Mental events causal effects

These three premises taken together might seem problematic for mental eausation. Premise (3) states that the mental is anomalous. Premise (2) can be understood as the acceptance of what Davidson calls the Principle of the Nomological Charaeter of Causality. This principle states that where there is causality, there must be a law events related as cause and effect fall under striet deterministic laws (Davidson 1980 116). If we accept the nomological requirement for causality, then it might seem that mental events cannot enter into causal relations. In order for mental events to causally interact with physical events, there would need to be psycho-physical causal laws (by the... 

Davidson s monism and his views about causation lead him to the conclusion that how we choose to describe an event is irrelevant to what that event causes. A mental event just is a physical event, and as event, it has the ability to cause certain effects. Whether we choose to describe the event as mental or as physical has no bearing on what the event will cause. This much seems right. Which properties we pick out when describing the event are irrelevant to what the event causes. But Davidson seems to conclude from this that an event therefore cannot be causal in virtue of having certain properties. But this conclusion just does not follow. The fact that what properties we pick out when describing an event are irrelevant does not mean that certain properties of the event cannot be more causally relevant than others. It makes perfect sense to ask which... 

C is a common cause of A and B when C causes both A and B but there is no causal relation between A and B. For example, a rock thrown into the center of a pool (Q causes a wave to hit at point a and at point b at time t. The worry is that the counterfactual i(A had not occurred, then B would not have occurred may appear to be true. In fact, I think that in ordinary language this counterfactual is plausibly tme in the situation 1 described. But recall that the characterization of causation as dependence involves a very particular way of evaluating counterfactuals. On that way this counterfactual is false since the world in which a small violation of law occurs just before r that leads to A not occurring but leaves all else the same, including B, is a more similar world to the actual world than the world that also leads to the wave not hitting b at t. Again, as in the backtracking case, there may be systems that are set up so that one does obtain counterfactual dependence between events that are effects of a common cause. But this won t occur with respect to mental events and their putative effects. 

If causal determinism is true, that probability will be i if indeterminism is true, it may fall short of i.) Another principle he invokes, but does not label -1 will call it the no effects without physical effects principle — is that if a mental event is a cause of another mental event, then it is a cause (is among the causes) of some physical event or other." 1 will not attempt to determine whether Kims argument for his position is successful. 1 note only that these... 

On the view that mental events are exemplifications of mental properties, it is deeply controversial whether any mental event is a physical event, for it is deeply controversial whether any mental property is a physical property. Moreover, on this view, Kim s position seems especially bold. It seems to amount to the claim that every mental property is such that it is either a physical property or else its exemplifications are without causal effects. ... 

NRP theorists acknowledge that since mental causal transactions are always physically implemented, they are not basic causal transactions. But they maintain they are real causal transactions nevertheless. (Compare the fact that nonbasic actions are real actions.) They hold that mental events are related to their eflfects (physical or mental) in whatever way it is that events must be related to be causally related. Thus, for example, if to be causally related, events must be subsumed under a causal law, then mental events and their effects will be subsumed under a causal law. Or if to be causally related, events must be linked by a chain of counterfactual dependence, then the eflfects of mental events will be linked to those events by a chain of counterfactual dependence. Causal transactions in which mental events participate will thus be genuine causal transactions. They are nonbasic... 

The basic idea offiller-functionalism (for mental events) is that a mental event type Af is the event type, whatever it is, such that tokens of it would occupy a certain role R, which includes a causal roled The causal role will consist of conditional roles both as a cause and as an effect it will consist of the role of being such that its tokens would have certain kinds of effects in certain conditions and would be effects of certain kinds of events in certain conditions. On this view, an event will realize Af in virtue of being the event type tokens of which would occupy or fill role R. 

Although incompatible with Kim s denial that there are second-order properties, this combined view is compatible with his position that every mental event is either a physical event or an epiphenomenon. For it entails his position. This view, moreover, is compatible with Kim s position that events have causal effects only in virtue of being exemplifications of physical properties. For the property in virtue of which an event has causal effects is, arguably, its constitutive property, and on this view, the constitutive properties of events are physical properties. If the properties in virtue of which events have casual effects are constitutive properties, then, on this view, although instances of mental properties have causal effects, they do not have them in virtue of being instances of mental event types rather, they have causal effects in virtue of being instances of physical event types. 

For me, it is events that have causes and effects. Given this extensionalist view of causal relations, it makes no literal sense, as I remarked above, to speak of an event causing something as mental, or by virtue of its mental properties, or as described in one way or another (Davidson 1993 13). 

So, for example, if a specific physical cause, in terms of only physical variables, were a sufficient actual cause for an event, then we can create a causal model Afp framed in only physical variables. If this causal model is effectively closed with respect to, say, mental variables from vocabulary M, then using mental variables that correspond to mental properties will do nothing to further our predictive power of the causal event in question. Our best way to predict the causation of the event in question will be to restrict ourselves to the physical vocabulary P within the model Afp. Employing mental properties in our prediction of the event will do nothing to further our predictive power. 

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