Kim criticizes non-reductive physicalism as a suitable metaphysics of mind among things because of its failure on the issue of mental causation. The failure is especially present in the thesis of supervenience physicalism. Kim concludes that the causal powers of mental states can be reduced to the causal powers carried by the physical states realizing them. Such causal reduction might involve identity between mental properties and physical properties. I think this is not a necessary conclusion. I try to clarify some premises behind Kim’s analysis, regarding issues of irreducibility, downward causation and the structure of the physical domain. I think the main reason why Kim doubts the plausibility of non-reductive physicalism is his view that downward causation and non-reductive metaphysics indicate the physical domain being hierarchically divided into levels. It seems like Kim would take the opposite position regarding the structure of the physical: an undivided continuum. Yet, the question is if that position follows from the ontological tenet of physicalism. Finally, I conclude that not necessarily, and I develop some further implications and suggestions.

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.

According to the dominant tradition in Christianity and many other religions, human beings are both knowers and actors: beings with conscious beliefs about the world who sometimes act intentionally guided by these beliefs. According to philosopher of mind Robert Cummins the “received view” among philosophers of mind is epiphenomenalism, according to which mental causation does not exist: neural events are the underlying causes of both behavior and belief which explains the correlation (not causation) between belief and behavior. Beliefs do not, in virtue of their semantic content, enter the causal chain leading to action, beliefs are always the endpoint of a causal chain. If that is true the theological anthropology of many religious traditions is false. JP Moreland draws attention to two different ways of doing metaphysics: serious metaphysics and shopping-list metaphysics. The difference is that the former involves not only the attempt to describe  the phenomena one encounter, it also involves the attempt of locating them, that is explaining how the phenomena is possible and came to be given the constraints of a certain worldview. For a physicalist these constraints include the atomic theory of matter and the theories of physical, chemical and biological evolution.   Mental properties are challenging phenomena to locate within a physicalist worldview, and some physicalists involved in “serious metaphysics” have therefore eliminated them from their worldview. Most however accept them, advocating “non-reductive physicalism” according to which mental properties supervene on physical processes. Even if one allow mental properties to supervene on physical processes, the problem of mental causation remains. If mental properties are irreducible to and therefore distinct from physical properties, as the non-reductive physicalists claim, they cannot exert causal powers if one accepts the causal closure of the physical domain – which one must, if one is a “serious physicalist” according to physicalist philosopher of mind Jaegwon Kim.   Alvin Plantinga, in his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, shows that if mental properties, such as the propositional content of beliefs, are causally inefficacious, then evolution has not been selecting cognitive faculties that are reliable, in the sense of being conducive to true beliefs. If the content of our beliefs does not affect our behavior, the content of our belief is irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint, and so the content-producing part of our cognitive faculties are irrelevant from an evolutionary standpoint. The “reliability” – truth-conduciveness – of our cognitive faculties can therefore not be explained by evolution, and therefore not located within the physicalist worldview. The only way in which the reliability of our cognitive faculties can be located is if propositional content is relevant for behavior.   If we however eliminate or deny the reliability of our cognitive faculties, then we have abandoned any chance of making a rational case for our position, as that would presuppose the reliability that we are denying. But if propositional content is causally efficacious, then that either – if we are non-reductive physicalists and mental properties are taken to be irreducible to physical properties – implies that the causal closure of the physical domain is false or - if we are reductive physicalists and not eliminativists regarding mental properties - it shows that matter qua matter can govern itself by rational argumentation, in which we have a pan-/localpsychistic view of matter. Either way, we have essentially abandoned physicalism in the process of locating the reliability of our cognitive faculties within a physicalist worldview. We have also affirmed the theological anthropology of Christianity, in so far as the capacity for knowledge and rational action is concerned. Keywords: Philosophy of mind, mental causation, reductionism, physicalism, the evolutionary argument against naturalism, the myth of nonreductive materialism, Alvin Plantinga, Jaegwon Kim