Mental Causation : : Investigating the Mind’s Powers in a Natural World / / Jens Harbecke.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Harbecke, Jens,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2013]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Metaphysical Research , 8
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (434 p.) :; Zahlr. Abb.

This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analyzed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the 'new compatibilist’s' approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterized by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of 'causal proportionality' that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal overdeterminationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. The Problem of Mental Causation: premises and central principles -- Chapter 2. Canonical solutions to the Problem -- Chapter 3. New compatibilism and mental causation -- Chapter 4. Open solutions -- Bibliography -- Index