Mental Causation: The Mind-Body Problem
Reviewed by Sara Worley,
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, May 11, 2009.
A surprising number of people believe that there is a non-physical mind in addition to the brain and body. This in itself would not be a problem except that they hold that the mind causes physical events, such as behaviour. There's no particular issue with 'non-physical' per se; the colour red, hope, the appropriateness of a response, and the recognition of a face are all non-physical. And so too mind, which is at a minimum epiphenomenal, can be thought of as non-physical. But how can epiphenomena - mere appearance, say - cause physical events? In my view, the efficient cause must lie in the physicality of the event itself, not in the appearance. This review takes a nice look at the tangled web we call 'causation' in relation to mental phenomena. The main takeaway? This nice neat picture of "A causes B" is deeply mistaken.
Comments
Your comments always remain your property, but in posting them here
you agree to license under the same terms as this site
(Creative Commons). If your comment is offensive it will
be deleted.
Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered
user you may submit links and other HTML. Anonymous users cannot
post links and will have their content screened - certain words are prohibited
and your comment will be analyzed to make sure it makes sense.
