Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Causation

The paper argues for four claims: (1) The problem of mental causation and the argument for its solution in terms of the identity of mental with physical causes are independent of the theory of causation one favours. (2) If one considers our experience of agency as described by folk psychology to be veridical, one is committed to an anti-Humean metaphysics of causation in terms of powers that establish necessary connections. The same goes for functional properties in general. (3) A metaphysics of causation in terms of powers is compatible with physics. (4) If combined with the argument for mental causes being identical with physical causes, that metaphysics leads to a conservative reductionism.     

Counterfactual Causation and Mental Causation

Counterfactual conditionals have been appealed to in various ways to show how the mind can be causally efficacious. However, it has often been overestimated what the truth of certain counterfactuals actually indicates about causation. The paper first identifies four approaches that seem to commit precisely this mistake. The arguments discussed involve erroneous assumptions about the connection of counterfactual dependence and genuine causation, as well as a disregard of the requisite evaluation conditions of counterfactuals. In a second step, the paper uses the insights of the foregoing analyses to formulate a set of counterfactuals-based conditions that are characterized as sufficient to establish singular causal claims. The paper concludes that there are ample reasons to believe that some mental events satisfy all these conditions with respect to certain further events and, hence, that mental events sometimes are causes.     

Sparse Causation and Mere Abundant Causation

Philosophical Studies - Setting off from a familiar distinction in the philosophy of properties, this paper introduces a tripartite distinction between sparse causation, abundant causation and mere...     

大学生物质主义与冲动性购买行为:金钱态度的中介作用

采用物质主义价值观量表、冲动性购买行为量表以及金钱态度量表对720名大学生进行调查,考察了物质主义价值观(包括以财物定义成功和以获取财物为中心)与大学生冲动性购买行为的关系,以及金钱态度在其中的中介作用。结果发现:(1)金钱态度与以财物定义成功、以获取财物为中心、冲动性购买行为呈正相关,冲动性购买行为与以财物定义成功、以获取财物为中心呈正相关;(2)金钱态度分别在大学生以财物定义成功与冲动性购买行为、以获取财物为中心与冲动性购买行为之间的关系中起着部分中介作用。     

Materialism and the Subjectivity of Experience

The phenomenal properties of conscious mental states happen to be exclusively accessible from the first-person perspective. Consequently, some philosophers consider their existence to be incompatible with materialist metaphysics. In this paper I criticise one particular argument that is based on the idea that for something to be real it must (at least in principle) be accessible from an intersubjective perspective. I argue that the exclusively subjective access to phenomenal contents can be explained by the very particular nature of the epistemological relation holding between a subject and his own mental states. Accordingly, this subjectivity does not compel us to deny the possibility that phenomenal contents are ontologically objective properties. First, I present the general form of the argument that I will discuss. Second, I show that this argument makes use of a criterion of reality that is not applicable to the case of subjective experience. Third, I discuss a plausible objection and give an argument for rejecting observation models of self-knowledge of phenomenal contents. These models fall prey to the homunculus illusion.     

Causation and the flow of energy

Causation has traditionally been analyzed either as a relation of nomic dependence or as a relation of counterfactual dependence. I argue for a third program, a physicalistic reduction of the causal relation to one of energy-momentum transference in the technical sense of physics. This physicalistic analysis is argued to have the virtues of easily handling the standard counterexamples to the nomic and counterfactual analyses, offering a plausible epistemology for our knowledge of causes, and elucidating the nature of the relation between causation and physical science.The development of this paper owes a great deal to the critical acumen of my colleagues. I want to thank especially Adam Morton, Ernest Loevinsohn, and Jon Levinson. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Carl G. Hempel for kindly commenting on a draft of this paper which led to numerous improvements. But most especially of all I want to thank David Lewis, whose indefatigable insistence on philosophical clarity saved this paper from many turbidities and falsehoods manifest in earlier drafts. I also wish to thank my students, Mark Folsom and Ken Waters, for spotting a serious inaccuracy.     

恩格斯与唯物主义

唯物主义认为存在或发生的一切都是物质的,可以用纯粹自然的术语来描述和理解,不必求助于神圣创造者或非物质的心灵。这种哲学是自然科学方法的基础。但恩格斯强调,将这种一般的哲学观与特定思想家在特定时期提出的特定形式区别开来是重要的。唯物主义往往作为狭隘的、机械论的和还原论的哲学出现,恩格斯称这种形式的唯物主义为"机械"唯物主义,如今它通常被冠以"物理主义"之名。在恩格斯看来,这并非唯物主义的唯一形式。恩格斯致力于发展一种非机械论的、非还原性的哲学的唯物主义,这种唯物主义是原创性的,并且具有重要的当代哲学意义。     

Computation and Causation

The computer's effect on our understanding of causation has been enormous. By the mid-1980s, philosophical and social-scientific work on the topic had left us with (1) no reasonable reductive account of causation and (2) a class of statistical causal models tied to linear regression. At this time, computer scientists were attacking the problem of equipping robots with models of the external that included probabilistic portrayals of uncertainty. To solve the problem of efficiently storing such knowledge, they introduced Bayes Networks and directed graphs. By attaching a causal interpretation to Bayes Networks, the philosophy of causation changed dramatically. We are now able to be extremely general about how causal structure connects to data, and systematic about when causal structures are empirically indistinguishable. In this essay I try to motivate and describe this synthesis.     

Causation and Identity

Causal accounts of the transtemporal identity of physical objects and of persons are not completely new. Passages in Hume can be read as suggesting causal accounts of the identity of physical objects and of the self, as can Kant's arguments that the successive states of an objective substance must be causally connected; and in this century, a variety of causal accounts of the identity conditions for persons and for physical objects have been proposed. Such accounts, especially for physical objects, have not been very fully developed, however, and here I want to provide a more detailed motivation for, and development of, a causal account of identity through time and to examine some of its implications. I think that my general line of argument applies both to persons and to physical objects, though to keep the discussion manageable I shall concentrate on the latter.     

Materialism,Spending, and Affect: An Event-Sampling Study of Marketplace Behavior and Its Affective Costs

Research on materialism has burgeoned in the last two decades, yet little is known about how people higher versus lower in this consumer values orientation differ in their day-to-day spending habits and in their emotional reactions to spending on purchases. The present study used an event-sampling method over a 3-week period to address these questions in a community adult sample. Results showed that over the course of the sampling period, high materialists made more discretionary purchases and spent more money on necessity purchases than did those lower in materialism, even though their incomes did not differ. Despite higher levels of spending, high materialists experienced a “letdown” after spending, as they reported more post-purchase unpleasant affect than did low materialists. This result was not moderated by level of dispositional unpleasant affect, purchase type, or purchase amounts.     

Mental Causation and the Supervenience Argument

One of several problems concerning the possibility of mental causation is that the causal potential of a supervenient property seems to be absorbed by its supervenience base if that base and the supervenient property are not identical. If the causal powers of the supervenient property are a proper subset of the causal powers of the supervenience base then, according to the causal individuation of properties, the supervenience base seems to do all the causal work and the supervenient property appears to be futile. Against this consequence it is possible to argue, first, that the relevant properties of causes must be in some sense proportional to the relevant properties of their effects and, second, that the principle of causal closure serving as a premise in the supervenience argument is probably false. The constraint that the relevant properties of causes should be proportional to the relevant properties of their effects together with the falsity of the closure principle leads to a restoration of the causal efficacy of supervenient properties.

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Agent Causation and the Phenomenology of Agency

Several philosophers claim that the phenomenology of one's own agency conflicts with standard causal theories of action, couched in terms of causation by mental events or states. Others say that the phenomenology is prima facie incompatible with such a theory, even if in the end, a reconciliation can be worked out. Here, it is argued that the type of action theory in question is consistent with what can plausibly be said to be presented to us in our experience of our agency. Several routes to a claim that there is nevertheless a prima facie incompatibility are examined, and all are found wanting. The phenomenology of agency, it is argued, is no threat to a standard causal theory of action.     

Physics and the Human Face of Causation

Many contemporary philosophers of physics (and philosophers of science more generally) follow Bertrand Russell in arguing that there is no room for causal notions in physics. Causation, as James Woodward has put it, has a ‘human face’, which makes causal notions sit ill with fundamental theories of physics. In this paper I examine a range of anti-causal arguments and show that the human face of causation is the face of scientific representations much more generally. Physics, like other sciences, is deeply permeated with causal reasoning.