At this point in the course, students have sometimes asked for additional reading, especially regarding the Pairing Problem. Here is a selection from Jaegwon Kim’s textbook that discusses epiphenomenalism and most of our arguments against interactionism. (Not much on Conservation of Energy, though, but Gennaro discusses that.) It’s entirely optional to do any extra reading, but if you want to, that would be a good place to start.
Note that, as I’ve warned you several times in our discussions, different philosophers don’t always define terms exactly the same way. Some of these differences show up between terms as I’ve introduced them to you and as Kim uses them:
I said that “dualism” leaves open what view you take about the relation between you (the person) and your soul. Kim sometimes characterizes “dualism” as committed to the specific view that you are identical to your soul; other times he characterizes it as committed to the specific view that you are identical to a combination (or “union”) of your soul and your body.
I said that “epiphenomenalism” leaves open whether mental things (events, processes, states) can cause other mental things. Kim characterizes “epiphenomenalism” as committed to the specific view that they cannot.
I said that “causal closure” says only that physical events that have any causal explanation will have a sufficient physical cause (a physical cause that would be enough by itself). This seems to be Kim’s official understanding too. But he sometimes writes in a way that makes it sound like “causal closure” already directly says that there are no soul causes of physical things:
the physical domain is causally closed. What does this mean? Pick any physical event … and trace its causal ancestry or posterity as far as you would like; the principle of physical causal closure says this will never take you outside the physical domain.
the closure principle is consistent with mind-body dualism … All it requires is that there be no injection of causal influence into the physical world from the outside, including Cartesian minds.
Instead of will never
and there be no,
I think Kim should have written that there doesn’t need to be
any non-physical causes (or effects).