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Is the Physical Causally Closed?
Introductory Papers
George Ellis,
On the Nature of
Causation in Complex Systems, Roy.Soc.S.Africa (2007) (cc,
list)
——,
On the Nature of
Emergent Reality, (cc,
list)
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Jaegwon
Kim,
Précis of
Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body problem and Mental Causation,
in the "Representation and Mind Series". Cambridge (Mass.): A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, 1998
(cc)
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Joe Lau,
Readings on Dualism and Energy
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E.J. Lowe,
Causal closure
principles and emergentism, Philosophy 75(4):571-585
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William G. Lycan,
Giving
Dualism its Due (cc)
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Eugene Mills,
Interactionism and Physicality, 1997 (cc); for discussion concerning the common
claim that "Anything that can move a physical thing is itself a physical thing".
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Barbara Montero,
Varieties of Causal Closure (cc)
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——,
What
does the Conservation of Energy have to do with Physicalism? (pub)
Response:
Ole Koksvik,
Conservation
of Energy Is Relevant to Physicalism (pdf)(cc)
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William F. Vallicella,
Discussion of C.J. Ducasse, "In
Defense of Dualism" in Sidney Hook, ed., Dimensions of Mind, Collier
1961, pp. 88-89
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Daniel von Wachter,
Why the Argument from Causal Closure Against the Existence of Immaterial Things
is Bad (cc)
Discussion
Generative Dualism
It is generally taken as a strong indication against dualism that the
physical world appears to be causally closed. This is taken from the fact
that the total of energy and total momentum appear to be accurately
conserved whenever they have been measured in modern physics. These
conservation laws do not seem to allow any room for minds to make any
difference to evolution of the physical world. We should first note, with
Meixner (2005), that there is
little or no experimental evidence just where it is needed, namely within
living bodies and especially within brains, so the universal application of
conservation laws is an assumption of the physical scienceSs, not a result
as it is commonly presented. Various general philosophical arguments for
causal closure have been presented, but they all depend on some assumption
that is almost identical to the result to be proved.
Suppose that physicists found that conservation laws in a object were not
conserved in some instances. How would they react? First, they would note
that the laws apply only to isolated systems, so they would examine whether
the object really was isolated or not, and whether they should look for
something further (like a hidden planet) that was producing the effects.
Secondly, they could generalise the conservation laws so the new law was
satisfied but not the old one. It used to be thought, for example, that
total mass and total energy were separately conserved, but, after many
subatomic experiments showing the annihilation and creation of massive
particles, those separate laws were quietly dropped in favour of a general
law of conservation of mass-energy in combination. Note that this example is
directly related to having a virtual as well as a ‘actual’ degree in
physics. A further ‘pregeometric’ degree would force a further
generalisation of the conservation laws. At present, energy and momentum
conservation are typically ‘derived’ from the invariance of the underlying
Lagrangian under small time and spatial translations respectively. If
spacetime were curved, or was being dynamically generated in some way, this
invariance would not hold, but physicists would soon come up with a
‘generalised mass-energy’ measure that was still conserved. If, therefore,
the non-conservation of energy and/or momentum were found in certain
biological or psychological processes, science as we know it would not
collapse. Either the influence from other kinds of beings would be
ascertained, or a further generalisation of the conservation laws would be
sought. The only novelty in the proposals here, is that these ‘other kinds
of beings’ would not be ‘physical’ in the traditional way. I remark that the
generalised conservation laws (beyond the pregeometric degree) to take into
account these new substances will still be recognisably rational.
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