Where reason appears to deliver more than one answer to the why-question regarding some event, reason must be speaking in tongues: different scientific languages reveal the very same cause or truth (Davidson, 1963). (..) Combined with suspicion over the success of ontological and epistemological reduction ism, the existence of such interdisciplinary explanations for certain events should lead us to reject the economic metaphor embedded in the token physicalist's worldview. (..) Perhaps the world is somewhat excessive, meaning that there are events that are overdetermined by more than one sufficient cause. Event pluralism, causation and over/determination are thus the focus of this paper. (..) Token physicalism is the view that mental events are physical events and that mental predicates are anomalous, i.e. that there are no true law statements invoking such predicates. (..) Davidson: A Mental events cause, and are caused by, physical events. B Causation is nomological, i.e. causal relations between events require the truth of at least one strict law statement that sub sumes the events in question. C Psychological predicates (properties) are anomalous (..) Psychological predicates are anomalous, hence Psychological laws are not the laws which satisfy the nomologicality of causation. (..) Physical predicates are nomological, that is to say, there are strict laws couched in a physical vocabulary. (..) The previous marks Davidson's philosophy as a form of nonreductive physicalism. (..) But is this conception of causation plausible? I see little reason for such a restriction on causation. (..) some ideas regarding causation within a pluralist ontology - we need not be uncomfortable with the idea of overdetermination and pluralism. (..) defend pluralism against Kim's well-known "exclusion" argument, that purports to show that dualism, along with several other assumptions, leads to event epiphenominalism. (..) Three claims: Pluralism: Mental events (and other events) are numerically distinct from physical events. Supervenience: Mental events are (strongly) supervenient upon physical events. Overdetermination: Both mental and physical events are causes of behavioral (physical) events. (..) Kim (1987; reprinted 1993) introduces the Exclusion Principle (EP) as a principle regarding causal explanation: EP: "... there can be no more than a single and independent explanation of any one event ..."(Kim, 1987/1993,238). (..) Taken ontologically this would form an argument against pluralism, sc. no mental event can be causally relevant to any physical event. (..) I am defending pluralism within the context of event supervenience - Kim: reductive or supervenient dependency of the mental on the physical. (..) Pluralism entails overdetermina tion, albeit, overdetermination of an effect by causes that are themselves not wholly independent of one another. (..) Do supervenient events have causal powers "over and above" their subvenient base events? If not, then those properties that distinguish mental events from physical events are non-causal properties. If so, then we need to know how this is consistent with the closed nature of physical theory. (..) I shall argue that overdetermination is not merely possible, but ubiquitous. (..) [interdisciplinary] causal relations are not necessarily competitive (..) My defense of pluralism and overdetermination involves an appeal to the modal dependence of mental events upon their underlying sub venient physical events. (..) Overdetermination is ubiquitous simply because mental events supervene upon physical events. (..) There are nomologically possible cases (and actual cases) in which there is more than one event, causally sufficient for a fur ther event. Example: Two bullets simultaneously enter poor Pedro's heart, causing his death. (..) Thus, 'being a sufficient cause' is not a competitive concept. (..) So the exclusion principle is false. (..) Overdetermination is possible on the same level of explanation [explanatory discourse] (..) Both the psychologist and the neurophysiologist provide causes for the behavior when they provide explanations for the behavior (..) There are many winners in the game of discovering sufficient causes. (..) If overdetermination is rare when the events are from the same explanatory domain, it is ubiquitous when the events are from distinct explanatory domains. (..) Non-competitive overdetermination is perfectly consistent with the idea that all physical events have physical causes. (..) Supervenient events can be multiply constituted by various aggregates of subvenient events. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt that supervenient causal relations are also multiply realizable with regard to their subvenient causal relations. But it is just such modal properties that pluralists seize upon to argue for ontological irreducibility. (..) I take overdetermination to be as common as interdisciplinary causal explanations. (..) If the causes postulated are distinct, and the events to be explained (by mentioning the causes) are identical, then we have overdetermination. [ obw why not interdisciplinary differences in both 'causes' and 'events'? Confusion of levels of explanation where a 'neurological event' and a 'mental event' cause some further 'behavioral event'] (..) physical events are the parts of mental events [ ? subvenient events are parts of supervenient events ? ] (..) part/whole relations are non-extensional, thus the whole is not identical with the sum of its parts because they lack the very same modal properties. |