Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind by William Child

Author:William Child [Child, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 0198236255

34 See Martin and Deutscher (1996).

35 Anscombe (1976) p. 127.

36 Cf. Wittgenstein (1981) §610.

end p.114

rigid distinction which it requires between features which are part of the concept of memory and those which are not.37 If it is actually true that memory is mediated by neurophysiological changes in the brain, and if that is widely believed by those who possess the concept of memory (or by experts to whose use of the concept ordinary usage is in some way deferential), there may be a good case for saying that the idea of physical mediation is part of the concept; or there may be no saying whether it is part of the concept or not. There is much to be said for that response. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that we concede that the idea of physical mediation is not part of the concept of memory. It may still be an intellectual imperative to say something about the relation between a mentalistic story about memory and various facts of physical causality. Philosophy has a legitimate interest not just in understanding the concept of memory but also in understanding the relations between different sorts of concepts which apply to subjects, and between different levels of description; and in that way it has an interest in understanding the phenomenon of memory itself. From that perspective, the purely mentalist story of memory causation is inadequate and intellectually unsatisfying. There are a number of reasons why.

First there is the general physicalist point that I have already mentioned: that all causal relations and processes are determined by minute physical causal relations and processes. One way of putting the point is this. Consider the case of action. When someone acts, something physical happens. (We can say this without being committed to the idea that an action is a physical event.) But, at a basic level, any physical occurrence, any movement or change in matter, can in principle be completely causally accounted for in terms of minute physical causes and causal processes.38 In giving this detailed microphysical account we give as complete an account as possible of what brought about the physical movements—of what 'did the actual causing'. Now there is also a mentalistic causal story; S Φ-d because she noticed that p (and believed that q . . . etc.). The mental causation of the action must either operate independently of the physical processes which caused the movements S made, in which case the movements were causally

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