A Critical Study: Physical Closure and the Argument for Naturalism

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

PhD in Philosophy of Religion, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Great naturalist philosophers like David Armstrong, David Papineau, Jeagwon Kim, and others have argued that the best arguments for naturalism are based on Physical Causal Closure (in brief P.C). P.C that is a premise in these arguments implies that only natural/physical causes are responsible for natural events and supernatural/non-physical causes cannot have any effective role in the natural universe. By adding some reasonable rules such as Ockham's Razor or Eleatic Principle to P.C, they have concluded that there is no non-natural cause such as God.
Many theists, in the face of the physical causal closure, may accept it and see the relationship between God and the natural world not as causal but as something entirely different; as existential or necessary relation. But this view seems to have problems. First, it is passive because it simply accepts the basic premise of the naturalistic view, and secondly, it seems unacceptable from a theistic point of view to reduce the relationship between God and the world to existential or necessary relation and to eliminate the possibility of causal influence on natural things.
In this paper, I will claim that P.C is not only against supernatural causation but is also against human agency and mental causation. To show this, first, I will present an argument against human mental causation based on P.C, and Then I will consider four different physicalist (which are committed to P.C) approaches that try to save mental causation. These approaches consist of 1) anomalous monism, 2) non-reductive physicalism, 3) over-determination, and 4) reductive physicalism.
The first solution is the idea that Davidson came up with to solve the problem of mental causation. By criticizing type identity and reductionism, he first re-examines the issue of mental causation in a new form. Examining the first (anomalous monism), I will show that this approach cannot save mental causation, and, in fact, mental causation will be rejected in this view. The second approach, although it hopes to maintain both mental causation and commitment to the physical closure, this article will show that it wouldn't succeed in doing either. Although at first glance, acceptance of over-determination may seem like a better solution, I show that this solution has fundamental problems, including the fact that in this approach mental causality becomes redundant, without which physical causes will produce the same result. But without a doubt, the main and popular solution of naturalists will be the last, that is, reductionism. Reductionism in this approach distances itself from early reductionism and seeks to establish a token identity between mental and physical states. But this moderate reductionism also faces fundamental problems such as the hard problem of consciousness, intention, and human agency, which will reject the possibility of its success. I will show, therefore, that none of these approaches can solve the problem of P.C and mental causation.
By criticizing all of them, I will show that P.C has an absurd consequence and cannot be a plausible premise in the argument for naturalism. Therefore, the best argument for naturalism will fail and cannot work against God.
 
 
 
 

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Theological Research
Volume 23, Issue 4 - Serial Number 90
December 2021
Pages 73-102

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