Causal Stance

Original Abstract

What exactly is the meaning of physical causal closure, a concept frequently discussed in the philosophy of mind? Jaegwon Kim explicitly adopts a conception of causation according to which physical causation is effectively identified with deterministic physical lawfulness, and on this basis equates physical determinism with physical causal closure. While this conception is internally coherent, it differs from the currently dominant theories of causation, which emphasize asymmetry between cause and effect grounded in manipulability and intervention widely employed in contemporary scientific practice. Physics and the theory of causation serve different descriptive purposes, and in this study we refer to them respectively as the Physical Stance and the Causal Stance. Within this framework, physical determinism is a notion that belongs to the Physical Stance, whereas physical causal closure is a notion defined only within the Causal Stance; consequently, the two should not be equated. Since causation is not explicitly defined within the language of physics, physical causal closure is not definable within the Physical Stance alone. By distinguishing between these two stances, this study reconstructs Davidson's Anomalous Monism as a materialist position that consistently acknowledges mental causation without contradicting physical determinism, and examines its relation to the Dual-Laws Model we propose. We further argue that, for the development of scientific theories of mind and consciousness, it is necessary to construct a linguistic framework within which physical causal closure does not hold in the Causal Stance, while physical determinism remains intact in the Physical Stance.