Mind Over Matter? (2)

He asked me to submit my argument as late as possible, though there's no need to ask :P. Anyway, in this round I am addressing two of his arguments against functionalism: Hempel's dilemma (in reference to physicalist functionalism) and Kim's argument concerning mental causation. A problem occurs though: saving enough character limits. While I will probably have enough character limits to respond to both of my opponent's argument, I remind my opponent of the arguments I made in my previous round (for functionalism) and would additionally have to reply to his initial argument for dualism (indeterminacy of the physical). Obviously, doing all these things with 8,000 characters is extremely difficult if I want to produce an effective rebuttal. I will do my best to integrate my response to my opponent's last round and a defense of my initial arguments -- however, I fear I won't have much space to respond to the argument from indeterminacy, meaning this round I won't respond to it. Perhaps I will in my last round, but as it is there are simply not enough characters. ==================== Hempel's Dilemma ==================== A simple response to this dilemma is to deny it's full effect. Perhaps Hepel is true in pointing out the vagueness of defining what is physical in relation to a certain step in development of physics. However, simply because it's difficult to explain the concept doesn't deny that we have no substantial understanding of said concept. An analogy can be made with knowledge; philosophers lately have their work cut out for them due to the introduction of Gettier's problem, which promptly questions the constituents of the concept of knowledge. However, despite the problem inherent in asking what constitutes knowledge, this doesn't mean we have no understanding of knowledge - rather, we are just incomplete in our understanding. In the same sense, physicalism tells us what we DO know exists - all that is detailed under physics. Does this mean that anything not described by physics doesn't exist? No, of course there is still the possibility of souls and what not. However, at the same time there exists NO evidence for their existence either. There is a distinction to be made between lack of evidence and evidence against. and even though we don't have the latter (unless said conception of soul is ludicrous to the point of having contradictory parts) we can still put them on a shelf of epistemological neutrality. Furthermore, and in conjunction with my argument for physicalism in the earlier round, we know that the scientific method and other related methodologies are highly effective in figuring out what exists. While there are varying conceptions of paradigms of what is a physical theory (common sense physics, Newtonian quantum, etc. ), we can refer to a common set of theoretical constructs between all of them. We can reserve and highlight the appropriate methodologies; "in short, we might say that the notion of a physical theory is a Wittgensteinian family resemblance concept, and this should be enough to answer the question of how to understand physical theory[1]. " ==================== Non-reductive Physicalism ==================== As my opponent has pointed out, most if not all functionalists identity with non-reductive physicalism. This means that we take a holistic approach with characterizing mental states - this should be clear with the commonly related concepts of supervenience and multiple realizability. My opponent utilizes Kim's argument that mental events are causally inert, or inefficacious. Kim believes that if mental causation is possible, dualism must be true. He draws this conclusion from the idea that higher level non-reducible properties causally effect lower levels, but are NOT causally effected by the lower-levels themselves. Or in other words, "upward determination excludes downward causation[2]. " Kim says that if such a thing happens, then it would be a case of overdetermination[3], a term in philosophy of action referring to the situations in which multiple causes sufficiently apply to the same corresponding event. A classic example of this is the firing squad: if all members of a firing squad shoot and kill the prisoner, can we say that one of the members killed said prisoner? Refer to this graph per Kim's argument[4]. If we accept the exclusion principle and the concept of supervenience, then there seems to be a case of a mental event be causally inert. How can this be accounted for? Well, I will bring up two responses relating to the idea of downward causation: On one hand, it can easily be stated that there are examples of macrophysical effects caused by macrophysical causes, and at the same times these macrophysical causes have microphysical effects. The earlier paper I referenced[3], includes an example of tectonic plates: "The fact that this particular silica molecule has been uplifted some tens of kilometers from deep within the crust is caused by the two tectonic plates colliding. And while these tectonic plates are constituted by microphysical entities, they cannot be identified with them. If two molecules with in a tectonic place were rearranged, then we would have one and the same tectonic plate. " The other reply would be to deny that non-reductive physicalism entails that mental properties have irreducible causal powers. Introduced are two important terms, Alexander's dictum and Causal individuation. The former claims "If A is a real property, then A has causal power" whereas the latter claims "If A is an irreducible property, then A has irreducible causal power[5]. " The problem is that Kim conflates the two when claims that mental properties being irreducible entails for them to have irreducible causal powers -- this would be validated IF argued via Causal Individuation, not Alexander's dictum. For the functionalist, whereas mental properties are considered irreducible from the physical this is so because they are multiply realizable. There is a jump from the claim that because mental properties are irreducible, Causal Individuation must apply. ---References--- 1. . http://plato.stanford.edu... 2. . http://www.uvm.edu... 3. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. . http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. . http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk...