William Nolan: 'A Powers Solution to Mental Causation'
Two main views of causation hold sway within the mental causation debates of the last few decades. These are, on the one hand, physicalist production accounts of causation like those defended by Jaegwon Kim. On the other hand, thinkers like Thomas Kroedel defend the possibility of mental causation under Humean counterfactual accounts of causation like those developed by David Lewis starting in the 1970s. Though distinct, each view attempts to resolve the two main issues facing mental causation: The Exclusion Argument and the Interaction Problem. It is my contention that both views fail to adequately overcome these problems, in one case because Kim accepts a problematic notion of overdetermination and in the other because of the inherent limitations of an ad hoc counterfactual account of causation. Surprisingly, other well-articulated views of causation on offer have not been applied to the problems of mental causation. In particular, mental causation scholarship has been almost silent with respect to neo-Aristotelian powers theories of causation. I argue that the problems of mental causation can be overcome by having recourse to a powers theory of causation. In particular, I propose that it solves them by avoiding inadequate articulations of overdetermination and by focusing on relevant dispositional causal antecedents as opposed to any and all counterfactual antecedents.
