Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:45:50.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Token Monism, Event Dualism and Overdetermination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Hagit Benbaji
Hagit Benbaji*
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The argument from causal overdetermination (‘the CO-argument’) is considered to be the shortest route to token monism. It only assumes that:

  1. 1. Efficacy: Mental events are causes of physical events.

  2. 2. Closure: Every physical event has a sufficient physical cause (if it has any sufficient cause).

  3. 3. Exclusion: Systematic Causal Overdetermination (CO) is impossible: if an event x is a sufficient cause of an event y then no event x* distinct from x is a cause of y.

  4. 4. Identity: Therefore, mental events are physical events.

Exclusion does not deny the possibility of two gunmen that fi re at a victim at the same time. But event-dualism is like a systematic fi ringsquad case — whenever I want to raise my arm, my arm is raised, and that is intolerable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 63 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, L.R. 1993. ‘Metaphysics and Mental Causation,’ in Heil and Mele, eds., Mental Causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 75–95.Google Scholar
Bennett, K. 2003. ‘Why the Exclusion Problem Seems Intractable, and How, Just Maybe, to Tract It.’ Nous 37: 471–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Block, N. 1990. ‘Can the Mind Change the World?’ in Boolos, G. ed., Meaning and Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 137–70.Google Scholar
Bunzl, M. 1979. ‘Causal Overdetermination.’ Journal of Philosophy 76: 134–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
T., Burge 1993. ‘Mind-Body Causation and Explanatory Practice’, in Heil and Mele, eds., Mental Causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 97–120.Google Scholar
Campbell, J. 1993. ‘A Simple View of Colour’ in Haldane, J. & Wright, C. eds. Reality, Representation, and Projection. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 257–68.Google Scholar
Charles, D. 1992. ‘Supervenience, Composition, and Physicalism’, in Charles and Lennon, eds. Reduction, Explanation, and Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 265–96.Google Scholar
Davidson, D. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, D. 1993. ‘Thinking Causes,’ in Heil and Mele, eds., Mental Causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 3–17.Google Scholar
Horgan, T. 2001. ‘Causal Compatibilism and the Exclusion Problem’. Theoria 16: 95–116.Google Scholar
Hornsby, J. 1980. Actions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hornsby, J. 1993. ‘Agency and Causal Explanation,’ in Heil and Mele, eds., Mental Causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 161–88.Google Scholar
Hornsby, J. 1997. ‘Bodily Movements, Actions and Epistemology’ in Simple Mindedness: In Defense of Naive Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 93-110.Google Scholar
Jackson, F. and Pettit, P. 1990. ‘Program Explanation: A General Perspective’. Analysis 50: 107–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. 1989. ‘Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion’. Philosophical Perspectives 3: 77–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. 1998. Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 2000. ‘Causation As Influence.’ Journal of Philosophy 97: 182–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LePore, E. and Lower, B. 1987. ‘Minds Matters.’ Journal of Philosophy 84: 630–42.Google Scholar
Macdonald, C. and Macdonald, G. 1986. ‘Mental causes and Explanation of Action,’ Philosophical Quarterly 36: 145–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menzies, P. 2001. ‘The Causal Efficacy of Mental States,’ in Monnoyer, J.M. ed., The Structure of the World: The Renewal of Metaphysics in the Australian School. Paris: J. Vrin.Google Scholar
Mills, E. 1996. ‘Interactionism and Overdetermination,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 33: 105–17.Google Scholar
Pietroski, P. 2000. Causing Action. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Steward, H. 1997. The Ontology of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, S. 1998. ‘Physicalism and Overdetermination.’ Mind 107: 411–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yablo, S. 1992. ‘Mental Causation.’ The Philosophical Review 101: 245–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar