Mental Causation

Im ersten Teil der Hausarbeit stelle ich Überzeugungen und phänomenale Erfahrungen vor. Ich werde zeigen, dass diese einen Gehalt bzw. Intentionalität haben und welchen Einfluss diese Eigenschaft auf die kausale Rolle hat, wenn es darum geht, welche Überzeugungen von welchen phänomenalen Erfahrungen verursacht werden. Im zweiten Teil stelle ich Dretskes Position im Bezug auf phänomenale Zustände und Überzeugungen dar, wie er sie in Dretske (1988, 1998) vertreten hat.

Im letzten, kritischen Abschnitt, will ich Dretskes Position dahingehend kritisieren, dass er es nicht schafft, Introspektion und die Kausalbeziehung zwischen phänomenalen Zuständen und Überzeugungen im Allgemeinen mit deren Inhalt zu verknüpfen, da der Gehalt phänomenaler Zustände in der Evolutionsgeschichte (Phylogenese), der Gehalt von Überzeugungen hingegen aus der Ontogenese stammt und da der Gehalt phänomenaler Erfahrungen, in seiner Theorie, keinen Einfluss auf ihre kausale Rolle hat.

The Article provides an overview of the historiography of the description of Dagestan carpet-weaving as a component of the domestic economy, material culture and aesthetic consciousness, as well as some ornamental and compositional and technical characteristics of local varieties of carpets and rugs.
Analysis of literature data and field ethnographic materials suggests that Dagestan carpet-weaving is characterized by ornamental features and compositional diversity; by abundance of local centers which used to produce these carpets and rugs; by art and technical features of Dagestan carpets which visibly testified in which part of Dagestan, in what village they are woven. Actually, this seems the most impressive feature of the Dagestan carpet culture. It is noteworthy that many well known types of Caucasian rugs are named as Lezgi (Mirakh, Akhty, Kabir, Akhty, Zahur (Zeihur), Chi-Chi), Kumyk (Kayakent, Kumtorkala), Avar (Tlyarota) villages. In the World there are no analogues to ornamental and color composition of flat-weave carpet types "dum","davagin", "salmag" "soumakh ", which were woven in a certain Kumyk, Avar, Lezgi villages.
So, the particularly of Dagestan carpet-weaving is expressed by:
a) the abundance of original carpet designs, developed to canonical level of perfection and clearly localized in the districts and villages;
b) variability of the ornamental and technological characteristics:
с) plurality of local types of carpets;
g) fineness of weaving technique;
d) quality of wool of the Dagestan mountain breed of sheep;
e) coloring properties of the Derbent madder roots which, comparing with all known World species of this plant, has a superior content of the red colorant. All this, combined with the skillful, painstaking work of the weavers, determines the finesse of the Dagestan carpets, which is easily detected by the naked eye and without special knowledge.

Многие открытия в нейронауке и социальной психологии ставят под сомнение наличие свободы воли. Они показывают, что поступки людей определяются социальным контекстом и бессознательными состояниями мозга. Но не следует ли из этого, что человек никогда не может принимать решения сам? И что у нас просто нет альтернатив действиям? А если так, если свобода воли - иллюзия, возможно ли считать других людей ответственными за поведение? Книга позволяет найти ответы на эти сложные запутанные вопросы. В ней автор защищает современную компатибилистская теорию – позицию, согласно которой свобода и ответственность совместимы с современными научными представлениями об устройстве мира. Кроме того, автор предлагает решения и других философских головоломок, связанных со свободой: проблемы тождества личности и ментальной каузальности.
Книга является одним из наиболее глубоких экскурсов в аналитическую философию конца XX-нач.XXI. В ней представлены взгляды современных западных и российских философов. А также разработана собственная теория, которую можно называть нарративной теорией свободы и ответственности. Это результат многолетних исследований автора, доктора философских наук и одного из наиболее активных участников философских дискуссий.
Текст предназначен для философов, историков философии, специалистам по этике и философии сознания, юристов, нейроученых и психологов, занимающимся вопросами принятия решений, свободы и ответственности, а также всех заинтересованных читателей.

En este artículo abordo críticamente la aseveración de David Papineau según la cual la evidencia fisiológica acumulada es suficiente para adoptar razonablemente el Principio del Cierre Causal de lo Físico y la vía negativa, viz. entender físico como no-mental, como solución al dilema de Hempel. Comenzaremos restando fuerza a tal afirmación revisando el trabajo de W. Penfield y J. Eccles, dos importantes neurocientíficos y declarados dualistas. No obstante, luego nos centraremos en el trabajo de B. Libet en el que se demostraría que los movimientos voluntarios están realmente determinados por causas enteramente (neuro)fisiológicas, lo cual constituiría una pieza fundamental de evidencia a favor de Papineau. Nuestro análisis mostrará que no se siguen tales conclusiones. Esto tendrá consecuencias negativas para el Principio del Cierre Causal de lo Físico y revelará una grave tensión al interior del Argumento Causal para el Fisicalismo del cual el mencionado principio es premisa clave.

In this article, I critically address David Papineau's assertion that accumulated physiological evidence is sufficient to reasonably adopt the principle of the Causal Closure of the Physical and the via negativa, viz. to understand 'physical' as 'non-mental', as a solution to Hempel's dilemma. We will start lowering the strength of his view by reviewing the work of W. Penfield and J. Eccles, two important neurophysiologists and declared dualists. However, we will then focus on the work of B. Libet in which it is purportedly shown that voluntary movements are really determined by entirely (neuro)physiological causes, which would constitute a fundamental piece of evidence in favour of Papineau. Our analysis will reveal that such conclusions do not follow. This will have negative consequences for the Causal Closure principle and will reveal a serious tension within the Causal Argument for Physicalism of which the aforementioned principle is a key premise.

"Most philosophers endorse the viewpoint that a
mental event can cause a physical movement, as
well as another mental event. Yet, the ontology to
which they adhere prevents them from conceiving
this mental causation. Jaegwon Kim solves this
problem by defining mental causation so that it does
not conflict with the current ontology. Tyler Burge
reverses this strategy: he thinks an investigation of
the problem of mental causation should start with an
analysis of explanatory practice, rather than with an
elaboration upon the current ontology. The aim of
this paper is to contrast and evaluate these
strategies."

“Realization” is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties. It is said that mental properties are realized by physical properties; functional and computational properties are realized by first-order properties that occupy certain causal/functional roles; dispositional properties are realized by categorical properties; so on and so forth. Given this wide usage of the term “realization”, it would be right to think that there might be different dependence relations that this term denotes in different cases. Any relation that is aptly picked out by this term can be taken to be a realization relation. The aim of this state-of-the-field article is to introduce the central questions about the concept of realization, and provide formulations of a number of realization relations. In doing so, I identify some theoretical roles realization relations should play, and discuss some theories of realization in relation to these theoretical roles.

Im Mittelpunkt dieser Abhandlung steht die Frage, welchen Beitrag der Libertarismus zur Begründung der Willensfreiheit leisten kann. Insbesondere ist gegen den libertarisch-akteurskausalen Ansatz häufig geltend gemacht worden, dass er inkonsistent und mit naturwissenschaftlichen Forschungsergebnissen nicht in Einklang zu bringen sei. In diesem Buch wird argumentiert, dass die Einwände auf der Grundlage naturphilosophischer, ontologischer und phänomenologischer Untersuchungen nicht stichhaltig sind. Es ist zudem das Ziel der Untersuchung, in einem kritischen Vergleich die Stärken des akteurskausalen Ansatzes gegenüber rein ereigniskausal fundierten libertarischen Positionen aufzuzeigen. In ihrem letzten Teil werden deshalb unter verkörperungstheoretisch-enaktiven Gesichtspunkten zentrale Annahmen des akteurskausalen Libertarismus weitergehenden Begründungen unterzogen. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die Auffassung, dass Personen als Substanzen in Verursachungsrelationen stehen.

If events exist, what are they like? It is common to accept events as the proper relata of the causal relation. If that is the case, and there is causation, then there must be events. There is disagreement over the character of these events. Specifically there is a question of grain. On the fine-grained account, prominently defended by Jaegwon Kim, there are many more events than on the coarse-grained account, which has Donald Davidson as its principle proponent. The ontological debate between fine-grained events and coarse-grained events is at least in part decided by implications for theories of causation. A number of arguments have tilted the balance in favor of fine-grained events. Arguments from emphasis in event sentences and arguments from the transitivity of causation have convinced some philosophers that more finegrained accounts of events, such as Kim's, are more plausible. In this paper I will evaluate the impact of the arguments from transitivity and emphasis by showing that both arguments have negative implications not only for coarse-grained events, but also for fine-grained events.

Geert Keil befindet, dass dem Libertarier ein Mythos der Unbedingtheit anhaftet. Keils grundlegende Auffassung einer libertarischen Freiheitsvorstellung beinhaltet aber das tatsächliche „Anderskönnen bei gegebener Vorgeschichte“. Dieser „starken“ Forderung steht entgegen, dass eine „stabile“ Person einen bestimmten Charakter mit einem bestimmten Wertegefüge besitzt, und sich unter identischen Ausgangsbedingungen nicht einmal so, und einmal anders entscheiden kann.
Der Libertarier Julian Nida-Rümelin beschreibt den freien Willen als „die spezifische Fähigkeit des Menschen Gründe abzuwägen und dieser Abwägung entsprechend zu handeln“. Dagegen ist für ihn die Frage unerheblich, ob eine Person von ihrem Charakter her wirklich in der Lage wäre, ganz etwas anderes zu tun als sie tatsächlich tut.
Zitieren bitte unter: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23773.59361

This book explores relationships and maps out intersections between discussions on causation in three scientific disciplines: linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. The book is organized in five thematic parts, investigating connections between philosophical and linguistic studies of causation; presenting novel methodologies for studying the representation of causation; tackling central issues in syntactic and semantic representation of causal relations; and introducing recent advances in philosophical thinking on causation.

Beyond its thematic organization, readers will find several recurring topics throughout this book, such as the attempt to reduce causality to other non-causal terms; causal pluralism vs. one all-encompassing account for causation; causal relations pertaining to the mental as opposed to the physical realm, and more.
This collection also lays the foundation for questioning whether it is possible to evaluate available philosophical approaches to causation against the variety of linguistic phenomena ranging across diverse lexical and grammatical items, such as bound morphemes, prepositions, connectives, and verbs. Above all, it lays the groundwork for considering whether the fruits of the psychological-cognitive study of the perception of causal relations may contribute to linguistic and philosophical studies, and whether insights from linguistics can benefit the other two disciplines.

The problem of free will is deeply linked with the causal relevance of mental events. The causal exclusion argument claims that, in order to be causally relevant, mental events must be identical to physical events. However, Gibb has recently criticized it, suggesting that mental events are causally relevant as double preventers. For Gibb, mental events enable physical effects to take place by preventing other mental events from preventing a behaviour to take place. The role of mental double preventers is hence similar to what Libet names free won’t, namely the ability to veto an action initiated unconsciously by the brain. In this paper I will propose an argument against Gibb’s account, the causal irrelevance argument, showing that Gibb’s proposal does not overcome the objection of systematic overdetermination of causal relevance, because mental double preventers systematically overdetermine physical double preventers, and therefore mental events are causally irrelevant.

Causal reductionism is the widespread assumption that there is no room for additional causes once we have accounted for all elementary mechanisms within a system. Due to its intuitive appeal, causal reductionism is prevalent in neuroscience: once all neurons have been caused to fire or not to fire, it seems that causally there is nothing left to be accounted for. Here, we argue that these reductionist intuitions are based on an implicit, unexamined notion of causation that conflates causation with prediction. By means of a simple model organism, we demonstrate that causal reductionism cannot provide a complete and coherent account of ‘what caused what’. To that end, we outline an explicit, operational approach to analyzing causal structures.

In everyday life we take it for granted that we have conscious control of some of our actions and that the part of us that exercises control is the conscious mind. Psychosomatic medicine also assumes that the conscious mind can affect body states, and this is supported by evidence that the use of imagery, hypnosis, biofeedback and other ‘mental interventions’ can be therapeutic in a variety of medical conditions. However, there is no accepted theory of mind/body interaction and this has had a detrimental effect on the acceptance of mental causation in science, philosophy and in many areas of clinical practice. Biomedical accounts typically translate the effects of mind into the effects of brain functioning, for example, explaining mind/body interactions in terms of the interconnections and reciprocal control of cortical, neuroendocrine, autonomic and immune systems. While such accounts are instructive, they are implicitly reductionist, and beg the question of how conscious experienc...

Jaegwon Kim has given new strength to the thesis of mental epiphenome-nalism. He has furnished powerful reasons to think that, if one accepts physicalism and admits that mental properties are distinct from physical properties, she must conclude that mental properties have no authentic causal power. Kim has offered two main arguments to support this implication. The first he baptized the "Supervenience Argument": a dilemma argument showing that — whether you accept mind-body supervenience or not — you must conclude that mental causation is unintelligible. The second points to the fact that the causal inefficacy of mental properties descends from their being functional properties; we may call it the "Dormitivity Argument". Although I acknowledge that both are effective and convincing, I will try to show that they are also questionable, and that mental epiphenomenalism is not as inevitable as Kim wants us to decree. In particular, I will show that the Supervenience Argument meets with difficulties when ruling out the possibility of some of the effects of mental properties being systematically overdetermined; and, on the other hand, that the Dormitivity Argument rests on an analogy between mental properties and typical functional second-order properties that might very legitimately be rejected.

Hume thought that actions undetermined causally by prior events would happen by mere chance. But we think that such actions need not happen by mere chance. The actions could be still determined - by their agents; they could therefore be free. What does this belief in freedom involve?

Is it simply the theory that substances, in the form of agents, can be causes, and not just events? The paper argues that this is not so. Our conception of freedom is of a power radically unlike ordinary causation, not simply in respect of the bearer of the power, but in the way that the power determines outcomes. A cause determines an outcome only when its power excludes alternatives. But freedom is a power that far from excluding alternatives, makes them available. The paper explores this difference between the two kinds of power, and the implications of Hume’s failure to distinguish them.

This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned.
The article was commissioned by High Existence.

– Introduction
– 1. The Genetic Argument
– 2. The Abstraction Argument
– 3. The Inferential Argument
– Why Panpsychism is Spurned
– End Remarks

Originally published 15 January 2018: http://highexistence.com/panpsychism-3-reasons-why-our-world-brimming-sentience/ [note different subtitle]

Accompanying audio version: https://youtu.be/B7B_RmZQp5Q

©Peter Sjöstedt-H 2018

This article is the second part of a two-part essay. The first part was published as: "Hylomorphic Animalism, Emergentism, and the Challenge of New Mechanisms in Neuroscience" Scientia et Fides 5 (2) /2017, 9-38

Abstract for Part II:
This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person's immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic-psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part's rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic-psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross's arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system.

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.

Drawing from both enactivist and cognitivist perspectives on mind, I propose that explaining teleological phenomena may require reappraising both “Cartesian theaters” and mental homunculi in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. Quasi-homuncular ESMs are suggested to constitute a major organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for solutions to inference problems in cognitive (and affective) development. Embodied experiences provide foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging problem spaces, so answering an unresolved question in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently powerful inductive biases to adequately constrain inference spaces? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I describe how embodiment provides fundamental sources of empirical priors (as reliably learnable posterior expectations). If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in cognitive development, then bidirectional linkages will be found between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied agents. Drawing upon the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, I describe a particular mechanism for intentional action selection via consciously imagined (and explicitly represented) goal realization, where contrasts between desired and present states influence ongoing policy selection via predictive coding mechanisms and backward-chained imaginings (as self-realizing predictions). This embodied developmental legacy suggests a mechanism by which imaginings can be intentionally shaped by (internalized) partially-expressed motor acts, so providing means of agentic control for attention, working memory, imagination, and behavior. I further describe the nature(s) of mental causation and self-control, and also provide an account of readiness potentials in Libet paradigms wherein conscious intentions shape causal streams leading to enaction. Finally, I provide neurophenomenological handlings of prototypical qualia including pleasure, pain, and desire in terms of self-annihilating free energy gradients via quasi-synesthetic interoceptive active inference. In brief, this manuscript is intended to illustrate how radically embodied minds may create foundations for intelligence (as capacity for learning and inference), consciousness (as somatically-grounded self-world modeling), and will (as deployment of predictive models for enacting valued goals).

La proposition originale de la psychanalyse, c'est la scission du psychisme en conscient et inconscient, provoquée par la défense contre la pulsion ou les représentations conflictuelles. La notion de conflit psychique 2 se réfère à un événement mental qui se produit à l'intérieur du psychisme constitué de récits contraires qui s'entrechoquent, d'exigences internes en opposition au moi, et c'est la cause dont les effets sont les mécanismes de défense. À partir de ces thèses centrales -la division de l'esprit et la cause mentale -Freud créa une métaphore de la vie humaine dans laquelle nos actions sont causées par des états mentaux inconscients. La mythologie freudienne 3 est un système de notation qui permît de re-décrire la vie psychique, en révélant des motifs, des désirs et des intentions, là où la psychiatrie de l'époque voyait une "disposition constitutionnelle" et des "états hypnoïdes". Freud amplifia la liste de phénomènes considérés comme rationnels, en identifiant des expressions mentales -phobies, actes manqués et rêves -à des actes justifiables. Dans son explication du comportement humain, il souhaitait, pour 1 Pendant les années 1997-98, le Centro Nacional de Pesquisa (CNPq) du Brésil me donna une bourse pour écrire mon mémoire dont les idées inspirent le présent article. Je voudrais remercier Jurandir Freire Costa pour ses contributions importantes données aux notions y developées, Marcelo Land pour avoir lu de façon rigoureuse l'article, et avoir montré les problèmes et les solutions possibles, et Bernard Andrieu pour les suggestions données à la version française. 2 LAPLANCHE J, PONTALIS J-B, 2002, Vocabulaire de psychanalyse, Paris, Quadrige/PUF; KAUFMANN P, 2003 L'apport freudien: éléments pour une encyclopédie de la psychanalyse, Bordas ; ANDRIEU, B. Ed. 2005, (org.) 2005, Le Dictionnaire du corps,Ed. CNRS . 3 Dans la conception de Wittgenstein, la vision du soi ayant un inconscient crée pour Freud est devenue subjectivement efficace et capable de former des identités psychologiques stables. Voir BOUVERESSE J, 1991, Philosophie, mythologie et pseudoscience, Wittgenstein lecteur de Freud, Paris, l'Éclat. les justifications rationnelles, le statut d'explications scientifiques : explications causales qui permettraient le contrôle et la prédiction expérimentales. Ces thèses furent la cible de critiques 4 autant en relation avec les prémisses présupposées la notion de cause et d'inconscient -qu'avec la méthodologie utilisée pour les valider. Freud croyait que la science exigeait un déterminisme causal et que les connexions causales étaient incompatibles avec le hasard. Basé sur des convictions matérialistes, le point de départ de l'oeuvre freudienne est l'esprit considéré comme un mécanisme dont le fonctionnement est déterminé par des causes. Cette thèse, comme le montra Wittgenstein, est basée sur la notion de déterminisme mécaniciste intrinsèque à l'événement mental. Le déterminisme du mental se caractérise par la croyance que tous les phénomènes vitaux, y compris le physique, sont explicables au moyen d'une théorie causale. Contrairement aux prétentions scientifiques de Freud, Wittgenstein prétend que les événements mentaux sont fondamentaux dans la grammaire des raisons et que les relations causales présupposent des lois causales. Wittgenstein introduit la distinction entre causes et raisons et se refuse à concéder quelque espèce de causalité aux événements mentaux, reconnaissant seulement les descriptions du mental faites en termes de justifications. Il considère que les motifs ne peuvent être des causes, et que c'est s'exposer à une erreur catégorielle de rendre équivalent motif et cause parce qu'il n'y a pas d'explication causale qui conserve l'aspect accidentel et contingent des actions humaines. L'importance de la critique se situe dans la démonstration qu'il n'est pas possible de rencontrer de lois nomologiques qui gouvernent l'événement mental. Dans son insistance à doter la psychanalyse des explications causales des sciences physiques, Freud semble confondre deux registres logiques différents d'explication. Le premier registre est détermination dans le champ du psychisme est passible de généralisations pour des faits du même type. Ce que les explications mécanicistes et déterministes proposent, c'est que pour tout ensemble de causes de type X découle l'ensemble des effets de type Y. Dans la théorie psychanalytique, toutefois, ce principe ne s'applique pas. Si à certains moments, Freud recherche des lois psychophysiques et psychologiques valides pour le psychisme, à d'autres moments, il désigne exactement le profil contingent des causes et effets impliqués dans l'explication de l'événement mental. L'idée de nature accidentelle et contingente de l'événement mental n'est pas incompatible avec l'idée de "déterminisme causal" de l'événement, mais elle est incompatible avec l'idée de "déterminisme causal mécaniciste" du même événement. La cause et le déterminisme, dans le domaine psychique, sont toujours singuliers. C'est-àdire que chaque cas est unique dans l'explication causale que nous pouvons offrir et non une occurrence d'un "type général" qui obéit toujours à la même loi de causalité et qui permet de prévoir toujours les mêmes effets. Nous pouvons considérer les généralisations de la psychanalyse, tel l'universalité du complexe d'Oedipe, non comme un référent ultime, mais comme une hypothèse qui fonctionne telle une mythologie ou une forme de vie qui offre un nouveau répertoire d'explications causales pour justifier pourquoi nous réalisons une action donnée. Avec la théorie du monisme anomal de Davidson, on récupère la notion de causalité mentale 5 non nomologique de l'événement mental. Davidson postule l'identité entre les événements physiques et mentaux 6 . Les événements sont particuliers et peuvent être décrits autant dans le vocabulaire physicalist que dans le vocabulaire du mental. Les descriptions physicalistes des événements admettent les formulations des lois stricts, qui expliquent l'interaction causale entre les événements. Dans le vocabulaire psychologique,

"Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009. (484 p. ; ISBN 978-1-4384-2941-0 ; 65,32 €) (Jan 2011, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4384-2940-3)
A good part of what fuels the current boom in consciousness studies is the robust progress of cognitive psychology and neuroscience toward reaching consensus explanations of just about anything except consciousness. Despite hopes that empirical research and computational modeling would constrain theory, it seems that scholarly debate has not so much reached an impasse as remained at one reached in the 17th century. Given the massive effort currently invested in research and debate, the lack of progress towards a general (and generally accepted) theory of consciousness begins indeed to make consciousness look like a kind of 21st century Philosopher’s Stone, whose hidden nature seems to hold the key to the greatest mysteries, but continues to elude us. Accordingly, the present volume taps leading researchers and theorists in the study of consciousness and Whitehead scholars to explore an interface between process thinking and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. In sum, the rationale for such a project has two main facets: first, the state of an educated debate that seems, first, unproductive and peculiarly burdened by its deep modernist origins; and, secondly, marked more by disciplinary rivalry than interdisciplinary synthesis.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Preface, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Main Themes of the Book
2. Précis of the Contributions
I. Introductory Essays, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness
2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy
3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought
4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness
II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin (Claremont)
6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko (Nijmegen)
7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin (Harvard)
III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro-)Science and Back Again
8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields (Kentucky State)
9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans (Goldsmiths)
10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg (New York)
IV. Applications to Psychiatry: Consciousness as Process
11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska (Lublin and Gdansk) and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Bydgoszcz)
12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger (Tel Aviv), Michael Frost (Tel Aviv) , Ofer Keren (Raanana and Tel-Aviv)
13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy
14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley (Toulouse le Mirail)
15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes (New York)"

The notion of reduction continues to play a key role in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. Supporters of reductionism claim that psychological properties or explanations reduce to neural properties or explanations, while antireductionists claim that such reductions are not possible. In this book, I apply recent developments in philosophy of science, particularly the mechanistic explanation paradigm and the interventionist theory of causation, to reassess the traditional approaches to reduction in philosophy of mind. I then elaborate and defend a pluralistic framework for philosophy of mind, and show how reductionist ideas can be incorporated into it. This leads to a novel synthesis of pluralism and reductionism that I call pluralistic physicalism.

The main purpose of this monograph is to respond to the reiterated criticisms that some reductionist philosophers, especially Jaegwon Kim and David Papineau, have developed of the non-reductive physicalist explanation of the causal power or relevance of the higher level or special sciences’ properties; properties of sciences as chemistry, biology and, especially, psychology. I argue that most of contemporary analytic philosophy is mistaken in assuming a physicalist proposal on the basis of the metaphysical supervenience theory of the higher level properties on their microphysical bases, the theory that we call microphysicalism, because this proposal has not only deep empirical but conceptual problems. Because the most accepted version of non-reductive physicalism – the current functionalist proposal – is committed to microphysicalism, Kim and the reductionists are right in their conceptual criticisms of the inability to account for the reality and irreducibility of the causal powers of the higher level properties within this physicalist framework. But they are wrong in claiming that the failure of the current functionalist proposal implies a general failure of any non-reductive physicalism. Emergentism is articulated as a type macrophysicalist theory because it considers that the special properties are metaphysically dependent on but not metaphysically determined by and, therefore, not reducible to their microphysical bases. This proposal claims that higher level causation is articulated combining the under-determination of the lower level causal processes, along with the instantiation of higher level causal properties and laws that constrain and select from the different and under-determined causal alternatives that the properties and laws that govern the lower processes leave open. As a final and general conclusion we can say that macrophysicalism or emergentism is not only a coherent and well suited conceptual proposal about the causal functioning of the different levels of composition and organization of our physical world, but that as far as we know it can be its most plausible empirical articulation.

There are three problems with Husserlian transcendental phenomenology: (1) What does it mean to be transcendental? Namely, how different is Husserl's version from Kant's? And is transcendentality necessarily idealistic, subjective (considering what Pradelle (2012) and Schnell (2020) depicted as "beneath subjectivity")? (2) Why is it legitimate to adopt a transcendental stance (instead of naturalism)? Can we provide arguments instead of claims? (3) How should Husserlians continue with transcendentalism in a fruitful and legitimate manner? Whilst restriction on the classical self-reflection renders the anti-anthropological Husserl paradoxically accused of anthropocentrism in biosemiotics, too much methodological freedom results in unexaminable speculations about affecter (Ding an sich, God or Life). This article attempts to offer a unified answer to these questions with a focus on the second one. Two arguments can be reconstructed for Husserlian transcendentalism. The first one is the rejection of mental causation: Were consciousness causally acting upon the world or acted upon by the world, then it should be located within the same objective real space as the object, which means the consciousness itself should be objective. The ridiculous result inconsistent with our experience shows that intentionality is not located within real space-time but encompasses the latter as a part of its intentional correlate-thus it 'transcends' the latter and is transcendental. The second argument is from the irreality of meaning: linguistic form in natural language appears to be more irreal than physical reality, not because it is eidetic, idealised or superimposed upon the latter, but because intentionality is made more explicit than at the empirical level. Hence, we obtain a sense of transcendentality in terms of intentionality, but this definition is not limited to the studies of sense-bestow (Bernet 2015) but includes whatever transcends real space-time in such a manner. If the rejection of mental causation forbids any attempt to reintroduce an affecter of givenness (Loidolt 2015), then one should reduce the talk of spontaneity, receptivity and automaticity to the determining relation between consciousness: whilst spontaneity and receptivity are asymmetrical determinations (contingencies), automaticity is the symmetrical regularity. What Pradelle and Schnell termed "pre-subjective" is in fact neutrally subjective, the middle voice.

This article examines two medieval thinkers—Averroes and Aquinas—on the kind of causation exercised by the agent intellect in “abstracting” or producing intelligibles from images in the imagination.  It argues that abstraction in these thinkers should be interpreted in causal terms, as an act whereby images in the imagination, through the power of the agent intellect, educe their intelligible likeness in a receptive intellect.  This Averroan-Thomistic causal approach to abstraction offers an intriguing alternative to the usual approach to abstraction as an epistemological content-sorting.  The article also demonstrates the extensive common ground uniting these thinkers’ cognition theories, despite Aquinas’s well-known rejection of Averroes’s theory of separate Intellects.

В статье совершается попытка объединения двух известных философских проблем. Проблемы ментальной каузальности, или более широко, проблемы каузальности в дуализме вообще, и проблемы онтологии случайного. Показано, что оба эти вопроса часто возникали в истории философии одновременно, но при этом решались по-разному. В част-ности у Декарта, Лейбница, Поппера, Чалмерса и других. Это связано с тем, что случайность в различных ее формах, в том числе в форме свободы, требовалась дуализму для проведе-ния различия между материальной и нематериальной субстанцией или свойством, так как нематериальные проявления признавались традиционно более "свободными", менее зави-симыми от жесткого детерминизма. однако, при этом природа свободы или случайного никогда не рассматривалась как следствие дуалистической онтологии мира, так как источ-ником закономерностей или случайностей в дуализме обычно выступала какая-то внешняя по отношению к "мирам" движущая сила, например, Бог или эволюционный процесс. То есть онтология случайного и вообще каузальности всегда оказывалась за рамками дуализ-ма, и не задавалась им внутри. В данной статье предлагается новый взгляд на эту проблему, и попытка объяснить природу случайного через сам дуализм, как следствие неопределен-ности, имеющей место между разнородными сущностями ("мирами"), управляемыми раз-ными законами. Также поднимается вопрос о возвращении дуализма как парадигмы в его каузальной форме в научный процесс.

The article attempts to unite two well-known philosophical problems. Problems of mental causation, or more broadly, problems of causation in dualism in general, and problems of the ontology of the random. It is shown that both of these issues often arose in the history of philosophy at the same time, but at the same time they were solved in different ways. In particular, Descartes, Leibniz, Popper, Chalmers and others. This is due to the fact that randomness in its various forms, including in the form of freedom, was required by dualism to distinguish between material and immaterial substance or property, since immaterial manifestations were traditionally recognized as more "free", less dependent on rigid determinism...

My target article (henceforth referred to as TA) presents evidence for causal interactions between consciousness and brain and some standard ways of accounting for this evidence in clinical practice and neuropsychological theory.  I also point out some of the problems of understanding such causal interactions that are not addressed by standard explanations.  Most of the residual problems have to do with how to cross the “explanatory gap” from consciousness to brain. I then list some of the reasons why the route across this gap suggested by physicalism won't work, in spite of its current popularity in consciousness studies. My own suggested route across the explanatory gap is more subterranean, where consciousness and brain can be seen to be dual aspects of a unifying, psychophysical mind.  Some of the steps on this deeper route still have to be filled in by empirical research. But (as far as I can judge) there are no gaps that cannot be filled—just a different way of understanding consciousness, mind, brain and their causal interaction, with some interesting consequences for our understanding of free will.  The commentaries on TA examined many aspects of my thesis viewed from both Western and Eastern perspectives. This reply focuses on how dual-aspect monism compares with currently popular alternatives such as “nonreductive physicalism”, clarifies my own approach, and reconsiders how well this addresses the “hard” problems of consciousness. We re-examine how conscious experiences relate to their physical/functional correlates and whether useful analogies can be drawn with other, physical relationships that appear to have dual-aspects.  We also examine some fundamental differences between Western and Eastern thought about whether the existence of the physical world or the existence of consciousness can be taken for granted (with consequential differences about which of these is “hard” to understand). I then suggest a form of dual-aspect Reflexive Monism that might provide a path between these ancient intellectual traditions that is consistent with science and with common sense.

Additional Note for 2012 upload on Academia.edu: This reply responds to thoughtful commentaries on the target article by John Kihlstrom, Todd Feinberg, Steve Torrance, Robert van Gulick, Jeffrey Gray and K. Ramakrisna Rao. One commentary by Ron Chrisley and Aaron Sloman seriously misrepresented my views and then proceeded to criticize their own misrepresentation in ways that I make clear in my response. Ten years after its initial publication, as far as I ca tell, the analysis of consciousness-brain causal interactions presented in "How could conscious experience affect brains?" still conforms closely to both the findings of science and to everyday experience.

We try to provide in outline an understanding of emergent properties, which should possibly make the idea of emergence not just plausible but compelling. It is our conviction that the core truth of emergentism is neither especially exotic nor counterintuitive, while its apparent eccentricity is essentially due to some prejudicial ontological assumptions. In the first half of the paper our argument develops through Jaegwon Kim's rejection of emergentism. We argue that Kim's use of both the "causal inheritance principle" and the "causal closure principle" in his criticism of emergence is unwarranted. In the second half of the paper we develop a positive account of emergence through a restoration of the ontological notion of quality. We contend that any monistic ontology, in order to account for experience, must make room for irreducible qualities and that efficaciousness cannot be denied to them. The novelty of emergent properties amounts to a priori unpredictabil-ity, due to the very nature of combination. Their efficaciousness is interpreted in terms of qualifying thresholds modulating the mode of efficaciousness.

In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic framework, I suggest a way to integrate the idea of streaming experiences with that of bodily strivings, which, owing to their primitive structure, can never be represented.

We współczesnej filozofii umysłu, kartezjański dualizm substancji nie jest stanowiskiem rozpowszechnionym. Z drugiej strony, popularny na przestrzeni ostatniego wieku redukcjonistyczny materializm, wciąż nie dostarczył odpowiedzi na wiele pytań dotyczących relacji umysłu i ciała. Rozwijające się nauki kognitywne, związane przede wszystkim z funkcjonalizmem, skutecznie ożywiły dyskusję na polu filozofii umysłu. Taka sytuacja, sprawia, że dużym zainteresowaniem ponownie cieszą się teorie pośrednie. Wśród nich mieści się emergencyjna teoria umysłu przyjmująca, co najmniej epistemologiczną, nieredukowalność stanów mentalnych do stanów fizycznych.
Zagadnienie przyczynowania mentalnego stoi w centrum problemu umysł-ciało. Potoczna intuicja, subiektywne odczucia oraz fundamentalna rola, jaką pełni w etyce kategoria ludzkiej wolności, zdają się nie pozostawiać wątpliwości w kwestii tego, czy umysł może wpływać na ciało. Jednakże, nauki ścisłe słusznie domagają się weryfikowalnego potwierdzenia tych intuicji. Problemy pojawiają się już na poziomie teoretycznym - zasada domkniętości sfery fizycznej, czy przyczynowego wykluczenia oraz tzw. zarzut z heterogeniczności zdają się dyskredytować możliwość przyczynowego oddziaływania umysłu na fizyczne ciało.
W pracy przedstawiono koncepcję przyczynowania mentalnego opartą właśnie na emergencyjnej teorii umysłu. Poza skonfrontowaniem jej z zarzutami teoretycznymi z zakresu filozofii umysłu i ontologii, w pracy obszernie posłużono się eksperymentami z zakresu nauk kognitywnych, biologii czy psychologii. W toku przeprowadzonych analiz stwierdzono, że termin przyczynowanie mentalne nie jest właściwym dla określenia odgórnego wpływu umysłu na ciało. W związku z tym, zaproponowano określenie - mentalne sprzężenie zwrotne - jako bardziej adekwatnie opisujące relację, jaka zachodzi między umysłem a mózgiem. Tezy stawiane w pracy, zyskują też częściowe potwierdzenie w przeprowadzonym autorskim eksperymencie, dotyczącym wpływu aktywności mentalnej na wykonanie testu poznawczego.
Wnioski płynące z pracy wspierają zatem  przekonanie, że świadome stany mentalne mogą oddziaływać na fizyczne ciało. Praca podkreśla także konieczność uwzględniania w dyskursie naukowym, takich własności stanów mentalnych, jak subiektywność czy intencjonalność. Zwraca także uwagę na istotną rolę interdyscyplinarnego podejścia w badaniach nad problemem umysł-ciało, które łączyłoby krytyczną analizę filozoficzną z ujęciem neuronauk.

A mind-independent physical world is a possible world consisting of material substance, where a material substance is a substance existing ‘otherwise than in a mind perceiving it’. Berkeley would have good reason to claim that talk of material substance is a ‘manifest contradiction’ should necessary properties of ‘material substance’ be shown incoherent. I will argue that Berkeley does not have good reason to claim that talk of material substance is a contradiction, but he is nonetheless justified in dismissing the notion of the existence of a material substance, and so of a mind-independent physical world, since a sound and valid argument can be produced concluding doing so based on Berkeley’s writings.

Many philosophers nowadays take for granted a causalist view of action explanation, according to which intentional action is a movement caused by mental antecedents. For them, “the possibility of human agency evidently requires that our mental states – our beliefs, desires, and intentions – have causal effects in the physical world: in voluntary actions our beliefs and desires, or intentions and decisions, must somehow cause our limbs to move in appropriate ways” (Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 2000 (1998), p. 31). The main question then is not to know whether there is mental causation at all, but how we should account for it. How can the mind move our body? In her 1983 paper, “The Causation of Action”, Elizabeth Anscombe shows how confused this way of putting things is. For her, if intentions or beliefs can indeed be taken to be causes of action, it is not in any metaphysically problematic sense. Seeing this requires us to distinguish clearly two theses: (1) “to be done in execution of a certain intention” is not a causal relation between intention and action; (2) an intention may be said to cause something: but this pertains to a specific kind of causal history, different from that which is uncovered by physical enquiry. First we will show how the metaphysical problem of mental causation arises from a given conception of action. Then we will turn to Anscombe’s arguments in favour of the two aforementioned theses.

Wie kann das Mentale aus Sicht der Neurowissenschaften verstanden werden, da nach einer allgemeinen Auffassung das Mentale mehr ist, als physikalisch beschrieben werden kann? Dabei geht es insbesondere um die Frage, wie mentale Verursachung zu verstehen ist. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wird die Position des Physiologen Bernd Lindemann vertreten, die er in seinem Buch „Mechanisms in World and Mind.  Perspective Dualism, Systems Theory, Neuroscience, Reductive Physicalism.” ausführlich darstellt. Diese Position bezeichnet er als neuro-mentalen Realismus. Bernd Lindemann ist Professor für Physiologie (ret.) an der Medizinischen Fakultät Universität Saarland, und hat an die 130 wissenschaftliche Beiträge verfasst.
Das Mentale wird nach Lindemann in einem neuen Modell der Systemtheorie als Ganzheit gedacht, die sich aus einem Netzwerk von Neuronen konstituiert. Ganzheiten können nicht interagieren, weder mit ihren eigenen Komponenten, noch mit externen Objekten.  Im Sinne einer Ganzheit wirkt das Mentale nicht auf das Neuronale sondern mit dem Neuronalen. Es ist eine virtuelle Ganzheit, in der in einem nicht näher definierten Erlebnisformat Kommunikation stattfindet. Das Mentale ist kein Epiphänomen. Die physikalischen Abläufe finden in der untersten Ebene statt, und konstituieren über mehrere Ebenen hinauf das Mentale. Die Systemtheorie dient dabei als Hilfsmittel, um komplexe Zusammenhänge zu veranschaulichen.
Zitieren bitte unter: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11439.71848