Kim V. Searle

Uniformity of Kind – Past and present causes are all of the same kind, have the same energy, and produce the same effects.

Correlation vs. causation: A relationship between two things does not infer a relationship between the circumstance and end

Firstly, Plantinga (1994) discusses epiphenomenalism; that physical events are completely independent of mental processes. He discusses that there is no causal

Examining all three premises together Davidson argues “...Anomalous monism: monism because it holds that psychological events are physical events, anomalous, because it insists that events do not fall under strict laws when described in psychological terms” (davidson2).

David Hume’s two definitions of cause found in both A Treatise of Human Nature, and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding have been the center of much controversy in regards to his actual view of causation. Much of the debate centers on the lack of consistency between the two definitions and also with the definitions as a part of the greater text. As for the latter objection, much of the inconsistency can be remedied by sticking to the account presented in the Enquiry, as Hume makes explicit in the Author’s Advertisement that the Treatise was a “work which the Author [Hume] had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was

Hume argues that cause and effect or presumed connections between two events are false because according to the empiricist principle, we cannot tell where our impressions of the idea of cause come from. He says that there is no way we can prove that an effect is as a result of a particular cause, nor can we predict a future event based on past experiences or laws of nature. Hume further argues that our assumptions about causation are based on habits of our minds and experience; that our experience of observing two events occur repeatedly has led us to assume in our minds that those events are connected. This, he refers to as ‘constant conjunction’. Whereas, those events are actually based on probability. His argument is that causation has no

causal factors, “forces” if you will. Moreover, it is now clear just what their causal character will

If what Hume explains (that only through repetition can cause and effect exist) is to be true, then a child would not learn after the first time to avoid putting his hand over a candle in fear of painful burns. In reality, most children do not need repetition of events to conclude that placing their hands over a lit candle is a bad idea. Therefore, this case finds Hume’s first claim about cause and effect unreasonable. Such an example would mean that the mind is capable of causality after even just one encounter with the event. After contemplations about the people’s beliefs of events, Hume argues that we do not experience “necessary connections” from one instance and thus, he agrees with the above counterargument. This counterargument leads to his next claim about the absence of “necessary connections” and the existence of self-reflecting impressions and habit. Though we cannot say that two objects are exclusively and necessarily connected, we cannot discount the possibility that they may be necessarily connected. On “necessary connections,” the relationship between repeated experience and development of habit is not automatic and reflexive. Casual connections, in the particular example of smoking resulting into lung cancer, are not mechanized or immediate. Hume’s claim does not reject this reasoning but he does not explain how some cases require extensive research and study (and ultimately,

Hume concludes at the end of Section VII of the Enquiry that the concept of causation may be preserved if we understand its definition as this: to say that a causes b is to say that the appearance of a is always succeeded by the appearance of b. 2[2]

In the article Epiphenomenal and Supervenient Causation, Jaegwon Kim provides a positive account for mental causation. He argues three main claims: that macro causation should be viewed as epiphenomenal causation, that macro causation as epiphenomenal causation should be explained as “supervenient causation”, and that psychological causation involving psychological events is plausibly assimilated to macro causation. (pg. 259). His claims attempt to resolve the puzzle of how psychological causal relations belong within a physically closed causal system. The Physically Closed Causal System Theory maintains that all causes are physical. If psychological causes are distinct from physical causes, then they cannot cause any effects in this world. Kim’s first two claims support his third. And, the third offers a possible solution.

In the philosophy of mind, one of the most prominent philosophical theories is Monism. Monism, by itself, is the theory that reality consists of only one kind of substance. Likewise, Anomalous Monism theorized and developed by Donald Davidson in his work, Mental Events, proposes that reality consists of one kind of substance, namely, physical substance. That is, according to Davidson, all mental events are a part of the physical realm. Furthermore, Anomalous Monism, also known as the token-identity theory, is Davidson’s attempt to rectify the problem of the mind-body relationship – which questions how the human mind and the body can causally interact. However, it appears that Davidson’s Anomalous Monism states a contradiction. As such, in

A great portion of Ryle’s argument is pointed toward a “category mistake”. These mistakes that Ryle makes note “The mistakes were made by people who did not know how to wield the concepts University, division and team-spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability to use certain items the English vocabulary”(27). This dualist doctrine formed a polar opposition between the mind and body. Ryle states that the official doctrine as a category mistake; “It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another”(26). Meaning mind and

When two human beings carry out an identical action together, each of them often comes to think that the other person could be the source of the movement, the event. In this way, unpredictability and variability are introduced in their own intentions and actions. David Wegner and Thalia Wheatley in 1999 carry out an experiment in which they are studying exactly how human beings are convinced that they have had a certain effect, despite the fact that they have not done anything. The experiment shows how much we can be wrong about what our action is and what it is not.

John Searle had a theory where he recognized there is a mental and physical dualism for Rene Descartes. In the other hand Descartes belief that dualism is composed of two different substances that are mind and body. One of them is physical and the other one is nonphysical. Descartes claims that these substances interact at some point in the body. Both of them recognized mind and body are different parts.

The idea states that for all effects there is a cause. Hume said that even though the cause preceded the effect, there is no proof that the cause is responsible for the effect's occurrence.