ABSTRACT
In a rather too frequently discussed paper – as Mellor would be the fi rst to hold – Crane and Mellor inveigh against physicalism. The common argument offered in favour of physicalism is based on the claim that the physical world is causally closed or, more specifi cally, that nothing non-physical causes something physical. In response, Crane and Mellor write:
Our mental states, intentional and otherwise, could – and would – affect our brain states and bodily movements even if the laws of physics made them all determined also by earlier brain states. The claim that a system thus constrained by non-mental laws must be closed, in the sense of being unaffectable by its mental states, simply does not follow – and it is not true.
