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Physical causal closure is a metaphysical theory about the nature of causation in the physical realm with significant ramifications in the study of metaphysics and the mind. In a strongly stated version, physical causal closure says that "all physical states have pure physical causes" — Jaegwon Kim , [ 1 ] or that "physical effects have only ...
Parallelism is a theory which is related to dualism and which suggests that although there is a correlation between mental and physical events there is not any causal relationship. The body and mind do not interact with each other but simply operate independently of each other, in parallel , and there happens to be a correspondence between the ...
There Van Inwagen argues that the problem of evil is a philosophical argument and, like most philosophical arguments, fails. Van Inwagen has shown an interest in the afterlife debate, particularly in relation to resurrection of the body. In his article "I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come", he concludes ...
Informally, causal decision theory recommends the agent to make the decision with the best expected causal consequences. For example: if eating an apple will cause you to be happy and eating an orange will cause you to be sad then you would be rational to eat the apple. One complication is the notion of expected causal consequences. Imagine ...
Another theory is the identity theory, according to which mental events are (either type- or token-) identical to physical events. A more recent view, known as functionalism, claims that mental events are individuated (or constituted by) the causal role they play. As such, mental events would fit directly into the causal realm, as they are ...
Philosopher Brian Leftow has argued that the question cannot have a causal explanation (as any cause must itself have a cause) or a contingent explanation (as the factors giving the contingency must pre-exist), and that if there is an answer, it must be something that exists necessarily (i.e., something that just exists, rather than is caused).
Causal reasoning is the process of identifying causality: the relationship between a cause and its effect.The study of causality extends from ancient philosophy to contemporary neuropsychology; assumptions about the nature of causality may be shown to be functions of a previous event preceding a later one.
The first principle, which most ontological physicalists would accept, is the causal closure of the physical domain, according to which, every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause. The second principle Kim notes is that of causal exclusion, which holds that no normal event can have more than one sufficient cause.