f a mental event M supervenes on a physical event P, and P causes a further physical event P* on which a further mental event M* supervenes, serious doubt can be cast on the claim that M causes M*. — Ignoredreddituser
A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”. — Supervenience
if a mental event M supervenes on a physical event P, and P causes a further physical event P* on which a further mental event M* supervenes, serious doubt can be cast on the claim that M causes M*. The account at the physical level of how P causes P*, together with the supervenient relations, is sufficient to account for the occurrence of M*. The M-to-M* doesn’t seem to be a genuine causal relation. — Ignoredreddituser
An outbreak of epiphobia (the fear that one is turning into an epiphenomenalist) appears to have much of the philosophy of mind community in its grip. Though it is generally agreed to be compatible with physicalism that intentional states should be causally responsible for behavioral outcomes, epiphobics worry that it is not compatible with physicalism that intentional states should be causally responsible for behavioral outcomes qua intentional. So they fear that the very successes of a physicalistic (and/or a computational) psychology will entail the causal inertness of the mental. Fearing this makes them unhappy. In this chapter, I want to argue that epiphobia is a neurotic worry; if there is a problem, it is engendered not by the actual or possible successes of physicalistic psychology, but by two philosophical mistakes: (a) a wrong idea about what it is for a property to be causally responsible, and (b) a complex of wrong ideas about the relations between special science laws and the events that they subsume. — Fodor
Consider, for example, the property of being a mountain; and suppose (what is surely plausible) that being a mountain isn't a physical property. (Remember, this just means that "mountain" and its synonyms aren't items in the lexicon of physics.) Now, untutored intuition might suggest that many of the effects of mountains are attributable to their being mountains. Thus, untutored intuition suggests, it is because Mount Everest is a mountain that Mount Everest has glaciers on its top; and it is because Mount Everest is a mountain that it casts such a long shadow; and it is because Mount Everest is a mountain that so many people are provoked to try to climb it... and so on. But not so, according to the present line of argument. For, surely the causal powers of Mount Everest are fully determined by its physical properties, and we've agreed that being a mountain isn't one of the physical properties of mountains. So then, Mount Everest's being a mountain doesn't affect its causal powers. So then - contrary to what one reads in geology books - the property of being a mountain is causally inert. Geoepiphobia! — Fodor
P is a causally responsible property if it's a property in virtue of the instantiation of which the occurrence of one event is nomologically sufficient for the occurrence of another. — Fodor
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