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It is not the case that Anomalous monism shows that mental causation is efficacious only under physical descriptions, not mentalistic ones.
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Reasons For
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1.
Mental causation via physical description alone seems to deny genuine mental causation—if only physics causes effects, mentality becomes epiphenomenal.
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2.
Explanatory efficacy matters: mental descriptions often provide causal understanding unavailable from physical descriptions alone (e.g., beliefs cause behavior).
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3.
The claim conflates 'what realizes causation' with 'what does the causing'—oxygen realizes fire's burning, but fire, not oxygen, explains the causation.
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Reasons Against
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Reason against
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1.
Physical closure: every physical event has a sufficient physical cause, leaving no causal gaps for non-physical mental properties to fill.
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2.
Mental properties supervene on physical properties, so mental causation must operate through the physical properties that realize mental states.
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3.
Descriptions are explanatory tools; mentalistic descriptions successfully explain behavior only by tracking underlying physical causal mechanisms.
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