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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 ...
Causal closure (also referred to as mental causation, causal interactionism or causation) is the metaphysical theory which dictates that every process stems from a cause and expresses consequences of its respective nature. (i.e.:
Kim has raised an objection based on causal closure and overdetermination to non-reductive physicalism. [12] The non-reductive physicalist is committed to following three principles: the irreducibility of the mental to the physical, some version of mental-physical supervenience, and the causal efficaciousness of mental states. The problem ...
The principle, in slightly different iterations, has variously been called causal closure, completeness of the physical, physical closure, and physical comprehensiveness. [2] This has been the foremost argument against interactionism in contemporary philosophy. [7]
Jaegwon Kim has argued against non-reductive physicalism on the grounds that it violates the causal closure of the physical, which assumes that physics provides a full explanation of physical events. If mental properties are causally efficacious, they must either be identical to physical properties or there must be widespread overdetermination.
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 ...
A second way in which quantum mechanics bears on the issue of causal closure lies with the fact that in some interpretations of the quantum formalism, consciousness itself plays a vital causal role, being required to bring about the so-called "collapse of the wave-function."
I conclude that even if an episode of agent causation is among the causal antecedents of every voluntary human action, these episodes do nothing to undermine the prima facie impossibility of an undetermined free act." [15] In his book Material Beings, [16] Van Inwagen argues that all material objects are either elementary particles or living ...