Does non-mental supervenience exist?

[pftest]

My biggest issue with the shadow example is that shadows do have causal powers. A shadow consists of a varying amount of photons. Its influence may be hard to see, unlike rocks hitting rocks, but look at photosynthesis to see what it can do. And in the case of 0 photons (complete darkness), the 0 photons will have 0 causal powers, since they do not exist. We might perceive it as a shadowy blob of blackness but that's more of an artifact of human vision. Actually if it affects our vision then it even has causal powers there.

So anyway i don't think there are physical things without causal powers.

Mental causation is a serious problem in cognitive science. Jaegwon Kim among others, have very good arguments against it. Kim's book, "The Mind in a Physical World" is excellent and he outlines the problems against mental causation nicely. There are many similar arguments, one of which I'm not sure about but suggests that even if consciousness is a quantum level phenomenon, entropy will be violated by mental causation. At a classical level, conservation laws will probably need to be violated, so mental causation is a very tough sell.

Its probably a tough sell because it would make consciousness more widespread than the human brain. Thats my take on it at least. We have these laws of physics that are universal, and for consciousness to have any causal power it would have to be involved at that level. I am trying to think of any higher level / local causal powers, but they all seem to consist of more fundamental interactions. For example, a closet that won't fit through a doorway may seem like its some macrolevel interactions, but its still just the molecular forces that do it, which in turn consist of atomic forces, etc.

Id like to hear more about the problems with mental causation.
Do you know any more about why it would violate entropy?
Or what the other problems are?

 

[Q_Goest]

My biggest issue with the shadow example is that shadows do have causal powers.

Yes, agreed. A shadow can enter the 'causal chain' of events. The intent of introducing the concept of a shadow is only for purposes of analogy. A shadow is analogous to mental causation in the sense that it follows along with the physical behavior - but any perception of mental phenomena is purely subjective (as opposed to an objectively measurable phenomena such as a REAL shadow). Also, that a shadow has no direct influence on the things that form the shadow unless there is physical feedback that allows the phenomena to enter the causal chain. However, you would be correct in saying that anything physical will necessarily be part of a physical, causal chain of events. Even if not acted upon, it certainly does change things physically, such as by reducing heat flux if even for a moment.

In the case of mental causation, this 'shadow' we call mental causation can not in any way enter the causal chain according to proponents such as Kim. Kim and Yablo are very similar in their attack on mental causation. Rather than continue that discussion here, I'll split it off and start a new thread.