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Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Action.Pdf 1 Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Action Andrea Suzanne White Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science February 2018 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Andrea Suzanne White to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by Andrea Suzanne White in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 3 Acknowledgements I owe greatest thanks to my supervisor Helen Steward. I have greatly enjoyed my PhD and this is, in no small way, down to Helen. My research has benefited enormously from her astute criticism and sage advice. I would also like to thank the University of Leeds for granting me the 110 Anniversary Scholarship and making this research possible. I am also grateful to the organisers of the 2016 Warwick MindGrad Conference for an exciting and interesting conference. I am especially grateful to Johannas Roessler for providing extremely helpful feedback the paper I presented there. I also wish to thank the organisers of the 21st Oxford Graduate Philosophy Conference for their excellent conference. I particularly want to thank Ursula Coope for the constructive comments she offered in response to my paper, and for her encouragement. Warm thanks go to David Hillel Ruben for running a weekly metaphysics seminar in London. Many of the philosophical works which have influenced this dissertation were brought to my attention by this stimulating seminar. I also wish to thank the many friends and colleagues at Leeds and elsewhere who provided comments and suggestions on draft chapters of this dissertation. I am greatly indebted to Emily Paul and Pete Blockley for so frequently granting me use of their spare room! I am sure I would not have managed my many trips between London and Leeds without their kindness and generosity. Heartfelt thanks go to Dan Hinge not only for proofreading my dissertation, but for his inexhaustible patience and unfailing support. 4 Abstract The subject of this dissertation is the problem of mental causation: the problem of how the mental is able to causally interact with the physical. I show that the problem of mental causation, as it is presented in contemporary philosophy of mind, is a pseudo-problem. My claim is that contemporary philosophy of mind has misidentified what it is about mental causation that we need, but struggle, to understand. This is because contemporary philosophy of mind labours under a misapprehension of what mental causation is supposed to be. In most discussions of the problem of mental causation, mental causation is presented as a cause-effect relation between mental and physical entities. I call this understanding of mental causation the relational understanding of mental causation: Relational understanding of mental causation: mental causation is a matter of mental items (events, processes or states) standing in causal relations to physical events, e.g. bodily movements. The relational understanding of mental causation is widely endorsed largely because it is thought essential to our conception of ourselves as agents who act intentionally and who bear moral responsibility. I argue that while intentional action does entail the existence of causation which involves mentality – something which is worthy of the name ‘mental causation’ – the mental causation intentional action presupposes ought not to be understood in relational terms. When we say that someone acted intentionally because of what she believed, desired or intended, the concepts belief, desire and intention do not refer to items which stand in causal relations to bodily movements. I will defend this thesis by examining metaphysics of action and the nature of agency. 5 Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 4 Contents .......................................................................................................................... 5 Table of Figures .............................................................................................................. 7 1 The Problem of Mental Causation ....................................................................... 8 1.1 The Relational Understanding of Mental Causation .............................................. 8 1.2 Mental Causation in the Philosophy of Action ..................................................... 15 1.3 Summary of Remaining Chapters ........................................................................ 20 2 The Causal Theory of Action ............................................................................... 22 2.1 Two Distinctions Crucial to our Concept of Agency ............................................. 25 2.2 Not All Agents Are Human .................................................................................. 35 2.3 Intentional and Voluntary Passivity ..................................................................... 45 2.4 The Disappearing Agent ...................................................................................... 48 3 The Humean Approach to Causation ................................................................ 53 3.1 The Humean Approach ........................................................................................ 54 3.2 Partially Non-Humean Approaches ...................................................................... 62 3.3 A Fully Non-Humean Approach ........................................................................... 76 4 Events and Processes ............................................................................................ 87 4.1 Verbal Predications and Progressive Aspect ......................................................... 88 4.2 Processes as Universals ........................................................................................ 90 4.3 Objections and Replies ...................................................................................... 102 5 A Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Agency .............................................................. 114 5.1 A Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Agency ................................................................. 114 5.2 Agent Causationism ........................................................................................... 118 5.3 Actions as Causings ........................................................................................... 122 6 5.4 The Temporal Stuff View ................................................................................... 130 5.5 Agential Power .................................................................................................. 135 6 Action Explanation ............................................................................................. 145 6.1 Rationalising Explanation .................................................................................. 147 6.2 Are Rationalising Explanations Causal? ............................................................. 160 6.3 Objections to Davidson ...................................................................................... 164 7 Causal Explanations and Intentional Action ................................................. 175 7.1 Causal Explanations .......................................................................................... 177 7.2 Causal Explanations and Manipulation ............................................................. 188 7.3 Intentional Action .............................................................................................. 195 8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 210 Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 218 7 Table of Figures Figure 1 Substance-Process-Event Ontology…………….……………...…...94 Figure 2 Metaphysics of Action………………..……………………………..116 8 1 The Problem of Mental Causation 1.1 The Relational Understanding of Mental Causation The problem of mental causation is the problem of how that which is mental is able to causally interact with that which is physical. In this dissertation, I will show that the problem of mental causation, as it is presented in contemporary philosophy of mind, is a pseudo-problem. This is not to say that there aren’t aspects of mental causation which are very hard to understand. Rather, my claim is that contemporary philosophy of mind has misidentified what it is about mental causation that we need, but struggle, to understand. This is because contemporary philosophy of mind labours under a misapprehension of what mental causation is supposed to be, or so I contend. The problem of mental causation is usually presented as a ‘how possibly’ question, that is, a question about how mental causation could exist. It is usually accepted as prima facie true that mental causation does exist; the difficulties arise only when we try to understand how this could be, given certain assumptions about the
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