ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on problems relating to mental causation. We begin by considering what exactly an account of mental causation ought to secure, focusing on Terry Horgan–s useful notion of mental quausation. We consider arguments for the reality of mental causation that appeal to introspection and the phenomenology of agency, and arguments that appeal to the explanatory role of mental states. We then examine Jaegwon Kim–s causal exclusion argument, and consider a number of influential responses to it on the part of non-reductive physicalists: Frank Jackson–s and Phillip Pettit–s program explanation, Stephen Yablo–s response involving the relationship between determinable properties and their determinates, and John Campbell–s interventionist account. The chapter also examines an alleged threat to mental causation that derives from content externalism. We conclude by considering an empirical objection to mental causation that derives from the research into the readiness potential by the neuroscientist Benjamin Libet.
