Mental Causation

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Abstract

The problem of mental causation was one of the most important problems in philosophy of mind at least from the time of Descartes. Since Cartesian philosophers found the causal interaction of the soul and the body problematic, they explained away the direct relation between the soul and the body in different ways. However, the problem was not resolved in contemporary philosophy of mind when the idea of a Cartesian
immaterial soul was abandoned. If we count the mind-body problem as the most basic problem in the contemporary philosophy of mind, the problem of mental causation would be one of its main forms. With Cartesian dualism, the problem would be that of the causal interaction between the two different substances of the body and the soul, and with physicalism, the problem would be how the mind can exert its causal forces in a wholly physical world. Philosophers proposed different solutions to the problem on the basis of their views of causation and the nature of mind, some of which will be dealt with in this paper.

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