Abstract
In his paper, “A Causal Argument for Physicalism” (Zhong, 2023), Zhong presents a novel argument for non-reductive physicalism (which he calls “A2”), based on the causal argument for reductive physicalism (which he calls “A1”), and claims that A2 is better than A1 since the premises in A2 are more plausible than those in A1. In this paper, I will argue that A2 fails to be a sound argument for non-reductive physicalism, or even physicalism per se, because the premises in A2 can be fulfilled by the kind of dualism which claims that the physical event (P), the mental event (M), and their effect (E) form a causal chain and that P and M are simultaneous causes. Also, I will argue that we do have ways to strengthen A2 to block the aforementioned problem. But the only plausible way to strengthen the argument is to appeal to the conservation of energy and momentum. And this favors A1 more than A2. So, I conclude that A2 is not better than A1, and a causal argument for physicalism still naturally favors reductive physicalism.
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Notes
The idea that dualist positions can somehow sustain the causal argument for physicalism has been proposed in the literature. E. J. Lowe (2000, 2003) and Chiwook Won (2021) argue that under the dualist picture, it can be the case that the mental event and the physical event jointly cause their effect. Christopher Devlin Brown (2019) and Ben White (2018) hold that dualists can appeal to dispositional essentialism to respond to the causal argument for physicalism. Thomas Kroedel (2015) suggests that dualists should hold that psychophysical laws that causally connect the mental and the physical are more robust than ordinary physical laws in the sense that worlds in which psychophysical laws are violated are further away than the worlds in which ordinary physical laws are violated. He also believes that such robust psychophysical laws can secure dualist mental causation under the counterfactual notion of causation. Bram Vaassen (forthcoming) argues that a special understanding of interventionist notion of causation could allow for dualist mental causation. Even if we already have these proposals, the way to save dualist mental causation I present here, especially the combination of the ideas of simultaneous causation and of causal chain, is original. I think the strong emergentist positon I present here most closely resembles that of Lowe and Won, especially in that I agree with Lowe that dualists need simultaneous causation and agree with Won that dualists need to accept what he calls “weak closure” and reject what he calls “strong closure” (see Won 2021, p. 4924). However, the position I present here does not require that the mental and the physical jointly cause their effect since they are on the same causal chain. I thank an anonymous referee for reminding me of these proposals in the literature.
The idea of “correlate-sensitivity” can be compared to the idea of “realization-sensitivity.” For realization-sensitivity, see Zhong (2020).
I think this idea is similar to what Jonathan Schaffer (2000) calls “a hybrid conditions-connections approach.” See also David Fair (1979) for such an approach. The difference is that they take causal concept itself to be hybrid, containing both causation by transference and causation by omission, but I take causal concept to be unified, as difference-making, only that different cases of causation may have different grounds.
This idea is seen in Kim (2007, p. 236).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the editors of Asian Journal of Philosophy for inviting me to participate in this article symposium on Professor Lei Zhong’s paper. I also thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments.
Funding
This paper is funded by The National Social Science Fund of China, “A Research on Metaphysical Grounding under the Background of the New Development of Philosophy of Causation,” 22CZX053.
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Zhang, W. On the causal arguments for physicalism. AJPH 3, 22 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-024-00156-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-024-00156-9