The Supervenience Argument, Overdetermination, and Causal Drainage: Assessing Kim's Master Argument

The Overdetermination Argument Revisited

In this paper I discuss a famous argument for physicalism – which some authors indeed regard as the only argument for it – the “overdetermination argument”. In fact it is an argument that does not establish that all the entities in the world are physical, but that all those events that enter into causal transactions with the physical world are physical. As mental events seem to cause changes in...

A Master Argument for Incompatibilism

Closed Causal Loops and the Bilking Argument

The most potentially powerful objection to the possibility of time travel stems from the fact that it can, under the right conditions, give rise to closed causal loops, and closed causal loops can be turned into self-defeating causal chains; folks killing their infant selves, setting out to destroy the world before they were born, and the like. It used to be thought that such chains present par...

The Causal Argument Against Component Forcesdltc_1216

Do component forces exist in conjoined circumstances? Cartwright (1980) says no; Creary (1981) says yes. I’m on Cartwright’s side in this matter, but find several problems with her argument (section 2). My primary aim here is to present a better, distinctly causal, argument against component forces: very roughly, I argue that the joint posit of component and resultant forces in conjoined circum...

The Overdetermination Argument versus the Cause-and-Essence Principle—No Contest

Scott Sturgeon has claimed to undermine the principal argument for Physicalism, in his words, the view that “actuality is exhausted by physical reality” (Sturgeon 1998, p. 410). In noting that actuality is exhausted by physical reality, the Physicalist is not claiming that all that there is in actuality are those things identified by physics. Rather the thought is that actuality is made up of a...