God and Mental Causation by Daniel Lim

Author:Daniel Lim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg

Kim rejects the overdetermination option for at least three reasons: (i) overdetermination is implausible, (ii) overdetermination makes mental properties causally dispensable, and (iii) overdetermination violates ClosureP. Though these reasons are addressed against a specific version of the GEA—Stage 2 of the Supervenience Argument—it is not difficult to see how these reasons generalize and can be used to attack any version of the GEA.

3.1.1 Dispensability

Let us take a look at Kim’s second reason first. This reason, it seems to me, is the easiest to reject so I will not have much to say about it. The thought is that the overdetermination response makes the instantiation of mental properties causally dispensable. Consider, again, the situation in Stage 2 of the Supervenience Argument. Both the instantiation of and the instantiation of lay claim to being sufficient causes of the instantiation of . If this is to count as an instance of overdetermination, doesn’t it follow that would have been instantiated even if had not been instantiated? And doesn’t the causal dispensability of ’s instantiation make it causally irrelevant with respect to the instantiation of ? Not necessarily. It is not clear that the dispensability of ’s instantiation with regard to ’s instantiation is an unwelcome result. If, as Kim is willing to assume, every case of mental causation is a case of causal overdetermination then it seems, by definition, that the mental cause is dispensable. That, after all, is what the nature of causal overdetermination seems to imply.

It is easy to generalize Kim’s point. If two causes, C and C, are responsible for bringing about an effect E and C and C are each sufficient causes for E then it follows that C and C are dispensable given the presence of the other. Though the dispensability of C or C may be used, in certain circumstances, as evidence against their causal efficacy the relationship between dispensability and the lack of causal efficacy is not a rigid one. The dispensability of C, especially in cases of causal overdetermination, cannot be used as evidence against its causal efficacy.

But even if dispensability somehow implied a lack of causal efficacy this still wouldn’t be able to help Kim. The problem is that arguing against causal efficacy based on dispensability regarding instances of causal overdetermination is symmetrical—such an argument would cut both ways. If every case of mental causation is indeed a case of causal overdetermination then the physical cause becomes just as dispensable as the mental cause. For parity of reasons it will not do to argue against the causal efficacy of mental events in terms of their dispensability.

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