DEFENDING MENTAL CAUSATION BY APPEALING TO GROUNDING
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Abstract
Recently, Clark and Wildman have argued against a thesis
about mental causation, due to Kroedel and Schulz, called
the causal grounding thesis. A programmatic idea driving
the causal grounding thesis is that instances of mental
causation are always grounded by corresponding instances
of purely physical causation. The causal grounding thesis
goes beyond this programmatic idea by providing a
substantial specification of how this occurs. The causal
grounding thesis is of considerable philosophical interest
because it is instrumental in Kroedel and Schulz’s attempt
to develop non-reductive physicalism about the mind in
such a way that the infamous exclusion problem is avoided.
This paper extends Kroedel and Schulz’s defense of the
causal grounding thesis and replies to Clark and Wildman’s
concerns.
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