Title

Mental Causation, Invariance, and Teleofunctional Content

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Ethics and Political Philosophy | Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

Can we vindicate the common sense conviction that a person’s beliefs and desires are causally efficacious—that they shape that person’s behavior? Three obstacles stand in the way. First, there are no exceptionless laws linking beliefs and desires to behavioral outcomes; second, the microphysical (or neurochemical) states of affairs on which beliefs and desires supervene have as strong a claim as beliefs and desires themselves to causing behavioral outcomes; third, even if we could surmount the threat of causal exclusion, we would still face “the problem of mental quausation” for beliefs and desires—we would have to show that beliefs and desires cause outcomes in virtue of having the contents that they do. I argue that the “manipulationist” account of causation not only side-steps the first obstacle, but also shows that there is no competing causation at the level of microparticles or neurochemistry. I then briefly suggest that “the problem of mental quausation”, as applied to beliefs and desires, is confused.

Comments

Forthcoming 2013 in a special issue of The Monist on the topic “constitution and composition”. Made available by kind permission of the editors. This manuscript is copyrighted: Copyright 2009, Crawford L. Elder.