Criticism of D.B Volkov’s Teleofunctional Solution to the Problem of Mental Causation

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Author(s):  
Anton V. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Factors ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Local Properties ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
First Editions

The articles examines the teleofunctional solution to the problem of mental causation, presented by Dmitry Volkov in his recently published book Free Will. An Illusion or an Opportunity. D.B. Volkov proposes solutions to three big metaphysical problems – mental causation, personal identity, and free will. Solving the first problem, Volkov creatively combines the advantages of Dennett’s teleofunctional model and Vasilyev’s local interactionism. Volkov’s teleofunctional model of mental causation seeks to prove the causal relevance of mental properties as non-local higher order properties. In my view, its substantiation is based on three points: (a) critics of the exclusion problem and Kim’s model of mental causation, (b) “Library of first editions” argument, (c) reduction of the causal trajectories argument (CTA 1) by Vasilyev to the counterpart argument (CTA 2) by Volkov. Each of these points faces objections. Kim’s criticism is based on an implicit confusion of two types of reduction – reduction from supervenience and from multiple realizability. The latter type does not threaten Kim’s ideas, but Volkov uses this very type in his criticism. The “Library of first editions” argument does not achieve its goal due to compositional features and because non-local relational properties are a type of external properties that cannot be causally relevant. The reduction of CTA 1 to CTA 2 is unsuccessful since, in the case of this reduction, important features of CTA 1 are lost – these are local mental properties, due to which the influence of non-local physical factors occurs. My main objection is that the concept of causally relevant non-local properties is incompatible with the very concept of cause. The set of causally relevant properties of cause can only be local.

Mental causation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Loewer
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
Completeness Of Physics

Both folk and scientific psychology assume that mental events and properties participate in causal relations. However, considerations involving the causal completeness of physics and the apparent non-reducibility of mental phenomena to physical phenomena have challenged these assumptions. In the case of mental events (such as someone’s thinking about Vienna), one proposal has been simply to identify not ‘types’ (or classes) of mental events with types of physical events, but merely individual ‘token’ mental events with token physical ones, one by one (your and my thinking about Vienna may be ‘realized’ by different type physical states). The role of mental properties (such as ‘being about Vienna’) in causation is more problematic. Properties are widely thought to have three features that seem to render them causally irrelevant: (1) they are ‘multiply-realizable’ (they can be realized in an indefinite variety of substances); (2) many of them seem not to supervene on neurophysiological properties (differences in mental properties do not always depend merely on differences in neurophysiological ones, but upon relations people bear to things outside their skin); and (3) many of them (for example, ‘being painful’) seem inherently ‘subjective’ in a way that no objective physical properties seem to be. All of these issues are complicated by the fact that there is no consensus concerning the nature of causal relevance for properties in general.

Determinables, Determinates, and Causal Relevance

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Walter
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Exclusion Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Manifest Image

Mental causation, our mind's ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our ‘manifest image’ of the world. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on Jaegwon Kim's so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, according to which mental events are ‘screened off’ or ‘preempted’ by physical events unless mental causation is a genuine case of overdetermination or mental properties are straightforwardly reducible to physical properties.

scholarly journals Epiphenomenalism for Functionalists

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Beebee
Keyword(s):  
Functional Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Exclusion Problem ◽  
Mental Properties

This chapter focuses on an assumption implicitly made by most recent attempts to solve the exclusion problem for mental causation, that mental (and so multiply realized) properties are ‘distinct existences’ from their alleged effects. Without that assumption, no such solution can work, since we have excellent grounds for thinking that there is no causation between entities that are not distinct from one another. But, assuming functionalism—which, after all, constitutes the grounds for thinking that mental properties are multiply realized in the first place—mental properties are not distinct from the effects to which they are alleged to bear causal relevance, since functional properties are defined in terms of the causal roles of their realizers. The chapter argues, however, that the natural consequence—epiphenomenalism with respect to mental properties—is not as problematic as many philosophers tend to assume.

Can a truth value have causal power?

1998 ◽  
pp. 89-96
Author(s):  
Josefine Papst
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Deflationary Theory Of Truth ◽  
Deflationary Theory

John Gibbons tries to show that the notion of similarities and differences between different cases of events reveals the relevance of relational properties, which are of causal relevance. Based on such considerations, Gibbons' main claim is that the truth value somebody assigns to his or her beliefs has causal power. This means that the deflationary theory of truth becomes false. The questions therefore are: (1) What are the similarities and differences between different cases? (2) What kind of properties are relational properties? (3) What is the causal relevance of such relational properties, and why should the truth value be of causal relevance? (4) Why can Gibbons not show that the truth value has the relevant causal power?

scholarly journals Beyond the lognormal approximation: a general simulation scheme

2020 ◽  
Vol 498 (2) ◽  
pp. 2663-2675
Author(s):  
Federico Tosone ◽  
Mark C Neyrinck ◽  
Benjamin R Granett ◽  
Luigi Guzzo ◽  
Nicola Vittorio
Keyword(s):  
Correlation Function ◽  
Random Fields ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Matter Distribution ◽  
Modest Improvement ◽  
Local Properties ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Simulation Scheme

ABSTRACT We present a public code to generate random fields with an arbitrary probability distribution function (PDF) and an arbitrary correlation function. The algorithm is cosmology independent and applicable to any stationary stochastic process over a three-dimensional grid. We implement it in the case of the matter density field, showing its benefits over the lognormal approximation, which is often used in cosmology for the generation of mock catalogues. We find that the covariance of the power spectrum from the new fast realizations is more accurate than that from a lognormal model. As a proof of concept, we also apply the new simulation scheme to the divergence of the Lagrangian displacement field. We find that information from the correlation function and the PDF of the displacement–divergence provides modest improvement over other standard analytical techniques to describe the particle field in the simulation. This suggests that further progress in this direction should come from multiscale or non-local properties of the initial matter distribution.

Free Will and Mental Quausation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARA BERNSTEIN ◽  
JESSICA WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Nonreductive Physicalism ◽  
Hard Determinism ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Mental Events

ABSTRACT:The questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are clearly connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-à-vis other events. Nonetheless, the free will and mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining the mutual bearing of these debates. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem of mental ‘quausation’, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type can be efficacious qua the types they are—qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative—given reasons to think such events are causally irrelevant. We go on to identify parallels between hard determinism and eliminativist physicalism and between soft determinism and nonreductive physicalism, and we use these parallels to identify a new argument against hard determinism and to reveal and motivate a common strategy underlying apparently diverse soft determinist accounts.

Closet Dualism and Mental Causation

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter ◽  
Alexander Miller
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Jaegwon Kim ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Tyler Burge ◽  
Argumentative Strategy ◽  
Stephen Yablo

Serious doubts about nonreductive materialism — the orthodoxy of the past two decades in philosophy of mind — have been long overdue. Jaegwon Kim has done perhaps the most to articulate the metaphysical problems that the new breed of materialists must confront in reconciling their physicalism with their commitment to the autonomy of the mental. Although the difficulties confronting supervenience, multiple-realizability, and mental causation have been recurring themes in his work, only mental causation — in particular, the specter of epiphenomenalism — has really captured the interest of philosophers in general in recent years.This growing attention has spawned a large body of literature, which it is not our aim here to explore or assess. Rather, we want to call attention to what we believe is a new and quite different argumentative strategy against epiphenomenalism voiced in some recent articles by Tyler Burge and Stephen Yablo. Each has challenged two central assumptions of the existing mental causation debate.

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