which ‘qualitative’ changes occur, are exploited to suggest a model of the mind as a many-layered, co-evolving system. (Series A)