CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Cucu, Mircea Mihail |
|---|---|
| Title | A Study on Mental Causation: The Problem of Causal Exclusion |
| Summary | My thesis is an analysis of the too easily claimed conflict between the idea of a causally potent mind of a non-physical kind and the hypothesis of the closure of the physical domain. Such a conflict is known as the Causal Exclusion Problem (CEP). CEP gives credit to the idea that, if one is committed to physical closure, the interactionist doctrine practically asks one to admit that in any case of mental causation the physical effect is overdetermined – a highly implausible situation. Any account of mental causation is more preferable to one implying that our world spends more resources than it needs for its becoming. The whole thesis is an attempt at showing that CEP is not quite a firm ground for building up an argument that interactionism could not be an answer to the mind-body problem. A supporter of interactionism not willing to defend his doctrine at the cost of contesting physical closure should base his/her comeback on finding some compatibilist scenario. In such a scenario, if it were real, the physical effect would not be overdetermined even though it would have a non-physical cause. The key point of my thesis is the endeavor to set up such a kind of compatibilist scenario. The strategy I have used rests on finding a necessary condition on overdetermination and some relation tokening among some of the causes of the physical effect such that, if the relation held, the necessary condition would be violated. |
| Supervisor | Robinson, Howard Michael |
| Department | Philosophy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/fphcum01.pdf |
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