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Notes
Variants of the exclusion problem have been presented, e.g., by Malcolm (1968), Peacocke (1979) and Schiffer (1987). More recently, Kim (1989, 1992) and Papineau (1993, 2001) in particular have pressed the exclusion argument in defence of physicalism; and as Papineau (2001) argues, something like the exclusion argument (and the assumption of completeness of physics; see below) also drives the traditional type-identity theory of Smart (1959), Lewis (1966, 1972) and Armstrong (1968).
I have borrowed this elegant way of summarizing the exclusion problem from Bennett (2007).
Note that the exclusion argument, if sound, generalizes: it threatens to make all properties studied by special sciences (e.g. properties of biology) which are purportedly distinct from (i.e., not type-identical with) underlying physical properties causally inefficacious. Hence, there is much more at stake here than just the mental.
Manipulationist theories of causation, in fact, have a longer history. Earlier variants include Collingwood (1940), Gasking (1955), von Wright (1971), and Menzies and Price (1993). These tend to be, however, problematically anthropocentric, subjectivistic and reductionistic, and are moreover threatened with circularities. The more recent interventionist variants apparently avoid such problems; cf. Woodward (2001).
Also Carl Craver (2007, pp. 223–224) briefly sketches what seems to amount to the same argument, giving credit to Eric Marcus (unpublished). Thus, such an argument seems to be very much in the air. [While this paper was under review, Woodward (2008) also came out; Woodward himself is developing there many ideas that are quite similar to those expressed in this paper. I have added a couple of references to Woodward’s paper in order to help comparison.].
That is, with certain natural ways of choosing the contrasts.
In the interventionist literature, if the variable X is causally relevant for the variable Y, it is often said that X causes Y. This manner of speaking admittedly deviates from the normal usage. In what follows, I only talk about “causal relevance” in such cases, just in order to keep these two kinds of causal claims clearly distinguished. But this is purely verbal choice from my part—nothing really hinges on this choice.
It is sometimes suggested that these correspond one–one to the so-called type-causation and token-causation, familiar from the philosophical literature on causation. However, I do not think that the issue is this simple. In particular, I think that both these sorts of claims can be meaningfully made at least in the type level (cf. Menzies 2008).
Consequently, if we were to follow the somewhat deviant interventionist manner of speaking (cf. Footnote 11), we could say both that X causes Y and that Z causes Y.
Woodward has certain reservations about the standard Lewis-Stalnaker analysis of counterfactuals. But in the present example, its possible problems appear to be irrelevant. The relative similarity between worlds seems to be sufficiently clear in these cases, and no violation of the laws of nature, or “miracles”, are involved. Neither is Lewis’s ultra-realism about possible worlds assumed.
In the interventionist literature, counterfactuals are evaluated instead by systems of equations. In the present simple case, this approach gives apparently the same results. I have leaned here on the possible world approach because it is more familiar.
In my own case, this argument was inspired by Tim Crane’s quite similar argument with respect to a more traditional counterfactual approach to causation (Crane 2001, pp. 64–65), though others seem to have been able to arrive at the idea independently of it.
(TC) X is a total cause of Y if and only if there is a possible intervention on X which will change Y (or the probability distribution of Y); see Woodward (2003, pp. 45, 51).
As, for example, in Hesslow’s (1976) classical example, in which birth control pills both directly cause an increased probability of thrombosis, but also lower the probability of pregnancy, which is itself a positive probabilistic cause of thrombosis.
Their formulation of Exclusion as well as of the whole exclusion argument is a bit different from mine. I have not attempted here to formulate their result in my setting, or to make our terminologies commensurable. I merely want to mention their work as it is clearly related to my considerations about Revised Completeness, and indeed inspired my way of presenting the issue here.
As it happens, Menzies (2008) draws the same conclusion.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper have been presented in the “Reduction and the Special Sciences”—conference in Tilburg (April 2008) and in the “Emergence afternoon” at the University of Helsinki (May 2007). I would like to thank all those who participated in the discussions. I am most indebted to Tim Crane, Jaakko Kuorikoski, Peter Menzies and Petri Ylikoski for helpful discussions on the topics of this paper. I am also grateful to two anonymous referees for their useful comments.
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Raatikainen, P. Causation, Exclusion, and the Special Sciences. Erkenn 73, 349–363 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-010-9236-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-010-9236-0