Sophisticated Exclusion and Sophisticated Causation

Zhong, Lei

doi:10.5840/jphil2014111724

Cited by 29 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…Christian List and Peter Menzies' resolution to the causal exclusion problem appeals to the difference-making model of causation Menzies 2009, 2017;Menzies 2013Menzies , 2015. While some others follow List and Menzies's solution somewhat closely (Raatikainen, 2010;Shapiro, 2012), and others endorse similar solutions (;Yablo 1992;Audi 2013;Zhong 2014;Pettit 2017), I shall focus on the solution proposed by List and Menzies. According to them, C is a cause of E if the occurrence of C makes a difference to the occurrence of E, where C makes a difference for E when the following two counterfactuals are true:…”

Section: Difference-making and Completenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Christian List and Peter Menzies’ resolution to the causal exclusion problem appeals to the difference‐making model of causation (List and Menzies , ; Menzies , ). While some others follow List and Menzies's solution somewhat closely (Raatikainen, ; Shapiro, ), and others endorse similar solutions (; Yablo ; Audi ; Zhong ; Pettit ), I shall focus on the solution proposed by List and Menzies. According to them, C is a cause of E if the occurrence of C makes a difference to the occurrence of E , where C makes a difference for E when the following two counterfactuals are true: Had C occurred, then E would have occurred ( C □→ E ) Had C not occurred, then E would not have occurred (~ C □→ ~ E ) For example, if the occurrence of Joan smoking for years ( C ) occurs, and the occurrence of Joan getting lung cancer ( E ) occurs, and if Joan hadn’t smoked for years (~ C ) then Joan wouldn’t have gotten lung cancer (~ E ), Joan's smoking for years is the cause of her lung cancer.…”

Section: Difference‐making and Completenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Causal Exclusion and Physical Causal Completeness

Moore

2019

Dialectica

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Nonreductive physicalists endorse the principle of mental causation, according to which some events have mental causes. Nonreductive physicalists also endorse the principle of physical causal completeness, according to which physical events have sufficient physical causes. Critics typically level the causal exclusion problem against this nonreductive physicalist model, according to which the physical cause is a sufficient cause of the behavioural effect, so the mental cause is excluded from causally influencing the behaviour. Numerous nonreductive physicalists have responded to the causal exclusion problem by weakening the principle of physical causal completeness in various ways. The result: either various nonreductive physicalist solutions fail on account of the fact that they do not satisfy a robustly defined principle of physical causal completeness, or there is an accelerating trend of solving the causal exclusion problem by suitably weakening the principle of physical causal completeness.

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Section: Difference-making and Completenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Difference‐making and Completenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal Exclusion and Physical Causal Completeness

Moore

2019

Dialectica

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“…When intuitions conflict, we'd better seek for arguments. In what follows, I attempt to present a causal exclusion argument for (P2), inspired by discussion of the exclusion problem in the philosophy of mind (see Kim , ; Zhong , ).…”

Section: The Exclusion Problem In Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic Normativity and Semantic Causality

Zhong

2015

Philos Phenomenol Research

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Semantic normativism, which is the view that semantic properties/concepts are some kind of normative properties/concepts, has become increasingly influential in contemporary meta-semantics. In this paper, I aim to argue that semantic normativism has difficulty accommodating the causal efficacy of semantic properties. In specific, I raise an exclusion problem for semantic normativism, inspired by the exclusion problem in the philosophy of mind. Moreover, I attempt to show that the exclusion problem for semantic normativism is peculiarly troublesome: while we can solve (or dissolve) mental-physical exclusion by adopting the so-called 'autonomy approach', a similar autonomy solution to semantic exclusion is implausible if semantic properties are understood as normative properties.

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“…Woodward seems to treat this as a clarification of the original theory rather than an amendment, but as it allows holding fixed off-path variables, it may be the sort of treatment that Zhong has in mind. This is not discussed in Zhong (2014) however, and the viability of Woodward's revised/refined (2015) proposal deserves fresh consideration. 20 As noted by an anonymous referee, interventionism as an approach to causation is independent of the commitment to proportionality (or any other specific commitment of Woodward's).…”

Section: Problems With Proportionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst such a strategy exists in earlier works, 1 the recent versions I have in mind adopt the so-called 'Interventionist' approach to causation. 2 In this discussion I will focus on two such contributions, the first from Menzies (2009, 2010), the second from Zhong (2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal exclusion and the limits of proportionality

McDonnell

2016

Philos Stud

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Causal exclusion arguments are taken to threaten the autonomy of the special sciences, and the causal efficacy of mental properties. A recent line of response to these arguments has appealed to "independently plausible" and "well grounded" theories of causation to rebut key premises. In this paper I consider two papers which proceed in this vein and show that they share a common feature: they both require causes to be proportional (in Yablo's sense) to their effects. I argue that this feature is a bug, and one that generalises: any attempt to rescue the autonomy of the special sciences, or the efficacy of the mental, from exclusion worries had better not look to proportionality for help.

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Sophisticated Exclusion and Sophisticated Causation

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

Causal Exclusion and Physical Causal Completeness

Causal Exclusion and Physical Causal Completeness

Semantic Normativity and Semantic Causality

Causal exclusion and the limits of proportionality

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