The Problem of Mental Causation: Challenges and Responses

Entropy, 2020

Mental causation is vitally important to the integrated information theory (IIT), which says consciousness exists since it is causally efficacious. While it might not be directly apparent, metaphysical commitments have consequential entailments concerning the causal efficacy of consciousness. Commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and the nature of causation determine which problem(s) a view of consciousness faces with respect to mental causation. Analysis of mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind has brought several problems to the fore: the alleged lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem. This article surveys the threat each problem poses to IIT based on the different metaphysical commitments IIT theorists might make. Distinctions are made between what I call reductive IIT, non-reductive IIT, and non-physicalist IIT, each of which make differing metaphysical commitments regarding the ontology of consciousn...

2010

Mental causation is a philosophical concept attempting to describe the causal effect of the immaterial mind on subjects behavior. Various types of causality have different interpretations in the literature. I propose and explain this concept within the framework of the reciprocal causality operating in the brain bidirectionally between local and global brain levels. While committing myself to the physical closure assumption, I leave room for the suggested role of mental properties. Mental level is viewed as an irreducible perspective ...

Dynamical Psychology, 2005

""In order for consciousness to be efficacious, to perform any real function, there must be a mechanism of causation by which its nonphysical attributes can effect the physical structures in the brain. Current theories of nonphysical causation most commonly rely on consciousness’ role in the collapse of the wave function to bridge the gap between mind and matter. However, these theories fail to translate well to our everyday macro level consciousness, which does not directly observe neural functioning in the same way that a physicist may observe quantum phenomena by looking at an instrument. This paper will propose a mechanism of nonphysical causation based upon consciousness’ entanglement with the brain across a brief temporal divide. In doing so it is hoped that a possible mechanism of nonphysical causation will be illuminated that only requires consciousness to will and observe macro events. ""

abstract Interactive dualism is notorious for supporting genuine and autonomous mental causation that is allegedly impossible for its confliction with basic principles of physics. The purpose of this essay is to show the invalidity of this commonplace view, by arguing to the contrary in three different steps. First, I will deal with the objection about the non-scientific character of interactive dualism, as it is conceived of in present-day philosophy of mind. Second, I will illustrate and critically examine three contemporary models of dualistically understood mental causation. Finally, I will summarise the chief assumptions made in these models and try to lay down my own proposal.

2012

The subject of this paper is the question of how causally efficacious mental properties can be incorporated into a physicalist framework. The problem is introduced by way of Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience-argument, where he formulates it as a question of what causal role is left for the mental to play given certain assumptions of the causal structure of the physical universe. I present his version of physicalism and how mental to physical relations are conceived within this framework. Further, I discuss whether his reductionistic approach to mental causation problem leaves mental properties with adequate causal powers. In the second half of this paper I consider theories that approach the issue from a non-reductionist perspective, positing emergent causal forces fundamented on the defining characteristics of complex systems. After elaborating on these basic features of such systems I introduce the notion of cognition in its minimal sense as a process of relation between a living system...

2002

There is a tension or even contradiction between mental causation-the belief that some mental events or properties are causally relevant for some physical events or properties-and the irreducibility of mental features to physical ones, the causal closure of the physical, and the assumption that there is no overdetermination of the physical. To reconcile these premises was a promise of nonreductive physicalism, but a closer inspection shows that it is, on the contrary, a source of the problem-namely, the unintelligibility of mental causation. This has to do with the widely-held assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical. How can the mental be causally relevant, then (because the physical seems to do all the causal work)? And what is the relationship of the mental and the physical (because supervenience must be explained)? There are many options, including identity, realizationism, emergence, or some kind of reducibility. But they all have their own problems, e.g. they threaten mental reality, the causal closure of the physical, or scientific explanations. All these aspects are covered in Jaegwon Kim's book Mind in a Physical World (1998). This paper is a detailed introduction to it, discussing and critically commenting it and those still intriguing, but also confusing and complicated issues of the mind-body problem, especially the ontology of mental causation. "consciousness has plagued us and we can not shake it, though we think we're in control, though we think we're in control"-Greg Graffin 1. Introduction Analytic philosophy of mind has many parallels with chess: rigor and creativity in thinking, logical necessity and mental acrobatics, control of success and quality, transparence and an enormous complexity, effort as well as play, pleasure and a wish for more. A recommendable recent example for this is Mind in a Physical World by Jaegwon Kim. He is the

The frontiers collection, 2016

This chapter looks broadly at how the overall thesis of the book relates to the human mind and brain, which develop to be what they are because they are located in a specific society. The main claim will be that one cannot begin to understand the brain properly without taking top-down causation into account. An example is that you are able to read this book, written in English, because your neuronal connections have been adapted to understanding that language as you interacted with members of the society in which you grew up (your parents, siblings, and school mates if it is your home language). This is top-down causation from the social milieu to detailed aspects of brain structure. There is no way this can be understood purely on the basis of the underlying physics. It is obviously not possible to give a detailed study of the brain in the space available, and nor do I have the competence to do so. Rather the point of this chapter, the culmination of what has gone before, is to point out firstly that the combination of bottom-up and top-down causation certainly occurs in the brain. And secondly that it is a crucial aspect of the way physics can underlie the extraordinary nature of the functioning of the mind. This viewpoint at least partly helps to see how the higher levels can have genuine causal powers in their own right, not determined uniquely by the underlying physics, but rather shaping the contexts of those physical events so that they can enable higher level functioning to take place meaningfully as events at their own level of causation. While I will make the case for top-down causation in the brain, I do not claim this solves the hard problem of consciousness or even the issue of free will, but rather that this sets in place some understandings that provide a platform towards tackling those issues adequately. Any approach which ignores the top-down aspect of causation in the brain will be bound to go wrong (as will any approach that ignores the bottom-up aspects). It is a key aspect of how our mental abilities can emerge on the basis of the underlying physics. Thus what is presented here is a counter to any simplistic reductionist view of how the brain works. Some of these issues are very controversial. In the space available, I cannot possibly respond to all the counterviews to what I present, of which there are many, and will not attempt to do so. Furthermore, the literature is vast and it would not be

PRINCIPIA, 2022

My account of the causal role of consciousness in a physical world is modeled on Dretske's celebrated explanation of the causal role of beliefs (something that Dretske himself never offered). First, behavior must be understood as a (broadly individuated) process that begins with some external stimulus causing some neurological event C, and ends with causing a bodily movement M (e.g., the Kennedy assassination is a process that begins with Oswald pulling the trigger at 12:30pm CST on November 23 in 1963 in Dallas, Texas, but only ends half an hour later when Kennedy is pronounced dead at 1 pm CST). The internal neurological event C causes bodily movement M, but only by virtue of being recruited by natural selection to represent the instantiation of some external property F when properly stimulated under normal circumstances. But the reason why C causes M lies in the fact that C represents the instantiation of the external property F. I withdraw my hand from a hot surface because the activation of nociceptive specific neurons in my parietal lobe (together with the activation of neuronal patterns in my motor cortices) was recruited by natural selection to represent the tissue damage in my hand. The activation of nociceptive specific neurons causes my hand to withdraw but for the reason that it represents tissue data at the time that I felt pain in my hand.

I summarize Jaegwon Kim's (2001/5) paper on the detrimental affect 'mental causation' has on physicalism.

Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, 2006

To explain how stimuli cause consciousness, we have to explain causality. We can't trace linear causal chains from receptors after the first cortical synapse, so we use circular causality to explain neural pattern formation by self-organizing dynamics. But an aspect of intentional action is causality, which we extrapolate to material objects in the world. Thus causality is a property of mind, not matter.