ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates three proposals: Anomalous Monism, Ontological Emergentism, and the Intentional Causation View. It discusses that not all forms of downward causation are Cartesian, or antinaturalistic, in spirit. The tenets of Anomalous Monism, seem to imply that events are causally related only in virtue of their physical properties. But, if this is true, the mental properties of events are causally inert—that is, Anomalous Monism amounts to epiphenomenalism. Lynn Baker develops an interesting proposal based on two 'unpopular views', ontological emergence and downward causation, which she takes as compatible with the present scientific view of the world. A way of accounting for mental downward causation is a form of causal pluralism based on the interpretation of causation as an intentional context-relative notion, interdependent with the notion of explanation. The first horn of the eliminationist dilemma claims that causal pluralism implies the violation of the principle of the causal closure of the physical world.
