This chapter argues that many of the standard arguments for the causal inertness of the mental rest on mistaken assumptions about causality and causal explanation. An interventionist account undercuts these assumptions. Interventionism allows for explanations involving macroscopic variables as well as microscopic variables. So, depending on the details of the case, it can explain the causal efficacy and explanatory power of multiple realisable mental states. When it comes to the causal exclusion argument, the chapter rejects the exclusion principle according to which if an event has a sufficient cause, then no distinct event can be a cause of it, unless this is a genuine case of causal overdetermination. An event being causally sufficient for some effect does not exclude some distinct event from causing or being causally relevant to that effect, even in the absence of overdetermination.
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