Anomalous monism and mental causality : on the debate of Donald Davidson’s philosophy of the mental

The English version of the first chapter of Erwin Rogler and Gerhard Preyer: Materialismus, anomaler Monismus und mentale Kausalität. Zur gegenwärtigen Philosophie des Mentalen bei Donald Davidson und David Lewis (2001) "Anomaler Monismus und Mentale Kausalität. Ein Beitrag zur Debatte über Donald Davidsons Philosophie des Mentalen" is a contribution to the current debates on the philosophy of the mental and mental causality initiated from Donald Davidson's philosophy with his article "Mental Events" (1970). It is the intent of the English version to give a response to the controversy among American, British and Australian philosophers in the context of a global exchange of ideas on problems understanding the mental. Contents 1. Preliminary Remarks 2. The Critique of Property-Epiphenomenalism and Counterarguments (a) The Enlargement of Nomological Reasoning (b) The Counterfactual Analysis (c) Supervenient Causality 3. Are Mental Properties real or unreal (fictive)? Abstract Things and events are fundamental entities in Davidson's ontology. Less distinct is the ontological status of properties, especially of mental types. Despite of some eliminative allusions there are weighty reasons to understand Davidson's philosophy of mind as including intentional realism. With it, the question of mental causality arises. There are two striking solutions to this problem: the epiphenomenalism of mental properties and the downward causation of mental events. Davidson cannot accept either. He claims to justify the mental as supervenient causality in order to thus integrate it into physicalism (his version of monism). But his argument at best proves the explanatory, not the causal relevance of mental properties. For this and for other reasons, Davidson fails the aspired synthesis of a sufficiently strong physicalism and the autonomy of the mental; a project whose realization is anyhow hard to achieve

Why Neural Correlates Of Consciousness Are Fine, \ud But Not Enough\ud

\ud The existence of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is not enough for philosophical purposes. On the other hand, there's more to NCC than meets the sceptic's eye.\ud (I) NCC are useful for a better understanding of conscious experience, for instance: (1) NCC are helpful to explain phenomenological features of consciousness – e.g., dreaming. (2) NCC can account for phenomenological opaque facts – e.g., the temporal structure of consciousness. (3) NCC reveal properties and functions of consciousness which cannot be elucidated either by introspective phenomenology or by psychological experiments alone – e.g., vision.\ud (II) There are crucial problems and shortcomings of NCC: (1) Correlation implies neither causation nor identity. (2) There are limitations of empirical access due to the problem of other minds and the problem of self-deception, and (3) due to the restrictions provided by inter- and intraindividual variations. (4) NCC cannot be catched by neuroscience alone because of the externalistic content of representations. Therefore, NCC are not sufficient for a naturalistic theory of mind, (5) nor are they necessary because of the possibility of multiple realization.\ud (III) Nevertheless, NCC are relevant and important for the mind-body problem: (1) NCC reveal features that are necessary at least for behavioral manifestations of human consciousness. (2) But NCC are compatible with very different proposals for a solution of the mind-body problem. This seems to be both advantageous and detrimental. (3) NCC restrict nomological identity accounts. (4) The investigation of NCC can refute empirical arguments for interactionism as a case study of John Eccles' dualistic proposals will show. (5) The discoveries of NCC cannot establish a naturalistic theory of mind alone, for which, e.g., a principle of supervenience and a further condition – and therefore philosophical arguments – are required.\u

Constitution and Causal Roles

Alexander Gebharter (2017b) has proposed to use Bayesian network (BN) causal discovery methods to identify the constitutive dependencies underwriting mechanistic explanations. The account assumes that mechanistic constitution behaves like deterministic direct causation, such that BN methods are directly applicable to mixed variable sets featuring both causal and constitutive dependencies. Gebharter claims that such mixed sets, under certain restrictions, comply with the assumptions of the causal BN framework. The aim of this paper is twofold. In the first half, we argue that Gebharter’s proposal incurs severe problems, ultimately rooted in widespread non-compliance of mechanistic systems with BN assumptions. In the second half, we present an alternative way to bring BN tools to bear on the discovery of mechanistic constitution. More precisely, we argue that all of a phenomenon’s parts, whose causal roles account for why the phenomenon has its characteristic causal role, are constituents--- where the notion of causal role is probabilistically understoo

Constitution and Causal Roles

Gebharter (2017b) has proposed to use one of the best known Bayesian network(BN) causal discovery algorithms, PC, to identify the constitutive dependencies munderwriting mechanistic explanations. His proposal assumes that mechanistic constitution behaves like deterministic direct causation, such that PC is directly applicable to mixed variable sets featuring both causal and constitutive dependencies. Gebharter claims that such mixed sets, under certain restrictions, comply with PC’s background assumptions. The aim of this paper is twofold. In the first half, we argue that Gebharter’s proposal incurs severe problems, ultimately rooted in widespread non-compliance of mechanistic systems with PC’s assumptions. In the second half, we present an alternative way to bring PC to bear on the discovery of mechanistic constitution. More precisely, we argue that all of the parts of a phenomenon that account for why the phenomenon has its characteristic causal role are constituents—where the notion of causal role is probabilistically understood

Emerging into the Rainforest: Emergence and Special Science Ontology

Many philosophers of science are ontologically committed to a lush rainforest of special science entities (Ross (2000)), but are often reticent about the criteria that determine which entities count as real. On the other hand, the metaphysics literature is much more forthcoming about such criteria, but often links ontological commitment to irreducibility. We argue that the irreducibility criteria are in tension with scientific realism: for example, they would exclude viruses, which are plausibly theoretically reducible and yet play a sufficiently important role in scientific accounts of the world that they should be included in our ontology. In this paper, we show how the inhabitants of the rainforest can be inoculated against the eliminative threat of reduction: by demonstrating that they are emergent. According to our account, emergence involves a screening off condition as well as novelty. We go on to demonstrate that this account of emergence, which is compatible with theoretical reducibility, satisfies common intuitions concerning what should and shouldn't count as real: viruses are emergent, as are trouts and turkeys, but philosophically gerrymandered objects like trout-turkeys do not qualify

The Interventionist Account of Causation and Non-causal Association Laws

International audienceThe key idea of the interventionist account of causation is that a variable A causes a variable B if and only if B would change if A were manipulated in the appropriate way. This paper raises two problems for Woodward's (2003) version of interventionism. The first is that the conditions it imposes are not sufficient for causation, because these conditions are also satisfied by non-causal relations of nomological dependence expressed in association laws. Such laws ground a relation of mutual manipulability that is incompatible with the asymmetry of causation. Several ways of defending the interventionist account are examined and found unsatisfying. The second problem is that it often seems to be impossible, in a model that contains variables linked by an association law, to satisfy the conditions imposed on interventions on such variables. Various ways to solve this second problem, most importantly the analysis of manipulability in terms of difference making, are examined. Given that none solves the problem, I conclude that the interventionist conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for causation. It is suggested that they provide an analysis of nomological dependence, which may be supplemented with the notion of a causal process to yield an analysis of causation

Mechanistic and topological explanations: an introduction

In the last twenty years or so, since the publication of a seminal paper by Watts and Storgatz (1998), an interest in topological explanations has spread like a wild fire over many areas of science, e.g. ecology, evolutionary biology, medicine, and cognitive neuroscience. The aim of this special issue is to discuss the relationship between mechanistic and topological approaches to explanation and their prospects