突现主义与心灵因果性

Taking Emergentism Seriously

“排除论证”已经困扰了非还原主义者几十年。在这篇文章中,我试图表明,突现主义(emergentism)——它认为心灵实体能够以非过度决定的方式向下导致物理实体——是解决排除问题最合理的方案。突现主义方案在当代心灵哲学中是缺席的,因为突现主义拒绝了物理的因果封闭原则,而这是几乎所有物理主义者都接受的学说。然而,本文将挑战关于因果封闭的共识,并辩护一种物理主义版本的突现主义。在仔细考察后,我发现物理证据和物理主义考量都不能令人满意地支持因果封闭。此外,我将论证,接受因果封闭的两种相互竞争的方案,即兼容主义和自主主义,都涉及心灵因果的特设(ad hoc)问题。因此,综合考虑后,突现主义是可供非还原物理主义利用的最佳选择。

The Exclusion Argument has afflicted non-reductionists for decades.In this article,I attempt to show that emergentism—the view that mental entities can downwardly cause physical entities in a non-overdetermining way—is the most plausible approach to solving the exclusion problem.The emergentist approach is largely absent in contemporary philosophy of mind,because emergentism rejects the Causal Closure of Physics,a doctrine embraced by almost all physicalists.This article,however,challenges the consensus on causal closure and defends a physicalist version of emergentism.On closer examination,I find that neither physical evidence nor physicalist considerations can satisfactorily support causal closure.Moreover,I argue that two competing approaches that accept causal closure,compatibilism and autonomism,involve ad hoc postulations of mental causation.Therefore,all things considered,emergentism is the best option available to non-reductive physicalists.