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Token Monism, Event Dualism and Overdetermination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Hagit Benbaji
Hagit Benbaji*
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
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Extract

The argument from causal overdetermination (‘the CO-argument’) is considered to be the shortest route to token monism. It only assumes that:

  1. 1. Efficacy: Mental events are causes of physical events.

  2. 2. Closure: Every physical event has a sufficient physical cause (if it has any sufficient cause).

  3. 3. Exclusion: Systematic Causal Overdetermination (CO) is impossible: if an event x is a sufficient cause of an event y then no event x* distinct from x is a cause of y.

  4. 4. Identity: Therefore, mental events are physical events.

Exclusion does not deny the possibility of two gunmen that fi re at a victim at the same time. But event-dualism is like a systematic fi ringsquad case — whenever I want to raise my arm, my arm is raised, and that is intolerable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 63 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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