Natural science tells us that the world is fundamentally physical - everything is ultimately constituted by physical properties and governed by physical laws. How do we square this picture of the world with the apparent fact that there are genuine causal relations at levels that aren’t described by physics? The problem of mental causation is at the heart of this issue. There are probably two reasons for this. Firstly, if there are any non-physical properties at all, surely mental properties are among them. And secondly, the reality of mental causation is arguably more important to us than the reality of any other kind of causation. Without it, it would be hard for us to make sense of ourselves as agents with free will and moral responsibility. The main purpose of this thesis is to defend a view that accepts a scientific worldview and still allows for mental properties to exist, be non-physical, and be genuine causes of actions and behaviour. Some philosophers are pessimistic that all these goals can be achieved. They think that the only way for mental properties to fit into the causal structure of the world is if these mental properties are really physical properties. I do not find the argument for this view compelling. As I will show, it relies on an implausibly strong constraint on causes that must be amended. Once amended, a new position emerges, the so-called Subset view, which is actually motivated by the very premises that initially pushed us towards a reductive view of mental properties.

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Mental causation is with us all the time. Being a table is different from being a human---although we are composed of physical particles, we have understanding, reason, or perception, which are able to make a difference in the physical world. In this dissertation, I have detail discussions of contemporary substance dualism, the mind-brain identity theory, and Jaegwon Kim's functionalism, and thus conclude that none of them can provide an appropriate account to the problem of mental causation. By distinguishing the mind from the body, substance dualists face the pairing problem: How does this particular mind unite with this particular body and thus interact? With the pairing problem, more and more philosophers accept physicalism. However, it is surprising that the problem of mental causation arises again from the heart of physicalism. It means that accepting physicalist ontology does not make this problem go away. On the contrary, basic physical assumptions can even be seen as the source of the current difficulties with mental causation. My preferred idea is that mental properties emerge from physical properties, and both of them together make an occurrence to cause an effect. Emergence makes mental causation autonomous and also avoids epiphenomenalism.

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The Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that since every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and cases of causal overdetermination (wherein a single effect has more than one sufficient cause) are rare, it follows that if minds cause physical effects as frequently as they seem to, then minds must themselves be physical in nature. I contend that the Exclusion Argument fails to justify the rejection of interactionist dualism (the view that the mind is non-physical but causes physical effects). In support of this contention, I argue that the multiple realizability of mental properties and the phenomenal and intentional features of mental events give us reason to believe that mental properties and their instances are non-physical. I also maintain (a) that depending on how overdetermination is defined, the thesis that causal overdetermination is rare is either dubious or else consistent with interactionist dualism and the claim that every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and (b) that the claim that every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause is not clearly supported by current science. The premises of the Exclusion Argument are therefore too weak to justify the view that minds must be physical in order to cause physical effects as frequently as they seem to. / Philosophy

Thesis advisor: Ronald K. Tacelli / This dissertation arose from concerns that the prevalent philosophy of materialism which reduces everything to matter has inadvertently contributed to the ecological destruction of the planet, and an impoverished understanding of human nature. Conceptual arguments and empirical data cry out for a philosophy beyond materialism (or its current avatar Physicalism) that moves us beyond 17th century classical science, making use of 20th century quantum science to better understand our world. Such a new philosophy would embed a new scientific paradigm that incorporates both the first person point of view and the third person "no point of view."The main issue I engage in this dissertation is whether consciousness can be explained by Physicalism. While functionalism, the dominant theory of Physicalism, answers many questions related to consciousness, it leaves major ones unanswered. I offer a critique of Physicalism using conceptual arguments and empirical data encompassing what I call the "chemistry of attention." I also offer innovative proposals toward a philosophical approach I term "Aspect Monism" that builds on earlier monist philosophies (Spinoza) while incorporating dualistic features, suggesting that this new approach would better account for consciousness. The proximate history of Physicalism to either explain the mind away or reduce it to the brain from Behaviorism through Identity Theory to Functionalism is laid out as well as the difficulty in establishing the boundaries of Physicalism.The project utilizes conceptual arguments to critique Physicalism in three areas of concern: What is left out? What is assumed? What is causing methodological confusion? The areas of qualia, cognition, intentionality, meaning and personhood are left out. This is demonstrated, in part, by various thought experiments like the inverted spectrum argument, the Chinese nation argument, the zombies' argument, the knowledge argument and the Chinese room argument. The problem of causal closure of the physical is that which is assumed. The ambiguity with respect to method is that which causes confusion.Empirical data from the neurosciences (EEG, ERP, fMRI experiments during meditation; OCD and phobia treatment; placebo and nocebo effect) are used to critically analyze Physicalism with respect to mental states and causation and the analysis of such data points to a close relationship between attention and changes in the brain, and subsequently to the collapse of Physicalism into Epiphenomenalism. Such a metaphysical approach to consciousness is suggested from, and provides a home for, the neurophysical approaches to the origins of consciousness. I present a neuro-quantum perspective using Stapp and Penrose-Hameroff who suggest these origins via neuroscience and quantum physics.As we search for a new scientific paradigm and consequently a new metaphysics that takes into consideration the objective and the subjective, and the inner and the outer, a new philosophy and a new scientific paradigm which incorporates both the first person point of view and the third person "no point of view" data is the need of the hour. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

One of the most interesting developments in recent psychological theorising has been a growing appreciation of the need for a viable theory of mental causation. Hitherto, the prospects for reconciling what seems to be the uniquely rational character of human thought and action with the non-rational mechanistic workings of the natural world have appeared to be limited or even illusory, and the pursuit of reconciliation of this sort has therefore formerly been dismissed as being either impossible of completion or inappropriate for contemplation. Much of the scepticism concerning the role of causal processes in human thought and action was dispelled, however, by the philosopher Donald Davidson, who argues that not only is human action capable of being caused by the actor�s thoughts and desires, but that only when such action is so caused, can it be rational. Davidson�s proposal for the reconciliation of human rationality with causal necessitation is articulated in his theory of Anomalous Monism. According to this theory, there exists what may be termed an ontological-conceptual distinction between events themselves and the characters or properties that are attributed to events by human observers, and it is through recognition of this distinction that one discovers how mental events, that is, events that are amenable to description in the psychological vocabulary, are causally efficacious yet free from the constraints typically associated with the necessity and sufficiency of causal laws. Anomalous Monism, if it were workable, would therefore resolve the paradox according to which human mentality is at once integrated in, and yet unconstrained by, the mechanistic natural world, by demonstrating the compatibility of the facts of causation with the intuitions of folk psychology. However, close examination of Anomalous Monism reveals it to rely on logically flawed anti-realist principles concerning the characters of events, properties and causation. It follows from this that the theory itself must be rejected, but the task that it was devised to undertake, the formulation of a viable theory of mental causation, need not be similarly discarded. Rather, what remains is the challenge of delineating an alternative theory, one that withstands logical scrutiny whilst addressing what is characteristic of human mental processes, and thereby what is characteristic of mental causation. The theory of Direct Realism that is derived from the broader philosophical realism of John Anderson provides the materials for meeting this challenge. According to Direct Realism, mental phenomena are relational situations obtaining between certain organisms (including humans) and their environments. As such, mental phenomena are included in the range of phenomena occurring in the natural world and they are therefore subject to all of its ways of working, including its deterministic mechanisms. The particular challenge that a Direct Realist theory of mental causation faces, that of demonstrating that relational situations can be causal, is revealed upon examination of the character of causation to be unproblematic. Furthermore, the seeming incompatibility between human rationality and natural necessitation is resolved when it is acknowledged that, rather than be an inherent feature of thought and action, logical structure is a characteristic of the natural environment that organisms are at times sensitive to, as revealed by its effects on the characters of their thoughts and actions. Far from being remote or illusory, the prospects for reconciling human mentality with the causal mechanisms of the natural world are discovered in the present thesis to be favourable when a realist approach to the characters of both mental events and causation is adopted.

Mental causation between the material and the immaterial has been problematic for interactionist substance dualism ever since its first major proponent René Descartes. The contemporary philosopher Jaegwon Kim believes he has found an argument that shows exactly why an immaterial event cannot be said to cause a material event; he calls this the pairing problem argument. This thesis will argue that there is actually sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that Kim’s argument is unsuccessful due to one of its premises being false. Furthermore, this thesis will also argue that interactionist substance dualism is actually a philosophically viable alternative, and lastly ways are sketched of how one might go about constructing such a view responsibly.

I present a thorough metaphysics of causal overdetermination, which yields new insights into mental causation, our world's counterfactual structure, and properties of moral responsibility. I investigate causal overdetermination in three related papers.In "Overdetermination Underdetermined," I show that overdetermination has been underspecified in the literature, leading to a conflation of several important questions: (i) what is overdetermination?, (ii) is overdetermination physically possible, and if so, how ubiquitous is it?, and (iii) is overdetermination a problem?I diagnose the source of confusion as the following definition implicitly used in the literature:(OD) Causes c1 and c2 overdetermine an effect e if c1 and c2 are (i) distinct, (ii) they occur, and (iii) they are each sufficient to cause e in the way that it occurs.I hold that this is not in fact a definition, but a schema with several open definienda: distinctness, occurrence, causation, and precision in the way that the effect occurs. Different satisfiers yield different notions of overdetermination. Answers to the central questions regarding overdetermination are sensitive to the kinds of overdetermination in play. Once we are clear on what overdetermination is and to which sorts we are ontologically committed, we can also be clear on what is at stake for each debate--and it typically is not acceptance or denial of causal overdetermination per se.In "Overdetermination and Counterfactual Sensitivity," I show that the counterfactual structure of the world is richer than previously thought. I introduce a novel class of events that are insensitive to the additive force of multiple causes. They do not covary counterfactually with the multiplicity or force of their causes. They are to be contrasted with sensitive effects, which counterfactually covary according to the number and sorts of causes they have.In "Moral Overdetermination", I examine causal overdetermination in the context of moral responsibility. I use cases of moral overdetermination to introduce puzzles about the relationship between causal responsibility and moral responsibility that deserve further exploration. Along the way, I consider the instrumental value of various reductive theories of causation as guides to moral assessment, and I unearth interesting consequences for moral luck and for collective responsibility.

One of the most interesting developments in recent psychological theorising has been a growing appreciation of the need for a viable theory of mental causation. Hitherto, the prospects for reconciling what seems to be the uniquely rational character of human thought and action with the non-rational mechanistic workings of the natural world have appeared to be limited or even illusory, and the pursuit of reconciliation of this sort has therefore formerly been dismissed as being either impossible of completion or inappropriate for contemplation. Much of the scepticism concerning the role of causal processes in human thought and action was dispelled, however, by the philosopher Donald Davidson, who argues that not only is human action capable of being caused by the actor�s thoughts and desires, but that only when such action is so caused, can it be rational. Davidson�s proposal for the reconciliation of human rationality with causal necessitation is articulated in his theory of Anomalous Monism. According to this theory, there exists what may be termed an ontological-conceptual distinction between events themselves and the characters or properties that are attributed to events by human observers, and it is through recognition of this distinction that one discovers how mental events, that is, events that are amenable to description in the psychological vocabulary, are causally efficacious yet free from the constraints typically associated with the necessity and sufficiency of causal laws. Anomalous Monism, if it were workable, would therefore resolve the paradox according to which human mentality is at once integrated in, and yet unconstrained by, the mechanistic natural world, by demonstrating the compatibility of the facts of causation with the intuitions of folk psychology. However, close examination of Anomalous Monism reveals it to rely on logically flawed anti-realist principles concerning the characters of events, properties and causation. It follows from this that the theory itself must be rejected, but the task that it was devised to undertake, the formulation of a viable theory of mental causation, need not be similarly discarded. Rather, what remains is the challenge of delineating an alternative theory, one that withstands logical scrutiny whilst addressing what is characteristic of human mental processes, and thereby what is characteristic of mental causation. The theory of Direct Realism that is derived from the broader philosophical realism of John Anderson provides the materials for meeting this challenge. According to Direct Realism, mental phenomena are relational situations obtaining between certain organisms (including humans) and their environments. As such, mental phenomena are included in the range of phenomena occurring in the natural world and they are therefore subject to all of its ways of working, including its deterministic mechanisms. The particular challenge that a Direct Realist theory of mental causation faces, that of demonstrating that relational situations can be causal, is revealed upon examination of the character of causation to be unproblematic. Furthermore, the seeming incompatibility between human rationality and natural necessitation is resolved when it is acknowledged that, rather than be an inherent feature of thought and action, logical structure is a characteristic of the natural environment that organisms are at times sensitive to, as revealed by its effects on the characters of their thoughts and actions. Far from being remote or illusory, the prospects for reconciling human mentality with the causal mechanisms of the natural world are discovered in the present thesis to be favourable when a realist approach to the characters of both mental events and causation is adopted.