ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author plays both offense and defense for the causal realist team. While on offense, the author shows that one should affirm causal realism because of the existence and nature of beliefs, inter alia. On the defensive side, the author objects to D. H. Mellor's argument for causal eliminativism, and shows that E. J. Lowe's attempt to make true causal facts with directed dispositions and their manifestation partners alone is problematic. The author's metaphysical methodology provides some motivation for committing to the existence of instances of mental causation and so also obtaining causal relations. The causal eliminativist who hopes to save the mental cannot appropriate Lewis's brand of functionalism, since according to causal eliminativism, there do not exist any obtaining causal relations, and so there are no causal roles. Like the neo-Russellians, E. J. Lowe argued that there are no obtaining causal relations. Unlike the neo-Russellians, his justification did not depend on physical considerations.
