Causal closure in panpsychism

Abstract

The mind-body problem has posed the questions: can we defend mental causation, or is there causal relevance of mental qua mental over and above physical in human behaviour? This would mean that conscious experience is not a physical phenomenon, though it has causal relevance in the world. The problem is understanding how something non-physical, mental or phenomenal could be causally relevant in a physical world. Physicalists and scientists have defended the plausibility of a principle that states the causal closure of the physical domain. This is the claim that the physical is closed off to all causal influences of non-physical events and non-physical properties. In conflict with that is what we think of mental states and properties of our consciousness as causally relevant to our behaviour and causally efficient in the physical world. If the physical closure principle stands, and only physical causation is possible, then mental causation in dualism is impossible, as is the usual argument against dualism. But we can also find this principle of physical causal closure in Russellian panpsychism. Russellian panpsychism and similar positions have come about as answers to the mental causation worries of physicalism and dualism. Panpsychism has the advantages of both positions. Science can only tell us about the relational or extrinsic (structural) properties, but mental states? phenomenal properties are intrinsic. These intrinsic properties can be the causal bases for extrinsic properties (or dispositions) and determine them. This is also the distinction between dispositional and categorical properties. If there is more to nature than relational properties, if there are some categorical bases of dispositions, then all causal explanations cannot be stated only in physical terms and just with mention of physical properties. Science (and physicalism) does not know anything beyond dispositions and structure, but there is great plausibility in the claim that dispositions have causal bases and are not groundless. The bases of dispositions are categorical intrinsic properties; the only absolutely intrinsic properties we know (intimately) are phenomenal properties of our conscious states. This means that the causal closure principle is false.