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15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 3. Mental Causation

[way in which thought causes events]

12 ideas
Can the pineal gland be moved more slowly or quickly by the mind than by animal spirits? [Spinoza on Descartes]
Freedom and natural necessity do not contradict, as they relate to different conditions [Kant]
Can one movement have a mental and physical cause? [Ryle]
Agency, knowledge, reason, memory, psychology all need mental causes [Kim, by PG]
Mind is only interesting if it has causal powers [Kim]
Beliefs cause other beliefs [Kim]
Experiment requires mental causation [Kim]
We try to cause other things to occur by causing mental events to occur [Perry]
Maybe mind and body do overdetermine acts, but are linked (for some reason) [Papineau]
Causation depends on intrinsic properties [Mellor/Crane]
In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan]
If minds are realised materially, it looks as if the material laws will pre-empt any causal role for mind [Heil]