Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T16:17:33.245Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Free Will and Mental Quausation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

SARA BERNSTEIN
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAMEsbernste@nd.edu
JESSICA WILSON
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTOjessica.m.wilson@utoronto.ca

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.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antony, Louise M., and Levine, Joseph M.. (1997) ‘Reduction with Autonomy’. Philosophical Perspectives, 11, 83105.Google Scholar
Audi, Paul. (2012) ‘Properties, Powers, and the Subset Account of Realization’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 84, 654–74.Google Scholar
Ayer, Alfred J. (1954) ‘Freedom and Necessity’. In Ayer, Alfred J., Philosophical Essays (London: Macmillan), 271–84.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Sara. (2016) ‘Overdetermination Underdetermined’. Erkenntnis, 81, 1740.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchland, Patricia S. (1986) Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, Paul M. (1981) ‘Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes’. Journal of Philosophy, 78, 6790.Google Scholar
Clapp, Lenny. (2001) ‘Disjunctive Properties: Multiple Realizations’. Journal of Philosophy, 98, 111–36.Google Scholar
David, Marian. (1997) ‘Kim's Functionalism’. Philosophical Perspectives, 11, 133–48.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald. (1963) ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’. Journal of Philosophy, 60, 685700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul K. (1963) ‘Mental Events and the Brain’. Journal of Philosophy, 40, 295–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. (1974) ‘Special Sciences (Or, The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’. Synthese, 28, 77115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. (1987) Psychosemantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry G. (1971) ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’. The Journal of Philosophy, 68, 520.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, John, and Pettit, Philip. (1996) ‘Strategies for Free Will Compatibilists’. Analysis, 56, 191201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holbach, Paul-Henri. (1770) The System of Nature; or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World. New York: Franklin.Google Scholar
Horgan, Terence. (1989) ‘Mental Quausation’. Philosophical Perspectives, 3, 4776.Google Scholar
Kane, Robert. (2002) ‘Introduction’. In Kane, Robert (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 341.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. (1989) ‘The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism’. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 63, 3147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Patricia S. (1984) ‘In Defense of Intentional Psychology’. Journal of Philosophy, 81, 89106.Google Scholar
McKenna, Michael, and Coates, Justin. (2008) ‘Compatibilism’. In Zalta, Edward (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Google Scholar
Melnyk, Andrew. (2006) ‘Realization-based Formulations of Physicalism’. Philosophical Studies, 131, 127–55.Google Scholar
Morris, Kevin. (2013) ‘On Two Arguments for Subset Inheritance’. Philosophical Studies, 163, 197211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ney, Alyssa. (2008) ‘Defining Physicalism’. Philosophy Compass, 3, 1033–48.Google Scholar
O'Connor, Timothy. (2002). ‘Free Will’. In Edward Zalta (ed.), Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Google Scholar
Papineau, David. (1993) Philosophical Naturalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Paul, L. A. (2002) ‘Logical Parts’. Nous, 36, 578–96.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. (1967) ‘Psychological Predicates’. In Capitan, W. H. and Merrill, D. D. (eds.), Art, Mind, and Religion (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press), 3748.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Sydney. (1980) ‘Causality and Properties’. In van Inwagen, Peter (ed.), Time and Cause (Dordrecht: Reidel), 109–35.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Sydney. (2000–2001) ‘Realization and Mental Causation’. In Elevitch, Bernard (ed.), Proceedings of the 20th World Congress in Philosophy, (Cambridge, UK: Philosophy Documentation Center), 2333. Published in revised form in Gillet, C. and Loewer, B. (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Steward, Helen. (2015) ‘What is Determinism?’. Flickers of Freedom blog. Available at: http://philosophycommons.typepad.com/flickers_of_freedom/2015/07/what-is-determinism.html.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter F. (1962) ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, 125.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter. (1983) An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Jessica M. (1999) ‘How Superduper Does a Physicalist Supervenience need to Be?’ The Philosophical Quarterly, 49, 3352.Google Scholar
Wilson, Jessica M. (2006) ‘On Characterizing the Physical’. Philosophical Studies, 131, 6199.Google Scholar
Wilson, Jessica M. (2009) ‘Determination, Realization, and Mental Causation’. Philosophical Studies, 145, 149–69.Google Scholar
Wilson, Jessica M. (2011) ‘Non-reductive Realization and the Powers-based Subset Strategy’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 94, 121–54.Google Scholar
Yablo, Stephen. (1992) ‘Mental Causation’. The Philosophical Review, 101, 245–80.Google Scholar