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The Journal of Philosophy:
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111 >
Issue: 7
Lei Zhong
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The Exclusion Argument, which aims to deny the causal efficacy of irreducible mental properties, is probably the most serious threat to non-reductive physicalism. Many non-reductivist responses can only reject simplified versions of the exclusion argument, but fail to refute a sophisticated version. In this paper, I attempt to show that we can block the sophisticated exclusion argument by appeal to a sophisticated understanding of causation, what I call the ‘Dual-condition Conception of Causation’. Specifically, I argue that the dual-condition account of causation motivates an Autonomy approach to solving the exclusion problem (whereas this account of causation challenges the Overdetermination approach). According to the autonomy solution, even if mental properties are unable to cause fundamental physical properties, they can still cause higher-level properties (such as mental, behavioral, and social properties)—if so, human agency would be preserved in the physical world.
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