Biological Naturalism, Mental Causation and Readiness Potential [Spanish]

Authors

  • Nicolás Acuña Universidad Andrés Bello

Abstract

Within the framework of philosophy of mind, this paper addresses the problem of mental causation in John Searle's biological naturalist project (2007, 2000). Beginning with the conception of the mind as a phenomenon emerging from cerebral processes, I evaluate the criticisms that Jaegwon Kim (2007, 2000) makes to the causal efficacy of consciousness, focusing on the arguments of overdetermination and violation of the principle of physical causal closure. Then, I analyze the debate on mental causation from the findings of Benjamin Libet (2004) regarding the existence of pre-conscious neural activity in voluntary motor behavior. This activity, called readiness potential, and the notion of causation worked in neuroscience, support the causal efficacy of mental states, but in a different sense from that proposed by Searle.

References

<div>Bechtel, W. (2009). Looking Down, Around, and Up: Mechanistic Explanation in Psychology. Philosophical Psychology, 22(5), 543-564. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09515080903238948</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Bechtel, W. (2008). Mental Mechanism. New York: Routledge.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Bechtel, W. &amp; Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A Mechanist Alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36, 421-441. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2005.03.010</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Bechtel, W. &amp; Hamilton, A. (2007). Reduction, Integration, and the Unity of Science. En T. Kuipers, D. Gabbay, P. Thagard y J. Woods (Eds.), General Philosophy of Science (pp. 377-430). North Holland:</div><div>Amsterdam.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Bechtel, W., Mandik, P. &amp; Stufflebeam, R. (2001). Philosophy and the Neurosciences. Massachusetts: Blackwell.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Bechtel, W. &amp; Wright, C. (2007). Mechanisms and Psychological Explanation. En P. Thagard, D. Gabbay, y J. Woods (Eds.) Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science (pp. 31-80). Amsterdam: North Holland.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Bickle, J. (2003). Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account. Dordrecth: Kluwer Academic Publishers.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Craver, C. (2007). Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Churchland, P. S. (1989). Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. Massachusetts: MIT press. 102</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Fodor, J. (1974). Special Sciences (or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97-115. doi: https://doi. org/10.1007/BF00485230</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Haggard, P. (2008). Human Volition: towards a Neuroscience of Will. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(12), 934-946. doi: https://doi. org/10.1038/nrn2497</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Hudspeth, A. J., Jessell, T. M., Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H. &amp; Siegelbaum, S. A. (Eds.) (2013). Principles of Neural Science. New York: McGraw-Hill, Health Professions Division.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Kim, J. (1995). Mental Causation in Searle’s “Biological Naturalism”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55(1), 189-194. doi: 10.2307/2108318</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Kim, J. (2007). The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness. En S. Schneider (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (pp. 406-418). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Libet, B. (2004). Mind Time. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nagel, E. (1961). The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Nagel, T. (1974) What is Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435-450. doi: 10.2307/2183914</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Searle, J. (2007). Biological Naturalism. En S. Schneider (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (pp. 325-335). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Searle, J. (1995). Consciousness, the Brain and the Connection Principle: A Reply. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55(1), 217-232. doi: 10.2307/2108322</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Shepherd, G. (1994). Neurobiology. New York: Oxford University Press.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H. J. &amp; Haynes, J. D. (2008). Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in The Human Brain. Nature Neuroscience, 11(5), 543. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2112</div>
Cover

Downloads

Published

2019-08-24

Issue

No. 32 (2020): January-june

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term "Work" shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
The Author shall grant to the Publisher a nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons 3.0 License Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported CC BY-NC 3.0, or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions: (a) Attribution: Other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;(b) Noncommercial: Other users (including Publisher) may not use this Work for commercial purposes;
4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
5. Authors are permitted, and Eidos promotes, to post online the preprint manuscript of the Work in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access). Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work is expected be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Eidos's assigned URL to the Article and its final published version in Eidos.