Physicalism—the thesis that everything there is in the world, including our minds, is constituted by basic physical entities—has dominated the philosophy of mind during the last few decades. But although the conceptual foundations of the physicalist agenda—including a proper explication of notions such as ‘causation’, ‘determination’, ‘realization’ or even ‘physicalism’ itself—must be settled before more specific problems (e.g. the problems of mental causation and human agency) can be satisfactorily addressed, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on the relationships between the various key concepts of the debate on physicalism is yet missing. This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency, written by established and leading authors in the field.

"This is a timely and well-conceived volume on a highly contested topic in analytic philosophy. Its perspicuous organization invites readers to think through the important issues surrounding the problem of mental causation. I recommend this exciting collection to anyone interested in metaphysics or the philosophy of mind. Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts/Amherst

"Three and half centuries after Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia challenged Descartes to explain “how the mind of a man can determine the bodily spirits in producing voluntary actions,” mental causation has re-emerged as a central problematic in the philosophy mind. The problem has far reaching implications — for the nature of psychological explanation, the relationship between psychology and physical theory, and the possibility of human agency. This timely collection by Walter and Heckmann brings together in one volume original essays by exciting new faces as well as some well-known participants in the debate. These works represent cutting-edge research on a variety of issues involving mental causation, and will be the focal point of discussion over the years to come." Jaegwon Kim, Brown University

Table of Contents

• Preface
• John Heil, "Multiply Realized Properties"
• Carl Gillett, "Non-Reductive Realization and Non-Reductive Identity: What Physicalism Does Not Entail"
• Gene Witmer, "Multiple Realizability and Psychological Laws: Evaluating Kim’s Challenge"
• Paul Noordhof, "Not Old . . . But Not That New Either: Explicability, Emergence, and the Characterisation of Materialism"
• John Bolender, "A Farewell to Isms"
• E.J. Lowe, "Physical Causal Closure and the Invisibility of Mental Causation"
• Andrew Melnyk, "Some Evidence for Physicalism"
• Barbara Montero, "Varieties of Causal Closure"
• Peter Menzies, "The Causal Efficacy of Mental States"
• Paul Raymont, "Kim on Closure, Exclusion and Nonreductive Physicalism"
• Ausonio Marras, "Methodological and Ontological Aspects of the Mental Causation Problem"
• Noa Latham, "Are There Any Non-Motivating Reasons for Action?"
• Ralf Stoecker, "Climbers, Pigs and Wiggled Ears: The Problem of Waywardness in Action Theory"
• Terence Horgan, John Tienson, George Graham, "The Phenomenology of First-Person Agency"

· ISBN 0-907845-46-0 · Published in June 2003 by Imprint Academic · Paperback · 330 pages · $29.90 ·

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