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Full Idea
Experimentation presupposes mental-to-physical causation and is impossible without it.
Gist of Idea
Experiment requires mental causation
Source
Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.128)
Book Ref
Kim,Jaegwon: 'Philosophy of Mind' [Westview 1998], p.128
A Reaction
So an epiphenomenalist can't do experiments? Kim implies that there is some special mental assessment of the feedback from physical events, but presumably a robot or a zombie could do experiments. Spiders do experiments.
| 4862 | Can the pineal gland be moved more slowly or quickly by the mind than by animal spirits? [Spinoza on Descartes] |
| 5606 | Freedom and natural necessity do not contradict, as they relate to different conditions [Kant] |
| 2622 | Can one movement have a mental and physical cause? [Ryle] |
| 2318 | Agency, knowledge, reason, memory, psychology all need mental causes [Kim, by PG] |
| 3392 | Mind is only interesting if it has causal powers [Kim] |
| 3396 | Experiment requires mental causation [Kim] |
| 3397 | Beliefs cause other beliefs [Kim] |
| 4887 | We try to cause other things to occur by causing mental events to occur [Perry] |
| 7864 | Maybe mind and body do overdetermine acts, but are linked (for some reason) [Papineau] |
| 6120 | Causation depends on intrinsic properties [Mellor/Crane] |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| 4618 | If minds are realised materially, it looks as if the material laws will pre-empt any causal role for mind [Heil] |