Physicalism and Psychology: A Plea for a Substantive Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

Introduction There has been considerable worry for the last thirty years about the causal efficacy of the mental: How, given the closure of physics and the apparent “irreducibility” of the mental to the physical, can mental phenomena play any causal/explanatory role in the world? Aren't they mere “epiphenomena”? In reaction to these worries, Tyler Burge (1993) has reasonably argued that: [T]hey are symptomatic of a mistaken set of philosophical priorities. Materialist metaphysics has been given more weight than it deserves. Reflection on explanatory practice has been given too little. The metaphysical grounds that support the worries are vastly less strong than the more ordinary grounds we already have for rejecting them. (p. 97) And Lynn Rudder Baker (1993) has rightly suggested that we: take as our philosophical starting point, not a metaphysical doctrine about the nature of causation or of reality, but a range of explanations that have been found worthy of acceptance. (p. 92) Baker and Burge are applying the sensible point, suggested years ago by Moore and emphasized by Quine (1953a), that there seems to be no specially privileged position outside of common sense and science from which philosophers can effectively dismiss them. It would take a pretty powerful metaphysical argument indeed to give us reason to give up our belief in familiar forms of mental causation. For all the wisdom of this position, however, I fear that Burge overstates the case in a crucial way. The problem of “epiphenomenalism” that many of these “metaphysical” discussions have been addressing arises in part from the difficulty of specifying a mechanism linking the mental and the physical.

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