PHYSICALISM QUAERENS INTELLECTUM BENEDIKT PAUL GÖCKE I. THE ARGUMENT FROM CAUSAL CLOSURE Given that “most contemporary analytic philosophers [endorse] a physicalist picture of the world,” 1 one should expect substantial arguments for physicalism. In fact, however, the only serious considerations in favor of physicalism circle around the notion of causation. 2 On the premise that physical effects of conscious causes are not overdetermined by ontologically distinct sufficient causes, and on the premise that physical effects have sufficient purely physical causal histories, the argument from causal closure concludes that the mind can act in the world only if it is a physical thing itself. If this is sound, then philosophers who assume that the mind acts in the world are committed to physicalism. 3 II. OVERDETERMINATION AND CAUSAL CLOSURE Is the argument compelling? Does it entail a contradiction if we reject the premise that physical effects are not overdetermined by ontologically distinct sufficient causes? 1 A. Newen, V. Hoffmann, and M. Esfeld, “Preface to Mental Causation, Externalism and Self- Knowledge,” Erkenntnis 67 (2007): 147–48. 2 Cf. S. Walter and H.-D. Heckmann (ed.) Physicalism and Mental Causation. The Metaphysics of Mind and Action (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003). 3 Papineau states the general idea of the argument as follows: “Many effects that we attribute to conscious causes have full physical causes. But it would be absurd to suppose that these effects are caused twice over. So the conscious causes must be identical to some part of those physical causes.” See David Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002) 17. For an analysis of causal closure see Barbara Montero, “Varieties of Causal Closure,” in: Walter and Heckmann (2003): 173–87. © 2008 The Philosophical Forum, Inc. 463