Mental Causation - Investigating the Mind's Powers in a Natural World

This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analyzed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the 'new compatibilist's' approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterized by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of 'causal proportionality' that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal overdeterminationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation.

Product details

• Authors: Jens Harbecke
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2008
• EAN: 9783110324495
• ISBN: 978-3-11-032449-5
• No. of pages: 434
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 33 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 691 g
• Illustrations: Zahlr. Abb.
• Series: Metaphysical Research; ISSN
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy > Miscellaneous; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Miscellaneous