Program explanations and causal relevance |
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Authors: | Sven Walter |
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Institution: | 1.Universit?t Bielefeld,Fakult?t für Geschichtswissenschaft Philosophie und Theologie Abteilung Philosophie,Bielefeld,Germany |
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Abstract: | Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit have defended a non-reductive account of causal relevance known as the ‘program explanation
account’. Allegedly, irreducible mental properties can be causally relevant in virtue of figuring in non-redundant program explanations which convey information not conveyed by explanations in terms of the physical properties that actually do the ‘causal work’.
I argue that none of the possible ways to spell out the intuitively plausible idea of a program explanation serves its purpose,
viz., defends non-reductive physicalism against Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument according to which non-reductive physicalism is committed to epiphenomenalism because irreducible mental properties are ‘screened
off’ from causal relevance by their physical realizers. Jackson and Pettit’s most promising explication of a program explanation
appeals to the idea of invariance of effect under variation of realization, but I show that invariance of effect under variation of realization is neither necessary nor sufficient for causal relevance. |
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