2 Kim, Jaegwon has repeatedly pressed these sorts of objections against nonreductive physicalism, most recently in his Mind in a Physical World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 37–56.Google Scholar T. L. S. Sprigge has noted, epiphenomenalism in the context of a materialistic metaphysics was first endorsed by George Santayana (Sprigge, T. L. S., “Honderich, Davidson, and the Question of Mental Holism,” Inquiry, 24 [1981]: 323–42Google Scholar, especially pp. 327–29). Sprigge refers us in this connection to George Santayana's Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940).Google Scholar Sprigge does not give page references, but see ibid., p. 315. Santayana's materialistic epiphenomenalism also found expression in Santayana, George, “The Efficacy of Thought,” The Journal of Philosophy, 3 (1906): 410–12Google Scholar, and in Santayana, George, “Apologia Pro Mente Sua,” in The Philosophy of George Santayana, edited by Schilpp, Paul Arthur (New York: Tudor Publishing, 1940), p. 542.Google Scholar Brian McLaughlin directs us to another early consideration of materialistic epiphenomenalism, this time by Broad, C. D. (Brian P., McLaughlin, “Type Epiphenomenalism, Type Dualism, and the Causal Priority of the Physical,” Philosophical Perspectives, 3 [1989]: 109–35, especially p. 109).Google Scholar The relevant passage can be found in Broad, C. D., The Mind and Its Place in Nature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1925), p. 472.Google Scholar Unlike Santayana, Broad ultimately did not endorse this view, opting instead for an old-fashioned, dualistic epiphenomenalism (Broad, C. D., “Reply to William C. Kneale,” in The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, edited by Schilpp, Paul Arthur [New York: Tudor Publishing, 1959], pp. 791–94).Google Scholar

3 Davidson, Donald, “Mental Events,” in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 208.Google Scholar

4 Dagfinn Follesdal provides an almost exhaustive list of the many people who levelled this objection against anomalous monism before 1983 (Follesdal, Dagfinn “Causation and Explanation,” in Actions and Events, edited by LePore, Ernest and Brian P., McLaughlin [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985], pp. 311–12).Google ScholarThe criticism seems first to have been made by Follesdal himself (Dagfinn Follesdal, “Explanation of Action,” in Rationality in Science, edited by Hilpinen, R. [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980], pp. 231–47;CrossRefGoogle Scholar originally published in Norwegian in 1973). I say “almost exhaustive” because Follesdal does not cite the following early instances of the criticism: Hess, Peter, “Actions, Reasons, and Humean Causes,” Analysis, 41 (1981): 77–81;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHonderich, Ted, “Psychophysical Lawlike Connections and Their Problem,”Inquiry, 24 (1981): 277–304, especially p. 298;Google Scholar and Robinson, Howard, Matter and Sense (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 8–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 In view of the closure worry, it is no surprise that Davidson's critics take him to be committed to epiphenomenalism, since something like the principle of closure seems to be part of the rationale for anomalous monism. In the course of elucidating his second principle, Davidson explicitly appeals to the “comprehensive closed system guaranteed to yield a standardized, unique description of every physical event couched in a vocabulary amenable to law” (Davidson, “Mental Events,” pp. 223–24). Tim Crane remarks on this connection between anomalous monism and a principle of closure in “The Mental Causation Debate,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Suppl.), 69 (1995): 211–36, especially p. 217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Macdonald, Cynthia and Macdonald, Graham, “Mental Causes and Explanation of Action,” in Mind, Causation and Action, edited by Stevenson, L.Squires, R. and Haldane, J. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 35–48;Google ScholarMacdonald, Cynthia and Macdonald, Graham, “Mental Causation and Non-Reductive Monism,” Analysis, 51 (1991): 23–32;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMacdonald, Graham, “The Nature of Naturalism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Suppl.), 66 (1992): 225–44;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMacdonald, Cynthia and Macdonald, Graham, “How to Be Psychologically Relevant,” in Debates on Psychological Explanation, Vol. 1: Philosophy of Psychology, edited by Macdonald, Cynthia and Macdonald, Graham(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), pp. 60–77;Google ScholarHeil, John, The Nature of True Minds (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), chap. 4;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Robb, David, “The Properties of Mental Causation,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (1997): 178–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Macdonald, and Macdonald, , “Mental Causes and Explanation of Action,” p. 38.Google Scholar

8 In the Macdonalds' words, “To be an exemplification of the former just is, in this case, to be an exemplification of the latter, despite the distinctness of the properties themselves” (ibid.., p. 39).

9 As the Macdonalds put it, “Any causally efficacious case in which a more determinate form of that property [viz., colour] is exemplified is a case in which the exemplification of colour itself is efficacious, by the extensionality of the causal relation” (Ibid.ibid.; emphasis in the original).

10 Heil, The Nature of True Minds, pp. 139–40.Google Scholar More recently, Heil has offered a response to the problem of epiphenomenalism that, despite his claim to the contrary, appears to be eliminativist (Heil, JohnPhilosophy of Mind [London: Routledge, 1998], pp. 200–201).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Heil, The Nature of True Minds, p. 138.Google Scholar

12 Ehring, Douglas “Mental Causation, Determinables and Property Instances,” Nous, 30 (1996): 461–40, especially p. 463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 “Exemplifications will have various ‘components’ including universals and it is hard to see how exemplifications with different universal ‘components’ could be identical” (ibid.).

14 Tim Crane takes this to be what distinguishes the Macdonalds' property instances from facts (or at least some conceptions of facts). Thus, Crane notes, while the fact that I am in pain at t is different from the fact that I am in brain state B at t (assuming that being in pain is not the same property as B), the relevant property instance, for the MacDonalds, has both a mental and a physical property as its “components” (Crane, “The Mental Causation Debate,”p. 222). As will soon be explained, this is a misinterpretation of the Macdonalds if, by calling both properties “components,” Crane means that they are both constitutive of the event in question.

15 Macdonald, Cynthia, Mind-Body Identity Theories (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 143–55.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 147.

17 As she says, “The view that mental properties of persons are constitutive of the events that are exemplifyings of them (hence that mental properties of events are essences of them) is at best dubious and arguably false on the view of essences favoured by many” (Ibid., p. 152).

18 Those who appeal to counterfactuals include: LePore, Ernest and Loewer, Barry, “Mind Matters,” The Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1987): 630–42;Google ScholarHeil, John and Mele, Alfred, “Mental Causes,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 28 (1991): 61–71;Google Scholar and Horgan, Terence, “Mental Quausation,” Philosophical Perspectives, 3 (1989): 47–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among those who appeal to non-strict nomological correlations are McLaughlin, “Type Epiphenomenalism,” and Jerry Fodor, “Making the Mind Matter More,” Philosophical Topics, 17 (1989): 59–80.Google Scholar

19 Jaegwon Kim has directed this sort of criticism at Ernest LePore and Barry Loewer (among others) in Kim, Jaegwon, “Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem of Mental Causation,” in Information, Semantics and Epistemology, edited by Villanueva, Enrique (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 43–45.Google Scholar For his deployment of this reasoning against non-strict nomological tests of causal relevance, see Kim, Mind in a Physical World, p. 126, n.6.

20 Jaegwon Kim makes essentially the same point in the course of considering a view that seems quite similar to the Macdonalds’ position, although he does not mention them (Kim, Jaegwon, “Postscripts on Mental Causation,” in Supervenience and Mind [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993], p. 364).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Macdonald and Macdonald, “Mental Causes and Explanation of Action,” p. 37 (emphasis added).

22 Heil, The Nature of True Minds, p. 136 (emphasis added). There is also an aside in which Heil says, “For simplicity, I shall follow Searle and speak here of properties or characteristics causing and being caused, though, strictly, it is instances of properties or characteristics that have aetiological significance” (p. 127, n.22; emphasis in the original).

23 In light of what Heil says earlier in his chapter on mental causation, it is clear that he takes the problem under consideration to be the question of whether mental properties are causally relevant, and not merely the question of whether mental tokens cause anything. See especially Ibid., pp. 104-107 and pp. 121 -22.

24 This is especially clear from Ibid., pp. 122-23, where it is suggested that only a trope account can make sense of the fact that a supervening property “matters causally,” i.e., is causally relevant.

25 James Robert Brown, commentary on “Does Anything Break Because It Is Fragile?” by Paul Raymont (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Ontario Philosophical Society, Toronto, ON, October 1997).

26 Macdonald and Macdonald, “How to Be Psychologically Relevant,” p. 74, n.10. It is unclear whether, at the time of their 1986 paper, the Macdonalds regarded the relation between mental and physical properties as a species of the determinable-determinate relation. In one passage, they write, “Mental properties correlate in a one-many way with physical properties (though in no systematic way), with the consequence that any instance of the former is an instance of one or another of some more determinate physical property. Just as to be red is to be coloured, one might say, to be an instance of the property, being a brain event B, is to be an instance of the mental property, being a pain” (Macdonald and Macdonald, “Mental Causes and Explanation of Action,” p. 39; emphasis added) The parenthetic denial of a “systematic” correlation between mental and physical properties (apparently motivated by the Macdonalds’ anomalous monism) militates against the claim that physical properties are determinates of mental features. However, the emphasized text suggests the contrary view. This discrepancy is remedied in their later paper, where the Macdonalds deny that mental features have physical properties as their determinates. Nevertheless, the Macdonalds continue to believe that mental and physical properties share the same property instances. Whether this is possible in the absence of systematic connections between mental and physical properties is a question that I shall set aside.

27 Yablo, Stephen, “Mental Causation,” The Philosophical Review, 101 (1992): 245–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially p. 259, n.32. Instead of comparing weights, Yablo gives an example that involves sounds measured in decibels.

28 Macdonald and Macdonald, “How to Be Psychologically Relevant,” p. 68.

29 It is also hard to see how the Macdonalds' 1986 paper could have met its stated aim of responding to Ted Honderich's criticisms of Davidson, since Honderich seems to have been concerned with the causal relevance of mental properties in Davidson's account, and not simply with the question whether mental events are causes (Honderich, Ted, “The Argument for Anomalous Monism,” Analysis, 42 [1982]: 59–64).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Robb, “The Properties of Mental Causation,” pp. 191-94. For another criticism of Robb's account, in addition to the one that I shall offer, see Noordhof, Paul, “Do Tropes Resolve the Problem of Mental Causation?” The Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (1998): 221–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Robb uses the term “trope” where the Macdonalds use “property instance.” He gives “trope” a much broader usage than the Macdonalds allow it. Whereas they regard tropes as the exclusive preserve of nominalists, Robb treats the usage of “trope” as being neutral between nominalism and realism with respect to universals. See especially Robb, “The Properties of Mental Causation,” p. 186.

32 Ibid., pp. 192-93. Robb expresses this view in terms of Yablo's example involving sounds measured in decibels, and also in terms of his own example in which the disjunctive property, being hot or blue, shares the same property instance as the property of being hot.

33 The example is borrowed from Ernest Sosa, “Mind-Body Interaction and Supervenient Causation,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 9 (1984): 271–81, especially pp. 277-78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Robb, “The Properties of Mental Causation,” p. 193.

35 Ibid., p. 191.

36 Note in this connection Ausonio Marras's explanation of the need to posit relations of causal relevance. According to him, the claim that certain entities are causally relevant “merely stresses the fact that merely citing the correct cause of an event (an action) is not sufficient as a causal explanation of the effect unless the cause is identified in terms of its causally relevant properties” (Marras, Ausonio, “Metaphysical Foundations of Action Explanation,” in Contemporary Action Theory, Vol. 1Google Scholar, edited by Ghita Holmstrom-Hintikka and Raimo Tuomela [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997], p. 60, n.10; emphasis added) It is clear from the emphasized text that Marras aims to specify what is needed in order for a speech act (viz., “citing the correct cause”) to succeed as an explanation. Apparently, then, he intends the more stringent interpretation of the explanatory requirement. I counter that no postulated entities (not even properties or property instances) meet this stringent explanatory requirement, for regardless of what are alleged to be the bearers of causal relevance, it will remain the case that merely citing such a thing is not sufficient as a causal explanation of the effect unless that thing is identified in the right way (and not, say, as the thing that was mentioned in the fifth line on page five).

37 As was noted above (in Section 3), Cynthia Macdonald's property instances each have only one property among their components, in the sense that each such instance has only one constitutive property, but more than one characterizing property. The point of the current remarks is that even these maximally fine-grained property instances will fail to be causally relevant for the same reason that coarser property instances do. Hence, the question of the coarseness or fineness of property instances is a red herring, for my argument hinges on the multiplicity of the modes of presentation that accompany any efficacious particular, and not on a supposed multiplicity of constitutive (as opposed to merely characterizing) properties in such events.