f484a99f-ff1d-4d55-bfd3-7d85bdeef2e0202610140004190585Depositor Namedepositor_email@address.comRUA Metadata ExporterAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Please note: you can download the full ebook using the above buttons. Read online or download: free Purchase price for print volume (including shipping and handling fees): £25.02 Understanding Mental Causation proposes a new, non-relational theory of mental causation. Andrea White believes that contemporary philosophy of mind labours under a misapprehension of what mental causation is supposed to be. This volume explains where the leading theories go astray, and how the new theory proposed solves critical problems for philosophers of mind and action. Ordinary experience suggests that what we do with our bodies causally depends, somehow, on what is going on in our minds. However, the problem of how to understand the causal relationship between mind and body remains. Contemporary philosophy of mind is shaped by the question: how is it possible for the mental to causally interact with the physical? Mental causation is often presented as a cause-effect relation between mental and physical entities. This understanding of mental causation is widely endorsed because it seems like a straightforward explanation of what is going on when people act intentionally. Desires and beliefs are seen as causes of the actions they explain, entailing the existence of causal relations between mental items and physical events. White calls this the 'causalist' view of intentional action. This view is not universally accepted. The 'non-causalist' view denies that intentional action entails the existence of causal relations between mental items and physical events. However, non-causalists reach this conclusion by arguing that explanations of intentional actions which cite beliefs or desires are not usually causal explanations at all. White presents a theory of intentional action that falls between the 'causalist' and 'non-causalist' views. She rejects the idea that as-a-cause is how we should understand the place of mentality in intentional action. Concepts like belief, desire and intention do not refer to items which can stand in causal relations to actions or physical events. However, like causalists, she holds that explanations of intentional actions which cite the agent's thoughts do give causal information. This intermediary view demands a new theory about the causation that is on display when human beings act intentionally, one that does not reduce mental causation to a relation between mental items and physical events. Orthodox theories of causation, inspired by David Hume, assume that causation is always a relation between events. Therefore, the causation demonstrated in intentional action must be a relation, because all causation is, and will count as mental causation if and only if at least one of the terms of that relation is a mental entity. White challenges this orthodoxy by presenting her own non-relational theory of causation. Denying causation is always a relation, she holds instead that causation is a general type of process in which substances engage and that exercising a causal power is to engage in a process. White shows how this novel theory can be used to provide a better understanding of intentional action and the mental causation associated with it. She suggests that to act intentionally is to engage in a process and, as such, to exercise a power - but a power of a special sort. The power to act intentionally is a power to structure one's own activities so that they demonstrate a pattern - a pattern which is only revealed by attributing mental states to the agent. So, when an agent acts intentionally, they engage in the process of mental causation because the agent is manifesting a special power to organise their activities into a pattern that can be made sense of by appeal to mental concepts. Broadening our understanding of causation, and more specifically incorporating the concepts 'power' and 'process', opens up new ways of understanding intentional action and mental causation. In Understanding Mental Causation, White presents a compelling new account in this key area of philosophy of mind. Readers may prefer to download and cite from the PDF version of this book. This has a specific DOI and has a fixed structure with page numbers. Guidance on citing from other ebook versions without stable page numbers (Kindle, EPUB etc.) is now usually offered within style guidance (e.g. by the MLA style guide, The Chicago Manual of Style etc.) so please check the information offered on this by the referencing style you use. Further information on the order processUnderstanding Mental Causation proposes a new, non-relational theory of mental causation. The volume explains where the leading contemporary theories go astray, and how the theory presented solves critical problems for philosophers of mind and action. Denying that causation is always a relation, and holding instead that causation is a general type of process which substances engage in, the author argues that even though it should not be understood as a relation, there is something worthy of the name ‘mental causation’ necessarily on display when human agents act intentionally.121720249781912482528978191248253597819124825429781912482559White Rose University PressYorkhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/10.22599/Whitehttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/m/10.22599/Whitehttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/4e6a672d-87fa-43f1-a698-45130a88acea.pdfhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/4e6a672d-87fa-43f1-a698-45130a88acea.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-84311217202410.22599/White.ahttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.ahttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/799d06cc-8a9d-486e-b1a7-3dd4b3d51469.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431This chapter outlines physicalism, this first of a trio of interconnected philosophical views which, while logically independent, are mutually reinforcing and which are responsible for the widespread acceptance of a relational understanding of mental causation. This chapter explains how arguments for physicalism presuppose the relational understanding of mental causation.1217202410.22599/White.bhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.bhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/7727cff7-04a0-43ce-bdb8-1bb26442f0fe.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 2 outlines causal theories of intentional action and explains how these theories are used to justify the relational understanding of mental causation. This chapter also argues that causal theories of intentional action owe much of their plausibility to relational approaches to causation.1217202410.22599/White.chttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.chttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/51013434-0a34-4c56-84eb-d8a5ec0c267f.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 3 explains what a relational approach to causation is and shows that the relational approach to causation is a substantive philosophical position, and not merely a harmless background assumption or pre-theoretical notion as philosophers of mind have often assumed.1217202410.22599/White.dhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.dhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/5c0bf4df-4ad3-47ab-bd6a-2c4e4a0564e0.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Drawing on arguments presented in philosophy of action, Chapter 4 argues against the physicalist/event-causalist description of agency which is entailed by the three mutually-supporting views discussed in the previous three chapters.1217202410.22599/White.ehttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.ehttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/ed4186b9-5261-49c5-9c50-bccdb674a729.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 5 offers a critical examination of some existing theories of agency that appeal to the concept of agent causation or substance causation. I suggest that the chief failing of these theories is that they do not go far enough when it comes to rejecting the relational approach to causation.1217202410.22599/White.fhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.fhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/48614e87-fefe-4434-82ac-e93cf79deac4.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 6 presents a novel non-relational approach to causation. This approach denies that causation is always a relation and holds instead that causation can be a process. It is suggested that causation is on display not only when events make the difference to the occurrence of other events but also when substances engage in processes. It is argued that engaging in a process is analogous to instantiating a property, and that events are instances of processes.1217202410.22599/White.ghttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.ghttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/3b3fed22-3287-483c-b091-253aad25b52f.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 7 argues that it is not necessary for an explanation to be causal that its explanandum designate an effect and its explanans designate an item that is the cause of that effect. The non-relational theory of causation proposed in chapter 6 implies that facts about causal relations are not the only causal facts that causal explanations could answer to. It is suggested that some causal explanations are made true by the non-relational aspect of causal reality, that is, by facts about substances engaging in processes.1217202410.22599/White.hhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.hhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/c681a996-4a66-4855-aaab-1f331acf03c3.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 8 argues that explanations of intentional action that cite the agent’s reasons for acting are the kind of causal explanation that are not made true by causally related events. The most important consideration favouring this view is that it saves two strong intuitions: (a) that reason-giving explanations are causal and (b) that the mental states cited in reason-giving explanations do not denote items that stand in causal relations to the actions they explain. This view has important consequences for how we ought to think about the nature of intentional action. Most importantly, it casts doubt on the view that intentional actions are distinguished from non-intentional actions by their causes.1217202410.22599/White.ihttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.ihttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/7d04f308-43a1-4860-9b61-76de67f19825.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 9 proposes that to act intentionally is to engage in a process, and as such is to exercise a power—but a power of a special sort. The power to act intentionally is a power to structure one’s own activities so that they demonstrate a pattern—a pattern that is only revealed by attributing mental states to the agent. So, when an agent acts intentionally, they engage in the process of causation. The process they engage in counts as mental causation in virtue of the fact that the agent is manifesting a special power to organise their activities so that they instantiate a certain structure, a structure that is made comprehensible by the agent’s mental states.1217202410.22599/White.jhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.jhttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/b67615f8-7a03-45dd-bf01-21de988485fa.pdfAndreaWhitehttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-8431Chapter 10 discusses alternative ways to understand mental causation and the consequences this has for philosophy of mind.1217202410.22599/White.khttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/chapters/m/10.22599/White.khttps://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/14/files/f98a8bfb-f086-4a47-8f7b-bd7d49d05c14.pdf