Name: Scott Lorimor

The Problem of Mental Causation

Jaegwon Kim, in his paper The Many Problems of Mental Causation points to a
problem he refers to as The Problem of Causal Exclusion, a problem in explaining
the importance or relevancy of higher level phenomena of the mind. Phenomena
like thoughts, desires, mental chatter and our minds eye all arise out of the
interaction of neurons in the brain (Kim, 2000). Intuitively, our want for chocolate
might lead us to go to the store and buy a candy bar, our fear of spiders may lead
us to run out of an arachnid infested room and our affinity for science fiction may
lead us towards buying a book. All in all, these higher level mental phenomena
seem to display a direct causal role in the physical actions that follow them. Kims
Problem of Causal Exclusion attacks this intuition directly, the problem is roughly as
follows:

All physical events are caused by other physical events, no events of type
physical (Type P) are uncaused.
Higher level phenomena in the brain are a result of interactions among
neurons in the brain, with these neurons following physical laws.
Higher level phenomena in the brain are of a different sort, what we will refer
to as events of type mental (Type M), these events encompass desires,
thoughts, etc. as mentioned above.
All events of type M, because of their dependence of neural activity, are
created by events of type P.

Our problem arises when we question the role that type M events have on have
on proceeding type P events. As type P events have to be caused by other type P
events, and as type M events cannot solely cause type P events, we are forced
to ask what sort of role, if any, do type M events play?
To further flesh out this problem, let us imagine a thirsty man sitting in his
kitchen who we will name Paul. Paul, being motivated by his Type M event of
thirst and his Type M event of preference for orange juice, reaches into his fridge
and grabs some orange juice (both of these actions being of Type P). As we can
see, Pauls mental events motivated his physical events, but the above
description of Pauls set of actions can just as easily
be replaced by a purely Type P set of descriptions.
These type P descriptions for Pauls preference and
thirst (the underlying neural circuitry) had to have
some sort of direct causal role in Pauls fridge
opening and orange juice grabbing. Some what role
did the type M events in Pauls brain play in his
fridge opening and orange juice grabbing?

If we take the type M events to simply be byproducts of the workings of type

P events and to be causally inert, we are left with an incredibly unsatisfying
Epiphenomenal account of the mind. This would
A possible epiphenomenal
mean that Pauls type M preference and thirst had
causal scheme of Paul's getting
no role at all in his actions, rather the underlying
orange juice. M1 and M2 are
Paul's preference and thirst,
physical events that lead to Pauls preference and
with P1 and P2 being their
thirst played the causal role entirely.
respective underlying physical
cause, P3A and P3B are Paul's
opening the fridge and getting
orange juice. Notice that M1
and M2 play no causal role in
Pauls eventual actions.

This leaves no role at all for our preferences,

thoughts and motives that seem to play such an
intuitively strong role in the realization of our
actions, unless an appropriate response can be
given. This proves to be a serious issue for Role Functionalism, Non-reductive
Physicalism and any even sorts of Emergentism, serving to eliminate the
relevance of emergent properties entirely.
Kims problem is not without its critics and Stephen Yablo presents an interesting
criticism of Kims problem. To understand Yablos argument we must first
understand the determinate/ determinable pair. In its most intuitive form, these
pairs would be things like blue/color, cat/animal, pie/food, with the determinate
being a subtype of the determinable. Yablo argues for such a relationship
between a particular mental type and its physical type (physical/mental). This
puts Yablo in a role functionalist position, classifying M types and having multiple
underlying type P organizations that can lead to them.
When we examine this relationship in other determinant/ determinable pairs
we find Kims problem of causal exclusion to lead to some fairly strange
outcomes. Yablo gives the example of a building being resistant to earthquakes
under a certain Richter reading, being struck by an earthquake above its range
and crumbling down. If we examine the properties of the earthquake, we find
that is not only above the buildings range on the Richter scale, but barely so,
this gives us a barely above range/above range pair. The important factor in the
buildings collapse is the fact that the earthquake was above range, but if we
were to exclude the determinables causal relevance, we are stuck with the more
specific barely above range. This extra detail (the barely) quite obviously serves
no relevance to the buildings falling and rests its causal power on the more
general determinable (Yablo, 1992, p.257).
If this determinant/ determinable relationship holds true for the physical/
mental aspects of a brain event, it would lead us down two possible paths, both
of which would be incompatible with Kims causal exclusion problem. If the
physical event is relevant in its specificity, say it would only have causal
relevancy if its level of specificity is considered, the determinable mental event
would still be relevant in its being a broader version of the physical event and
defining its function. To translate this into our earthquake example, if a group of
Seismologists were to investigate the collapsed building and wondered by what
degree the buildings threshold was overcome, the determinant barely would be
relevant towards answering their question. Nonetheless, the determinable

above range would still hold relevancy in it being the seismologists implicit
assumption when investigating the collapsed building. As such, even if the
specific organization of a neural network is relevant in its causal chain, it does
not exclude the mental kind as this serves the broader determinable role.
The second path this leads us down is one where the determinable M Type is
the only thing relevant in its specificity. Yalbo seems to hint in his essay that this
is mostly the case, and if we look at things like motivations and wants, the P
Type organization underlying the M Type higher level property is not really
important. To be clearer, if I want a piece of cake, and I will act on that want via
physical means, the specific neural organization leading to that wanting of cake
is not important, rather my wanting cake is what is important to my further
actions. This allows both the physical and mental kinds to play a role, the
physical allowing our adherence to causal closure, and the mental giving
structure and purpose to the physical actions that proceed. This is interesting, as
it allows the underlying type P organization to be swapped out with any other
Type P organization assuming it emerges into the same functional Type M
property and follows the same physical causal role. This, of course, follows
strongly in the philosophy of Role Functionalism.
Barry Loewer, a nonreductive physicalist, has a very different take on mental
causal exclusion. His essay Mental Causation, or Something Near Enough, begins
very similar to Yablos reasoning, explaining Kims view of first order and second
order properties (Loewer, 2007). Physical states are first order properties in
reference to mental states as mental states can only be realized by their physical
states, leaving the mental states as second order states. This relationship the
reverse of the above determinate/ determinable relationship (it is borne out of
causal dependence), and Loewer finds this reasoning to be flawed, taking view more
akin to Yablos. We further find that Loewer holds the functional states (the mental)
to have the determinable role, though he does not deny the mentals causal
dependence on the physical.
Furthermore, in order to attack the independent causal role that Type P events
play (at the exclusion of mental events), Loewer sets up two different views of
causation. The first, production, is when an event produces another event in a
causal chain. If say, physical event A is sufficient to lead to physical event B, we can
say that event A produced event B. It is quite obvious that Kim exclusion arguments
hold with it this implication. If we reference the above diagram, P1 is sufficient in
producing P2, and P2 is sufficient in producing P3A and P3B. This leaves no role at
all for mental events to play, and it can be seen why exclusion is a natural
consequence of the causal production view.
The second causal view is that of dependence, in that event B would not occur
unless event A were to cause it. Erasing event A from history would result in event B
either never occurring, or event B taking a form that would no longer categorize it
as the same event (thus still never occurring). With this dependence scheme of
causation, we can ask if a physical event P2 is in fact solely dependent on event P1,

or if M1 plays any sort of additional role required for P2 to keep its identity as P2. To
do this I would like to try a thought experiment.
Let us go back to Pauls orange juice adventure, except we will instead replace
Pauls brain with a nonconscious computer. This computer has in it the instructions
to eventually lead Paul to follow the same causal path as our previous example
(namely P1 -> P2-> P3A & P3B), without any of the higher level mental events like
Pauls thirst and preferences. The machine eventually succeeds and computer Paul
(CPa) eventually gets his glass of orange juice. At first, this does in fact seem to
support Kims position that we do not need Pauls mental events to lead to his
eventually physical actions, but we must consider what is missing with computer
Pauls actions. I will now explain two different ways we can answer this question.
Assuming we continue to keep this computer in Pauls head, and he acts and
looks exactly the same as noncomputer Paul (Pa), a split may begin to appear
allowing us two separate views. The first is that Cpa is for all intents and purposes
the same and Pa, he is behaviorally indistinguishable and responds to stimuli
exactly as Paul would. Furthermore, if we accept Kims causal exclusion, the illusory
nature of CPas actions are akin to the illusory nature of our mental properties from
the view of an outside observer, both serving no use in the eventual physical
outcome. Even if we compare Pa and CPa and their views of the self, although CPa
does not have higher level mental events like thoughts, motivations and
introspection, Pas higher level mental events do not seem to matter as CPas
actions are identical, thoughts or not.
A different take on CPa is that the actions performed by CPa can be viewed as
akin to a glass being picked up rather than Paul picked up the glass because he
was thirsty and liked orange juice. By this I mean, although the higher level mental
events do not have a physical casual role in the lifting of the glass of orange juice,
they play a direct role in the action being an act of Thirsty, orange juice loving Paul
picking up a glass of orange juice. As in, are the actions of Paul the same in both
examples, or are the physical actions of a different sort when Pauls higher level
actions are removed. Is the action causally dependent on Pauls higher level
properties in order to retain its form as P2A and P2B? If so, what purpose does this
distinction play, if any?
I think this has interesting implications for Yalbos view as we now have a Type P
event with the same causal outcome without their respective determinant (the
emerged higher level events), though it cannot be of the same physical kind as Pas
physical events as Type M events do not emerge out of the computer in CPas head 1.
On the other hand, if we were to take Pauls brain, and replace his areas for
preference of orange juice and thirst, with a physically different system that
produces the same type M events, we can still say Pauls events are of the thirsty,
orange juice loving Paul picking up a glass of orange juice sort. It seems that
something is lost when higher level properties are removed, and it is doubtful to me

that these higher level properties play only an illusionary role, as suggested by
Kim1. If we find this to be the case, in order for P2A and P2B to continue being of the
same sort, we need the preceding P1 and P2 to emerge out M1 and M2. This
makes P2A and P2B dependent on M1 and M2s presence to be of the same sort.
To conclude, Kims problem of causal exclusion poses a strong blow towards
varieties of Functionalism, Emergentism and philosophies granting higher level
properties a relevant position in the causal functioning of our mind. Yalbos
determinate/ determinable view of Type P and Type M events respectively serves to
question the possibility of a type P event having any sort of coherency without its
respective determinable Type M event, this was further elaborated in Yalbos
earthquake example. Loewer provides an interesting perspective on the causal
production view inherent to Kims thinking, instead posing a view of causal
dependence as making a place for type M events to assert some sort of role on
further physical events. I attempted to combine the two to formulate an objection to
Kim in a P-zombiesque sort of way, while granting that viewing the above Pa/CPa
example through a Behaviorist lens may serve to actually support Kim. Overall I feel
Kims problem of causal exclusion is far from being resolved, though Yalbo and
Loewer serve to bring some hope back to the Functionalist.

Bibliography
Borst, A. (2014). Fly visual course control: behaviour, algorithms and circuits.Nature
Reviews
Neuroscience, 15(9), 590-599.
Kim, J. (2000). Mind in a physical world: An essay on the mind-body problem and
mental causation. MIT
Press.
Loewer, B. M. (2007). Mental causation, or something near enough.
Yablo, S. (1992). Mental causation. The Philosophical Review, 245-280.

1 By this I am saying that, assuming we keep the same structure for Pauls P1 and P2
events, type M1 and M2 events will always emerge, assuming the stimuli remains
consistent. Any failure of type M1 and M2 events to emerge out of these conditions means
the underlying P1 and P2 events have ceased, and the P type events that replaced them are
not of the same sort. We see this lack of M type events in CPas computer, thus we must
conclude that the physical events causing the eventual fridge opening and orange juice
grabbing are of a different sort, as emergence of M type events are dependent on structure
of the underlying physical system.