I read the chapter “The Case for Materialism” from Papineau's book, Thinking About Consciousness, in which he argues all mental events are identical to physical events. He gives the following three premises:
(i) Conscious mental occurrences have physical effects.
(ii) All physical effects are fully caused by purely physical prior histories.
(iii) The physical effects of conscious causes aren't always overdetermined by distinct causes.
And concludes all conscious mental occurrences are identical to physical occurrences.
Conversely, Jennifer Hornsby reasons that assuming casual events occur because of physical events it ignores the distinction of human agency. She continues to argue the foremost mistake in the relationship of causality as purely physical is rooted in the Fundamentalist postulate that we can think of causal chains of states and events whenever we have a case of causality.
Both philosophers refer to examples of a similar pattern: stimuli & mental instance that lead to direct action. But what happens when this pattern is reduced to only the question at hand? Specifically, if we are questioning if a mental event is identical to a physical event, what if we isolate the mental event from the physical event: can it be argued that mental events are purely mental? The purpose of showing a mental state can create a physical reaction is a potentially attractive argument for Physicalism. But I am most curious about mental states that do not have a direct physical event accompanying the mental state. Likewise, I am interested in considering physical events that do not have mental states.
One can conceive of mental states that do not cause a physical event. What comes to mind most prominently is memories. Memories are past occurances, which do not have explicit influence on the future. Surely there are exceptions, such as remembering someone and reaching out to them thereafter. But even then, the chain of events isn't so direct that a specific memory elicits a specific response each time, or if it causes a response at all.
Memories can be caused by a physical stimuli or event, but they can also occur in the absence of related physical stimuli or any physical stimuli. For example, when laying in bed before sleep, there is no active physical stimuli but for many people, this is an unfortunately perfect time to dwell of the past. I do not deny that the recollection of memories may cause someone to enter a physical state, but this is not a requirement. Because I can conceive of mental occurrences without physical effects, I'm compelled to reject the first premise.
Another example that can be conceived is dreaming. This may be too closely coupled to memories because our understanding of conscious is distorted here. That said, dreams do occur for people while our body is in a physical state of REM, where our bodies are most still. There are people who sleep talk or walk, but again, this is not a requirement. Again, this leads me to the rejection of the first premise.
The final example I believe is most compelling is the feeling of love, or hate if you prefer. Either way, a feeling of intensity towards a person does not cause a direct physical event. It does influence several related physical events, such as choosing to be with the person, do things for them and so forth. However, loving a person does not directly cause these things to happen, for there are several other variables and other more immediates physical states that occur before any of those occur. This inclines me to reject the first and second premise. While the rejection of the first premise is repetitive of the previous examples, I dismiss the second premise because--as we just proved--there are mental events that do not cause direct physical events but do influence other mental events that then produce physical events.
The third premise is a bit shaky, in my opinion. Because it isn't a ultimatum of always or never, but sometimes, it seems too obvious to refute. So I will not.
If someone has been driving for sometime, then they have likely operated in autopilot for at least part of the physical event. They are indeed driving, but the actions have become muscle memory and they now think, “I need to switch lanes," translates to move left hand downwards to put on blinker, glance in mirrors, rotate neck and shoulder back to check blind spots, move hand(s) to the desired direct to begin to move car. Each of these movements are not individually thought of, for they are thinking of switching lanes or perhaps irritated that the car one lane over won't let them over. The mental state is occupied with the primary goal and each physical movement is linked to the goal without being directly focused upon.
This also occurs noticeably when writing by hand. A person doesn't focus on the individual stroke, rather they are focusing on the message they're writing and the coherence of their words, hopefully. Similar to the autopilot example, these instances occur through an abstracted level of mental state. Because the middle state between the abstract umbrella goal and the physical event does not have a mental event, then it can be conceivable to reject premise two.
Hornsby's main contention is that Fundamentalist theory suggests looking for causes and effects in a mechanical perspective, but it looks too deeply for causes about a human when they are actually coming from the human. In the aforementioned cases, the the Fundamentalist may examine the chain of events and indeed find the firing of neurons for the abstract middle state. However, in doing so, it ignores the mental state of the goal and how the goal has an explicit physical outcome that is comprised of smaller physical events. The umbrella goal is human agency and our ability to have cognitions that create causes and are not necessarily the cause themselves.
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