Abstract
Jaegwon Kim’s influential exclusion argument attempts to demonstrate the inconsistency of nonreductive materialism in the philosophy of mind. Kim’s argument begins by showing that the three main theses of nonreductive materialism, plus two additional considerations, lead to a specific and (by now) familiar picture of mental causation. The exclusion argument can succeed only if, as Kim claims, this picture is not one of genuine causal overdetermination. Accordingly, one can resist Kim’s conclusion by denying this claim, maintaining instead that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. I call this strategy the ‘overdetermination challenge’. One of the main aims of this paper is to show that the overdetermination challenge is the most appropriate response to Kim’s exclusion argument, at least in its latest form. I argue that Kim fails to adequately respond to the overdetermination challenge, thus failing to prevent his opponents from reasonably maintaining that the effects of the mental are always causally overdetermined. Interestingly, this discussion reveals a curious dialectical feature of Kim’s latest response to the overdetermination challenge: if it succeeds, then a new, simpler and more compact version of the exclusion argument is available. While I argue against the consequent of this conditional, thereby also rejecting the antecedent, this dialectical feature should be of interest to philosophers on either side of this debate.
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Notes
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Kim in this section are to his 2005 (chapter two).
See Kim (1993c) for further discussion of this point.
A note about the strength of modality involved here. Typically, it is thought that nonreductive materialism is committed to metaphysical mental-physical supervenience. For example, Marras (1993), Chalmers (1996), Kallestrup (2006), and Bennett (2008) all characterize it in this way. Interestingly, Kim (2005) disagrees, claiming that “the possibility that mind-body supervenience is logically or metaphysically necessary … is essentially a reductionist view”, and so cannot be a commitment of nonreductive materialism (49). In a footnote, however, Kim admits that “[t]his is not an uncontroversial issue” (49). Fortunately, this controversy can largely be avoided. For the most part, Kim’s exclusion argument makes no assumption about the strength of modality involved in [Supervenience]. This issue will, however, briefly resurface later in “Responding to Horn One”.
The second occurrence of the modal operator ‘necessarily’ in the above definition guarantees that any mental-physical connections that obtain within a world also obtain across all possible worlds. Weak mental-physical supervenience is obtained by omitting this modal operator, thereby allowing for transworld variation. Global mental-physical supervenience also allows for such variation. Arguably, nonreductive materialism requires transworld invariance, and thus strong supervenience is adopted over these other theses. See Kim (1993a, 1993b) and McLaughlin (1995) for further discussion of the various kinds of supervenience relations.
Kim has argued that not all types of mental-physical reduction are ruled out by considerations of multiple realizability. He makes this case with respect to both species/structure-specific reductions (1998) and functional reductions (1998 and 2005). See Shapiro (2000, 2004) for criticisms of arguments for multiple realizability.
See Horgan (1989) for a discussion of this distinction.
Properties as such do not enter into causal relations. However, for readability, I will often follow Kim and speak of causation between properties, as opposed to causation between property instantiations.
In order to reach the conclusion of stage one, it is not necessary to share Kim’s view that the two reasons for M’s instantiation mentioned above are “seemingly exclusionary”. So long as one accepts [Realization] and [Supervenience], one must admit that M causes M* at t by causing P* at t. I write this because some do not share Kim’s attitude towards this situation, and believe this upsets his argument. See, for example, Crisp and Warfield (2002). Of course if one takes the alleged tension to be the only support for [Realization], then if one rejects the tension, one will also reject [Realization]. My point is merely that one can reject the tension while accepting [Realization], in which case one will reach the conclusion of stage one. Note that Crisp and Warfield deny [Realization], although for different reasons than those responsible for their denying the alleged tension.
Kim will ultimately conclude that M does not cause P* (or M*) at t (assuming M is not reducible to P). For this reason, his conclusion that M’s physical subvenient base, P, causes P* at t might appear suspicious. However, if one keeps in mind that this conclusion rests on the premise that M causes P* at t, which ultimately comes from the assumption that M causes M* at t, then this suspicion should subside. To put the point another way, [Subvenient Causation] can be read as follows: if M causes P* at t, then M’s subvenient physical base, P, causes P* at t. I thank an anonymous referee for raising this concern.
To say that they are ‘distinct’ is consistent with M’s supervening on P. They are ‘distinct’ in the sense of [Irreducibility] discussed in “The Three Theses of Nonreductive Materialism”.
I assume that there are no other potential causes of P* at t, and thus that at least one of our two candidate causes is P*’s actual cause.
In fact, [Closure] is not needed in order to complete the reductio. Once [Exclusion] is invoked, it follows that either M does not cause P* at t, or P does not cause P* at t. But either of these disjuncts contradicts an earlier step in the argument. [Closure] is needed only in order to exclude M rather than P. But since any contradiction will do, this step is unnecessary. Interestingly, Kim does not appear to see this.
See Shapiro and Sober (2007) for a discussion, among other things, of Kim’s attempt to save [Efficacy] via a rejection of [Irreducibility]. Interestingly, Shapiro and Sober argue that Kim’s reductionist strategy ultimately undermines the causal efficacy of ordinary mental properties such as pain and the belief that p.
In fact, Kim’s argument does not explicitly state either that M is a sufficient cause of P* or that P is a sufficient cause of P*. Each is claimed to merely be a cause of P*. However, in order for [Exclusion] to be applicable to the situation depicted in Fig. 1, each needs to be regarded as a sufficient cause of P* (at t). Given that most philosophers who discuss the exclusion argument adopt Kim’s formulation of [Exclusion], they must regard M and P in this way. I’ll follow this practice.
Each of these authors has recently denied or called into question [No Overdetermination] (or something very much like it). Crisp and Warfield’s rejection comes in a review of Kim (1998), and is fairly brief. They also reject other parts of Kim’s exclusion argument. Sider’s rejection comes in a discussion of Merricks (2001), and so does not deal directly with Kim’s argument. Although Block raises some objections to [No Overdetermination], his primary focus is on the denial of [Exclusion]. Finally, Carey considers various definitions of overdetermination, arguing that on each definition, the nonreductive materialist is able to deny at least one of the claims making up the exclusion argument; on some definitions, [No Overdetermination] is rejected. Crisp and Warfield’s paper will be further discussed in the next section.
The principle of exclusion has been formulated in various ways by numerous philosophers over the years, and thus many different versions of the principle have been rejected. Nevertheless, [Exclusion], as formulated in this paper, must be denied by anyone who accepts [Irreducibility], [Closure], and the claim that the mental can cause the physical without overdetermining it. Philosophers who maintain each of these claims include Fodor (1989), Horgan (1997, 2001), Bennett (2003), Kallestrup (2006), Shapiro and Sober (2007), Woodward (2008), Shapiro (2010), and many others.
See Funkhouser (2002) for a discussion of the varieties of causal overdetermination.
Not all cases of independent overdetermination are like this. Two bullets simultaneously hitting a spy’s heart is neither surprising nor coincidental, if they came from weapons fired by cooperating assassins.
Sider (2003) distinguishes three objections to causal overdetermination, arguing that each is unconvincing. The first such objection he calls the ‘coincidence objection’. I take Kim’s argument just considered to be an instance of this objection. Additionally, my response to Kim’s argument is essentially in line with Sider’s criticism of the coincidence objection. However, and as noted in footnote eighteen, Sider does not explicitly address Kim’s exclusion argument.
To be precise, this constitutes a violation of [Closure] only if the mental cause is the only cause of the physical event. Kim most likely makes this assumption because of the stipulation that this situation is, apart from the physical cause’s absence, “in other respects as much like our world as possible”. The reasonableness of this assumption will be questioned.
Notice that Block’s response does not challenge Kim’s suggestion that in order to vindicate M’s status as a genuine overdetermining cause of P*, P* must occur in PW~P. Unfortunately, I do not have the space here to consider this possible challenge to Kim’s argument.
Technically, Kim is responding to Crisp and Warfield’s dilemma (2002). In contrast to Kim, they argue that the two possibilities just discussed are not problematic for nonreductive materialism.
Recall from footnote four that the modal operators in [Supervenience] are to be interpreted as expressing at least nomological necessity. Also noted there was Kim’s claim that the nonreductive materialist cannot interpret these modal operators as expressing metaphysical necessity since “such a view [would be] essentially a reductionist view” (49). See footnote four for references to philosophers who disagree with Kim on this point.
Note that Kim is here distinguishing ‘physical possibility’ from ‘nomological possibility’. Often these expressions are used to refer to the same kind of possibility.
This is in accordance with Lewis’s (1979) directive that when measuring the similarity of two possible worlds to our own: “(1) It is of the first importance to avoid big, widespread, diverse violations of law. (2) It is of the second importance to maximize the spatiotemporal region throughout which perfect match of particular fact prevails. (3) It is of the third importance to avoid even small, localized, simple violations of law.” (472). The most similar non-P world to our own is one on which physical conditions antecedent to the occurrence of P in our world are held fixed in exchange for a local violation of physical law.
The violation of [Supervenience] can be supposed to be local, not widespread, thus making it a small miracle.
Kim suggests this in the quotation given at the very start of “Kim’s Latest Argument for [No Overdetermination]—A Dilemma”.
Following Kim, I use P’ to refer to M’s alternate physical subvenient base in PW~P.
This assumes that all nonphysical properties, not just mental properties, supervene on physical properties.
[Exclusion] and [Closure] could also be discarded.
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Acknowledgment
I would like to thank William Roche, Carolina Sartorio, Lawrence Shapiro, Alan Sidelle, and Danielle Wylie for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks especially to William Roche for valuable and extensive subsequent discussion. Thanks, finally, to an anonymous referee at this journal for his or her comments and advice during the review process.
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Roche, M. Causal Overdetermination and Kim’s Exclusion Argument. Philosophia 42, 809–826 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-014-9525-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-014-9525-y