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    Causally interacting mental events must be token-identica... — Carmelics
    Home/Consciousness & Mind
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Part of a larger discussion

    Challenges→Cartesian dualism and other forms of dualism are ruled out.

    Causally interacting mental events must be token-identical with physical events.

    CausationConsciousness & Mind
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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Causally interacting mental events must instantiate some strict law property (the cause-law principle).
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    • 2.Mental properties are not suitable for inclusion in strict laws (the anomalism principle).
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    • 3.Therefore, causally interacting mental events must instantiate some non-mental property suitable for strict laws.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Causal efficacy can be grounded in higher-level causal powers without requiring token identity with lower-level physical events.
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    • 2.Non-reductive physicalists like Jaegwon Kim argue that if mental properties are causally efficacious, they must be reducible—but Davidson's token identity fails to secure this, yielding epiphenomenalism rather than genuine mental causation.
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    • 3.Token identity preserves mental causation in name only if the physical description, not the mental description, does all the nomological causal work.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Strict laws are not a necessary condition for singular causal relations, as argued by Donald Davidson's own account of cause, which permits causation without covering laws when properly understood.
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    • 2.If singular causation obtains independently of law-subsumption, mental events can cause physical events under their mental descriptions without needing to instantiate any physical property.
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    Topics

    Consciousness & MindCausation

    Connections

    2 topics

    Philosophy of Language2 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    Cartesian dualism and other forms of dualism are ruled out.Causal efficacy can be grounded in higher-level causal powers without requiring ...Causally interacting mental events must instantiate some strict law property (th...Dualism entails that mental events are not token-identical with physical events.
    +9 moreShow less
    Every physical event has a physical explanation (causal closure of the physical ...If singular causation obtains independently of law-subsumption, mental events ca...Mental properties are not suitable for inclusion in strict laws (the anomalism p...

    Similar

    Dualism entails that mental events are not token-identical with physic...95%Particular mental and physical events cannot be token-identical93%Anomalous Monism entails that particular mental and physical events ar...92%What makes a mental event identical to a physical event is that the me...84%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: anomalous-monism
    View source passageHide passage
    The structure of Davidson’s derivation of the token-identity of causally interacting mental events with physical events appears to be straightforward: causally interacting mental events (the interaction principle) must instantiate some strict law property (the cause-law principle) but mental properties are not suitable for inclusion in strict laws (the anomalism principle). So mental events must instantiate some other property, which is suitable for such inclusion. Given Davidson’s invocation of

    Details

    Type
    premise
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    Non-reductive physicalists like Jaegwon Kim argue that if mental properties are ...
    Physical properties have a privileged status and hold out the promise of strict ...
    Strict laws are not a necessary condition for singular causal relations, as argu...
    Therefore, causally interacting mental events must instantiate some non-mental p...
    Therefore, the non-mental property that causally interacting mental events insta...
    Token identity preserves mental causation in name only if the physical descripti...