Either mental events have some kind of directly emergent relationship with physical events and processes - in which case, "mental causation" is simply an interesting instance of physical causation

-or- mental events happen in some mental spirit realm or whatever, and we apparently have no way of discovering anything about how that realm operates, and mental events trigger physical events which then trigger more mental events, and so on.

Through the medium of words (physical objects), is this post of yours “causally” linked to your mental state?

And for me, does my mental state cause me to frame my post with certain words, or cause certain words (physical characters) to be printed here?

So there is the question of whether the mental “causes” the physical at all.

But now your question would seem to be more specific: did you, through the physical medium of words, cause my mental state?

I think you can take my words as evidence of my mental state (I’m telling you what I am thinking). And then if you find that my words (evidence of my mental state) are rationally responsive to your post (my evidence of your mental state), then this rational relationship might be called causally related.

In other words (as more evidence of what I am thinking), from your mind, through your words, you communicated your mind to my mind, and now if you see a rational relationship to your mind in MY words, and you see my words as related to a mental state in me, you could see this rational relationship as causal.

You express your mind and I respond to your mind through my own expression and where we are connecting, we have mental to mental causality.

There is the whole “free speech” political debate. Can someone be held accountable for inciting others to riot? The law says yes, which seems to require that words can cause mental states in others (intentional rioting), so as long as the words were caused by the speaker’s mental state in the first place, we have mental to mental causality enforced by courts.

Perhaps causation should be more narrowly and technically construed to describe physical to physical contact. So is those post I Like Sushi’s words banging up against “Fire Ologists” words, or is it two minds banging up against each other through words? Words hitting words seems to have no meaning but metaphor - is mind hitting mind also metaphor? Maybe causation needs to be taken literally. I think if we did we would have to reeducate everyone because naively, people say other people make them think certain things.

How about lying. There is no physics to support me telling you about the spaceship that landed I my backyard yesterday, so if your mental state is believing a spaceship landed, your mental state could only be caused by my lie. Seems like mental to mental causation is a straightforward way to describe a lie.

The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation is an overliberal use of the term 'Causation'. — I like sushi

What is an example of such an idea? Who holds that there is such a thing?

As for mental causation, what if I were to write something that caused you to become agitated? Would that not constitute an example of mental causation that has physical consequences such as increasing your pulse?

The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation — I like sushi

I read this as homing in on a special problem within causation-talk: Whether my thoughts of, e.g., "If p then q" and "p" can be said to then cause the thought "q". But perhaps this isn't where you want to focus? You seem to be addressing mental-to-physical causation, or vice versa, not mental-to-mental.

But perhaps this isn't where you want to focus? — J

Go for it! I am kinda of the mind that they both suffer with the same underlying problem of how causation is framed.

I was considering starting a thread about this. I'm doubtful about whether there is any physical causation. I think it all might be mental. There are problems whichever way we jump.

- The problem of overdetermination - can an event have both physical and mental causes (e.g. the decision to raise one's arm causes the arm to go up, but so does the purely functional brain chemistry - this is suggestive of functionalism as a solution)

- The physical causes the mental but not vice versa - epiphenomenalism

- The problem that decisions seem to be made before conscious awareness of them is prima facie suggestive of epiphenomenalism

- The strong intuition that experiences do, in fact, play a causal role in behaviour. Consider a jealous person murdering their ex's new partner. Non-mental causation does not seem sufficient, the felt emotion strongly seems to play a causal role.

- Mental causation is the only causation we are acquainted with - physical causation is inferred from correlation.

Panpsychism is a possible solution

I am kinda of the mind that they both suffer with the same underlying problem of how causation is framed. — I like sushi

That’s what I was saying.

So your OP caused the same mental ambiguity in me and J. Or is “cause” the wrong word?

THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS

Twilight of Idols, By Nietzsche...

Check it or don't, but it will perhaps answer you most deeply here...

Or is “cause” the wrong word? — Fire Ologist

This would be a key question when it comes to mental events such as thoughts. Our usage is such a mish-mash that it's difficult to find a place to begin an analysis.

Do I have a reason for thinking X? Let's say the answer is yes. OK, does that mean I have been caused to think X? Well, maybe. Reasons are often referred to as causes of actions, so why not causes of thoughts? But whatever their causative power may be, it isn't much like what happens when a bat strikes a ball -- or so we tend to believe. What the bat does to the ball is going to be seen as necessitating what happens next, and in principle a full account could be given of what the ball's trajectory must be, given the force of the bat's contact. Usually, that's not what we say about the causative power of thoughts, if any. A possible exception is the one I brought up, about modus ponens. Here, it is tempting to say that I'm caused to think the conclusion in much the same way that the ball is caused to do its thing by the bat. But should we resist that temptation?

Howse about you give us a brief summary rather than leaving half a response.

Like all good philosophers, I will answer the question I want to answer rather than the one you asked. As a frame to the question you’ve asked I’d like to point out that many philosophers reject the idea of causation entirely.

It is not my intention to cause any disruption to your thread, so I will not take this any further.

The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation is an overliberal use of the term 'Causation'.

The term Causation is a physical term that describes types of temporal organisation. Even within the world of physics causation is a quite difficult item to deal with at the extreme ends of the micro and macro scales. — I like sushi

There are established usages of the word 'causation', both in ordinary language and in specialized domains. Capturing these usages in a single, all-encompassing definition has proven to be difficult. To my knowledge, no one definition works perfectly.

That said, we can note two things:

One is that when it comes to science, particularly physical science, causation does not have much of a role to play. Causation does not appear explicitly in physical ontologies. There is no "law of causation" to be found in our best theories. That was the basis of Russell's attack on causation a century ago, which remains influential to this day.

Where causation does play a role is in informal talk and reasoning. (Philosopher Peter Norton, whose views on causation can be characterized as Russellian, likens causation to folk science.)

With that in mind, I see no reason to deny mental causation as not complying to some pure notion of causation. Causation is very much an impure, informal notion, and mental causation fits comfortably within that informal domain. My intention to perform an action results both in mental and physical effects. Intentions are causal. Communication is causal.

There are established usages of the word 'causation', both in ordinary language and in specialized domains. Capturing these usages in a single, all-encompassing definition has proven to be difficult. To my knowledge, no one definition works perfectly. — SophistiCat

I agree with you, but that's kinda scary isn't it? It's such a fundamentally important concept, to pretty much everything in life, especially philosophy. Without causation there's... nothing. If we didn't live in a causal world, there'd be nothing to experience, sense, or even think. It's so fundamentally important and yet so difficult to even define.

Mind blowing.

If we didn't live in a causal world, there'd be nothing to experience, sense, or even think. It's so fundamentally important and yet so difficult to even define.

Mind blowing. — flannel jesus

Mind itself is just as difficult to define. And here we wondering about mind to mind causation.

How can we not say more after 3,000 years of trying?

Everything blowing…

I'll summarize 1 of the great errors: the error of false causality.

For centuries people thought the "will" and the "ego" were genuine causes, facts about consciousness that explained action and responsibility. This is merely a projection of outdated psychology. Modern insight reveals that what we call "the will" doesn't cause action, motives are mere suruface ripples, and the Ego is a fiction of IT ( the body). Humans mistook these illusions for real quantums of force, and we built our metaphysics based upon them and projected it upon the world, turning the Ego into an ideal models of "being." Resulting in a massive inherited error: believing in the spirit and the mind as if they were causes via the thing in itself...

What are your thoughts regarding Mental Actions as Causal Actions? — I like sushi

Mental actions are physical actions. You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain. It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality.

It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality. — Philosophim

:100:

Mental actions are physical actions. You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain. It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality. — Philosophim

But . . . hold on. Let's rearrange.

"You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain."
OK (so far as we know).

"It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality."
OK, if "divorced" is a synonym for "exists apart," above.

"Mental actions are physical actions."
Does not follow at all. How do you get an identity statement out of the first two? Compare:

You cannot have a football game that exists apart from the players and the field.
It is a mistake of category to believe that "a football game" is divorced from the players and the field.
Therefore: A football game is the players and the field.

? - I don't think so. At best, you might conclude that the actions comprising a football game are made by players, on a field, but that's not nearly a good enough description.

"Mental actions are physical actions."
Does not follow at all. How do you get an identity statement out of the first two? Compare:

You cannot have a football game that exists apart from the players and the field.
It is a mistake of category to believe that "a football game" is divorced from the players and the field.
Therefore: A football game is the players and the field.

? - I don't think so. At best, you might conclude that the actions comprising a football game are made by players, on a field, but that's not nearly a good enough description. — J

Your therefore is wrong. You can only conclude a football game is comprised of players and field. If you have no players or field, you have no existent football game. A football game is a game that comprises players and a field. You cannot have a football game apart from these.

Now lets go back to physical reality which doesn't quite fit your analogy. 'Mental' actions are physical reality. If my brain connects in a certain way, that physical reality is that I feel X. "Mental" is a category of physical experience, but is still physical. There is no 'mental' reality that exists apart from the physical. I cannot grab something non-physical out of the air and say, "That's a mental reality." Mental actions are simply a category of physical actions, and it is a category mistake to think they can exist independently when no one has ever shown this to be the case.

I was considering starting a thread about this. I'm doubtful about whether there is any physical causation. I think it all might be mental. There are problems whichever way we jump. — bert1

What are the problems with mental causation in an idealist reality? Seems fairly straightforward: your ideas cause me to think a certain way.

Your claim that mental actions are just physical actions assumes what it needs to prove. When you imagine a red apple, you experience the color red in your mind’s eye, but there is no actual red in the brain. No physical process in the brain has the property of redness. Electrical signals and neural patterns are not red, yet the experience undeniably involves red. This shows that the qualitative content of mental life isn’t present in the physical system itself.

You can identify neural correlates of mental events, but correlation is not identity. The fact that a brain state accompanies a mental state doesn’t mean the two are the same. Until you can explain how physical processes generate subjective experience, how neurons firing produces the feeling of pain or the image of color, the claim that mental reality is just physical reality remains unproven. Calling it a category mistake doesn’t resolve the problem; it just labels it without answering it.

Causation in general is a fraught notion itself. It's been discussed for thousands of years and the theories as to what it is or means still vary to this day. Some even doubt its usefulness in science. Bertrand Russell's famous quote goes so far as to relegate it to the status of folk science, not fit for physics and the like:

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

- On the Notion of Cause

When you imagine a red apple, you experience the color red in your mind’s eye, but there is no actual red in the brain. — RogueAI

No, because the red that the brain sees is not emitted light. Its physical light that is interpreted into a subjective experience of those brain cells.

01100001 Do you see the letter A? Well if this is processed into a visual medium and displayed on a screen, you would see this binary code as A. But if I don't have a screen and am looking at the bits, I have no idea its A. But its still 'A' in the language and process of the machine.

The fact that a brain state accompanies a mental state doesn’t mean the two are the same. — RogueAI

Correct, if the mental state has some other measurable aspect. But it doesn't does it? Actual neuroscience has demonstrated that altering brain states alter the states of one's experience. Just because we don't have a physical screen to translate that physical experience into something we can see with light, doesn't mean there is some ephemeral non-physical existence. We need some type of evidence for that, and there doesn't seem to be any.

No, because the red that the brain sees is not emitted light. Its physical light that is interpreted into a subjective experience of those brain cells. — Philosophim

How do you get subjective experience from brain cells? Why do brain cells give rise to subjective experience but liver cells don't?

There is no 'mental' reality that exists apart from the physical. — Philosophim

Oh, OK, so you're assuming this. I thought your post was aiming to demonstrate it.

I agree with you, but that's kinda scary isn't it? It's such a fundamentally important concept, to pretty much everything in life, especially philosophy. — flannel jesus

Causation is a useful everyday notion, but it is perhaps best thought of as a heuristic shortcut, rather than a sharp feature of the world.

If you ask after the cause of a thing or an event, the question won't even make sense without some context. Why are you asking? What specifically do you want to know? What do you intend to do with that information? Causal analysis is very much an applied, pragmatic practice.

Doesn't causation just explain the "why" of some event or substance? We usually think in terms of efficient causation, in which one is identifying the (moving) cause that brought about some effect.

Asking, "What caused it?," seems to be asking what accounts for its existence. Thus in the most general sense you have Aristotle's four causes, which are meant to explain the being of substances.

Louis CK says he hates when people say "The N-word." Not the actual word, but "the N-word." Because you're intentionally putting the word into someone's mind. And if you're going to do that, you should have to actually say the word. (He explains it with harsher language.)

17-12=

A young woman and young man, early 20s, run into each other at a party. They don't know each other, but start talking. They are stunned when they realize they lived a couple houses apart about 15 years ago, before the girl's family moved away. The young man says he cried those years ago when he heard she had moved away. He says he remembers that she said she liked brand new, shiny pennies, because they reminded her of the sun.

If you now have a certain word, and/or number, and/or scene of a romantic nature, in your head, was it put there physically? I think the medium of my communication, squiggles on the screen, is physical. But the meaning of the squiggles is not physical. And, since I stopped before the word, number, or scene, I certainly didn't physically put them into your head.

You can identify neural correlates of mental events, but correlation is not identity. — RogueAI

Indeed. The neural correlates are locations.

If you have no players or field, you have no existent football game. A football game is a game that comprises players and a field. You cannot have a football game apart from these. — Philosophim

Expert chess players are able to play with no physical board. Grand masters, for instance, will play against 10 opponents simultaneously, sometimes while blindfolded, and still consistently win. What about that situation is 'physical'?


Magnus Carlsen plays against 10 people while blindfolded.

Or Beethoven composing music after going deaf.