existentialsex4

It is widely held that mental properties supervene or in some way depend on the physical. In addition it seems that every physical effect has some physical cause. In addition it would seem that it is not always the case that there are two causes for any effect; or systematic overdetermination is false. But if all of these are true it would seem that mental properties, or the mental have no causal powers. But that seems absurd, intuitively I do things because I have particular beliefs, intentions goals; and these seem to be in some sense mental properties. Therefore, it seems that if one still wants to cling to the common idea that mental events do have causal force one needs to expand supervenience or deny supervenience in some way or else deny physical closure, the idea that every physical effect has some physical cause. There are some obviouse consequence to denying physical closure, one is that it may make the law of thermodynamics implausible. Thus it would seem there is a real problem of mental causation, how is it that the mental has causal force or do mental properties even have any causal powers at all?

The above problem is something I've been thinking about recently. I am kind of leaning towards denying physical closure and creating some sort of ontology where mental causes have no drastic consequences for the very base level of physics. Thus if I'm right, then positing mental causal powers have no drastic effects to the law of thermodynamics. I haven't really clearly spelled out what such an ontology would look like, but my brain is buzzing right now.

Even if your mental events don't have causal powers, here's a video that might cheer you up.