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Causation in Physics and in Physicalism

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Abstract

It is widely thought that there is an important argument to be made that starts with premises taken from the science of physics and ends with the conclusion of physicalism. The standard view is that this argument takes the form of a causal argument for physicalism. Roughly, physics tells us that the physical realm is causally complete, and so minds (among other entities) must be physical if they are to interact with the world as we think they do. In what follows, I raise problems for this view. After an initial review of the causal argument, I begin my case by showing that the totality of physical truths do not deductively entail the causal completeness of the physical realm, using a double-prevention scenario and causation by omission to show that nonphysical causes of physical effects would not need to violate physical conservation laws. I then move on to raise problems for an inductive argument for causal completeness by drawing on the neo-Russellian view that there is no causation in fundamental physics, and so causation must itself be a realized or derived entity. I conclude by suggesting that the underlying problem is that the causal argument has fallen out of touch with the sophisticated understanding that philosophers have developed of the role of causation within physics.

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Notes

  1. For the view that physics gives us good reason to reject physicalism, see for instance Wigner (1961), who takes the Von Neumann-Dirac collapse formulation of quantum mechanics to support mind–body dualism. Or see Barrett (2006), who contends that both collapse and no-collapse formulations support dualism.

  2. Taken from Papineau (2001: 9), but using Papineau’s (1993) formulation of the (P1) premise. Other proponents of causal arguments for physicalism include Lewis (1966), Davidson (1970), Peacocke (1979), Tye (1995, 2009), Levine (2001), and Melnyk (2003), Kim (2005).

  3. This is in contrast with the via negativa conception that defines “physical” as (roughly) the non-mental; see for example Montero (1999), Papineau (2001) and (2002), Levine (2001), and Tiehen (2016). One reason to prefer the theory-based conception in the present paper is that what we are interested in the way the science of physics in particular provides evidence for physicalism.

  4. There are physicalists who reject this token identity thesis, holding that mental events are realized or constituted by physical events rather than identical with them—for discussion, see Yablo (1992). Perhaps they can embrace a modified version of the causal argument that makes room for their position, but this is not something I will explore.

  5. See Stoljar (2015) and Tiehen (2018) for discussion.

  6. Cornman (1978) argues that Broad’s (1923) version of antiphysicalist interactionism is consistent with the conservation of energy but not with the law of the conservation of linear momentum. I mention this to highlight the need to bring in other conservation laws here.

  7. Leibniz (1998). Of course, many different critics objected to Descartes’s interactionism, but I single out Leibniz because his objection is based specifically on physical conservation laws.

  8. For further discussion relating Leibniz’s view to the case for Completeness, see Papineau (2001, 2002) and Montero (2006). Garber (1983) argues that Leibniz misrepresents Descartes’ position, while McLaughlin (1993) responds that Leibniz got Descartes right.

  9. The title of the pamphlet is standardly translated using “force,” but Helmholtz retrospectively understood his argument to concern energy. For the development of his thinking on the point, see Elkana (1974).

  10. Hergenhahn and Henley (2013: 223).

  11. Driesch (2013: 145).

  12. Dennett (1991: 35).

  13. Lewis (1990: 590). Beyond Dennett and Lewis, other philosophers who seem to take the conservation laws to rule out violations of Completeness include Fodor (1981), Lycan (1996), and Crane (2001). Here I am indebted to Montero (2006).

  14. Other authors who deny such an entailment include McLaughlin (1992) and Papineau (2001, 2002). They argue on different grounds than I do here; also, they endorse the inductive argument for Completeness that I reject in §3. See also Montero (2006) for skepticism that physics entails Completeness.

  15. Regarding double prevention, see for instance Hall (2000, 2004), Lewis (2000, 2004), Schaffer (2000, 2004), Gibb (2013, 2015a, 2015b), and Paul and Hall (2013).

  16. This is taken from Hall (2004: 271).

  17. Gibb (2013, 2015a, 2015b).

  18. Tiehen (2014).

  19. This is essentially the view of mental causation envisioned by Gibb (2013, 2015a, 2015b), with the caveat that she denies that absences can be causes—a position we will consider in Sect. 2.4—and so frames her view as giving the mental a kind of causal relevance to the physical without causing physical effects. In effect, Gibb frames her account as a way to reconcile a kind of dualist mental causation with Completeness, while I have framed my argument here as showing that Completeness can be false even if all actual physical truths hold.

  20. Objection: If (as we are assuming) the conservation of energy law holds at w*, then the 8-ball reaching the corner pocket does not counterfactually depend on the prevectoplasm intervening, since the law would have obtained even if the prevectoplasm had not intervened. Reply: By assumption, the conservation of energy principle holds as a law at w* at least partly because there is a nonphysical law ensuring that prevectoplasm prevents ectoplasm from interfering with physical processes. Once we counterfactually suppose this nonphysical law away (by supposing the prevectoplasm had not intervened in this case), we cannot assume the conservation of energy principle would continue to hold as a matter of law.

  21. This was the focus of Tiehen (2014).

  22. See Jackson (1998), Chalmers (1996, 2012), and Tiehen (2014). Or perhaps, as Jackson and Chalmers maintain, physicalism allows that the entailment base will include indexical truths in addition to physical truths and a that’s-all truth. I will ignore this complication here.

  23. On probability-raising theories, see for instance Suppes (1970) and Eells (1991); for interventionist approaches, Woodward (2003, 2009) and Hitchcock (2009); for counterfactual theories, Lewis (1973, 2000).

  24. Dowe (1992, 2000, 2001, 2004). Other defenders of broadly similar physical theories of causation include Aronson (1971), Fair (1979), Salmon (1984), Hall (2004), Kim (2007), and Ney (2009). I note that Fair develops his account in a way that allows for absence causation.

  25. Instead, he says double prevention is a form of “causation*” (Dowe: 2000), or “quasi-causation” (Dowe: 2001).

  26. Strictly speaking, my argument does not require the difference-making conception—it is for instance compatible with Fair’s (1979) non-standard physical theory that allows for absence causation. But because the most familiar way to defend absence causation is in connection with difference-making views, and because I find such views plausible anyway, I am willing to make them my focus here and treat them as a premise of my argument.

  27. Influential difference-making approaches to mental causation have been defended by Lepore & Loewer (1987), Yablo (1992), Loewer (2007), Woodward (2015), among others.

  28. See Schaffer (2000, 2004) for arguments that many of the causal claims advanced in the special sciences invoke absences. Loewer (2007) argues that difference-making mental causation is as much as physicalists can hope for, and that they should be content. Russo (2016) makes the empirical case that the physiological mechanisms underlying human action involve double prevention, in which case philosophers who deny that double prevention is causation will be forced to hold that mental events do not cause human actions.

  29. An anonymous referee notes that Kim (2007) acknowledges that it is the productive conception of causation rather than the difference-making one that is operative in his causal exclusion argument, which is broadly similar to the causal argument for physicalism. In that case, my argument would fail to saddle Kim with any burden he does not already willingly take on. However, there are other proponents of the causal argument for physicalism who operate with the difference-making conception, including as a paradigmatic example David Lewis—for his defense of the causal argument, see Lewis (1966), and for his counterfactual theory of causation, see Lewis (1973). In that case, my argument in this section exerts leverage on at least some proponents of the causal argument.

  30. Melnyk (2003: 289–290).

  31. For discussion see Russell (1913), Field (2003), Norton (2003), the essays contained Price and Corry (2007), Kutach (2013), Papineau (2013), Frisch (2014), Ney (2016), Loew (2017), and Haug (2019).

  32. Russell (1913: 1).

  33. See for instance Albert (2000) and several of the essays contained in Price and Corry (2007).

  34. Field (2003: 443).

  35. Papineau (2013) pursues this line of thought.

  36. Field (2003: 443), describing Cartwright (1979).

  37. Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this point, giving as an example Anscombe’s (1971) view according to which we can perceive causal relations.

  38. Proponents of simplicity-based arguments for physicalism include Smart (1959), Brandt and Kim (1967), Churchland (1987), Hill (1991), Hill and McLaughlin (1999), McLaughlin (2007), and Block and Stalnaker (1999).

  39. Two authors who have explored conclusions similar to mine—but not arguments similar to mine—are Ney (2016) and Haug (2019). Ney argues that there is a tension between the causal argument for physicalism and causal anti-fundamentalism. She then suggests that this gives us reason to reject anti-fundamentalism. In effect, Ney and I agree on what the decision points are in this debate, we just disagree on which decisions should be made at those points. Haug acknowledges there is a tension between the causal argument and causal anti-fundamentalism, and proposes to meet that challenge by developing two distinct but complementary arguments for physicalism: one argument that is causal and draws on evidence from various sciences, and one that is non-causal and focuses on fundamental physics. The overall view is at odds with mine, but there is at least this much agreement: I too say that the causal argument alone cannot get us all the way to physicalism, and at best can work by being supplemented with a non-causal argument.

  40. Papineau (2001, 2002).

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    Justin Tiehen

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Tiehen, J. Causation in Physics and in Physicalism. Acta Anal 37, 471–488 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-021-00503-y

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