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 all the things identified by physics and anything which is a compound of these things. So there are tables as well as their microphysical constituents. The argument that Sturgeon has in his sights is the Overdetermination Argument. In what follows, I shall argue that Sturgeon’s criticism of the Overdetermination argument fails. I shall also argue that Physicalism can accommodate his claim that causal statements concerning the mental and physical respectively may require diverse patterns of counterfactual activity for their truth.