Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Causal Exclusion

Yates, David

PDF
Share+
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Reddit
- Mendeley

Functionalism and the Metaphysics of Causal Exclusion

David Yates

July 2012, Volume 12, No. 13, pp. 1-25

Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0012.013

Permissions: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact [email protected] to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

For more information, read Michigan Publishing's access and usage policy.

Abstract

Given their physical realization, what causal work is left for functional properties to do? Humean solutions to the exclusion problem (e.g., overdetermination and difference making) typically appeal to counterfactual and/or nomic relations between functional property-instances and behavioural effects, tacitly assuming that such relations suffice for causal work. Clarification of the notion of causal work, I argue, not only shows that such solutions don't work, but also reveals a novel solution to the exclusion problem based on the relations between dispositional properties at different levels of mechanism. The solution involves three central claims: (i) the causal work of properties consists in grounding dispositions, (ii) functional properties are dispositions, and (iii) the dispositions of mechanisms are grounded in the dispositions of their components. Treating functional mental properties as dispositions of components in psychological mechanisms, I argue that such properties do the causal work of grounding agent-level dispositions. These dispositions, while ultimately grounded in the physical realizers of mental properties, are indirectly so grounded, through a hierarchy of grounding relations that extends upwards, of necessity, through the mental domain.

- 150% +

image

« Prev

This kind of argument holds wherever causation of a supervenient property-instance is involved, provided the occurrence of that property-instance is insensitive to the precise manner of its realization. Interestingly, such cases don’t falsify (CX), but that’s because P fails to be a cause of M*. This is a case of M’s difference-making causal role with respect to M* excluding a similar difference-making role for P. What’s gone wrong with the exclusion argument, then? It’s not obvious what we should say. If we substitute ‘difference-making cause’ for ‘cause’ in (CC), then if we treat M* as a physical event (qua behavioural) then (CC) comes out false, because M* doesn’t have a physical difference-maker. If we substitute difference-making causation in (DC), it too comes out false. M isn’t a difference making cause of P*, since (M occurs  P* occurs). Perhaps we could then keep hold of (CC) by employing a more flexible notion of causation. There is, after all, a sense in which M* does have a sufficient physical cause. P is sufficient for P*, and the supervenience relation between P* and M* is synchronic and non-causal, so it would seem foolish to deny that some kind of causal relation holds between P and M*, and I see no reason why this causal relation shouldn’t satisfy proponents of (CC). Let’s say that difference-making causation involves a rejection of (DC): M causes M*, but not by causing P*, so there isn’t any over-determination, and M’s causal role is secure.

« Prev Next »