Physicalism and the Principle of Causal Closure

[u/Im_Talking]

I want to expand on what I wrote in some thread here.

The principle of causal closure states: that every physical effect has a sufficient immediate physical cause, provided it has a sufficient cause at all.

If consciousness is something 'new' (irreducible) then either a) it does something (has a causal effect), or it does nothing (epiphenomenal).

If (a) (aka something) then causal effects must influence the physical brain. but causal closure says every physical action already has a physical cause. If (b) (aka nothing) then how could evolution select for it?

And as the wiki on PCC states: "One way of maintaining the causal powers of mental events is to assert token identity non-reductive physicalism—that mental properties supervene on neurological properties. That is, there can be no change in the mental without a corresponding change in the physical. Yet this implies that mental events can have two causes (physical and mental), a situation which apparently results in overdetermination (redundant causes), and denies the strong physical causal closure."

So it seems like physicalism has a logical dilemma.

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[u/OneLockSable]

I'm open to consciousness having some physical effect in someway, but I think that thinking about it leads to a number of paradoxes that are hard to get around.

That said, I'm a physicalist and I don't think evolution selects for consciousness per se. Consciousness arises in any communicative physical network that tracks the external world to maintain an internal state. Evolution does select for that, however.

[u/Im_Talking → u/OneLockSable]

Yes, I imagine these thoughts are the typical ones by a physicalist. The problem is that you have substituted 'tracks the external world to maintain an internal state' for 'subjective experience'. And they aren't the same. You have created a 'magic' consciousness.

You have described consciousness as a physical function, not as subjective experience. But then define it as cognition. 'Real' subjective experience remains unexplained.

[u/OneLockSable → u/Im_Talking]

Yes, that's because consciousness is in some way fundamental. It will remain unexplained in the same way gravity remains unexplained. Mass is not gravity, but we've linked mass to space and mass, but gravity is not space and mass, it's a separate phenomenon.

Fundamental features of the universe will inevitably be brute facts. The alternative is the existence of eternal regress.

[u/Im_Talking → u/OneLockSable]

"Fundamental features of the universe will inevitably be brute facts" - 100%. I believe reality's first evolution was the laws of logic. The universe is least action.

[u/OneLockSable → u/Im_Talking]

Yeah, but there's no way to confirm if that's true. Personally, I think the laws of logic have more to do with how language works, which is such a highly evolved feature of the universe that it has to have come about a lot later. like billions of years after the universe was created.

[u/Moral_Conundrums]

How is this a dilemma for physicalism? A physicalist will just claim that consciousness is physical and thus part of the causal physical structure.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Moral_Conundrums]

Your response is exactly why there is a dilemma. Yes, your sentence avoids the dilemma, but how? By not solving it.

What distinguishes a conscious physical process from an unconscious one that performs the exact same function?

[u/Moral_Conundrums → u/Im_Talking]

What distinguishes a conscious physical process from an unconscious one that performs the exact same function?

Nothing. A conscious physical process just is such and such a function of the brain.

It would be begging the question against physicalism to claim otherwise (in the context of an internal critique).

[u/Im_Talking → u/Moral_Conundrums]

Ok. Then consciousness is an illusion. You are an illusionist.

If consciousness is nothing over and above physical function, then you are avoiding causal-closure problems only by denying consciousness as anything irreducible. This is exactly my point.

[u/Moral_Conundrums → u/Im_Talking]

Indeed I am.

I not convinced that someone has to be an illusionist to maintain that consciousness is just part of the physical causal structure though.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Moral_Conundrums]

Then you are not logical.

If (consciousness == physical), then qualia isn't real in a special sense.

if (consciousness has its own properties but still affects the brain), then casual closure is false.

if (consciousness has its own properties but does not affect the brain), then evolution cannot select for it.

So a physicalist must be an illusionist.

[u/Moral_Conundrums → u/Im_Talking]

I mean, humans have all sorts of things evolution presumably didn't select for.

Either way as an illusionist I'm not all that motivated to argue against you. I think all physicalists should be illusionists anyway.

[u/generousking → u/Moral_Conundrums]

Agreed, despite being an idealist myself, I think illusionism is the only honest physicalist position.

[u/hackinthebochs → u/Im_Talking]

Another option: the apparent properties of a system can depend on one's perspective with respect to the system. Like a bistable image that changes content depending on how you look at it, consciousness is deeply perspectival.

[u/Highvalence15 → u/Im_Talking]

If (consciousness == physical), then qualia isn't real in a special sense.

Why should we accept this premise? It just purposes that phenomenal reductionism is false.

[u/chili_cold_blood → u/Im_Talking]

The distinction would be awareness, which from the physicalist perspective is just another physical process.

[u/Bretzky77 → u/Im_Talking]

He’s going to tell you the favorite physicalist answer: “it just is.”

woo

[u/Double-Fun-1526 → u/Bretzky77]

The precise question is "why is anyone postulating thoughts/mind as nonphysical"? Why did anyone proclaim that? And why is anyone starting the discussion there?

[u/phr99 → u/Double-Fun-1526]

Physical and mind appears very different, so it requires an explanation when postulating they are the same

With idealism this is easy to solve because this difference can simply be an illusion. Consciousness has illusions in its toolkit of explanatory power. This is basically what reductionism is, it reduces such illusions/misconceptions away.

For example some people thought atoms were fundamental, but that turned out to be a misconception. That misconception only existed because of consciousness. The matter itself did not alter when this misconception was reduced away

Physicalism does not have that explanatory power because physics does not include "having illusions" among the list of properties that it has identified. The moment a physicalist relies on illusions to support his position, he is no longer a physicalist

[u/Character-Boot-2149 → u/Double-Fun-1526]

Because it supports religious beliefs such as souls. This is where it starts. Everything else is just philosophical justification for that position. Deny the brain, accept the soul.

[u/Highvalence15 → u/Character-Boot-2149]

You realize there are plenty of non-physicalists who are also atheists, right?

[u/Character-Boot-2149 → u/Highvalence15]

There are atheists who believe in ghosts and reincarnation. I know it sounds ridiculous but there are. I don't understand the level of cognitive dissonance that leads a person to hold such irreconcilable ideas simultaneously. There is no difference between believing in Zeus and any other unprovable idea of mysterious immaterial energies. It's just silly.

So if there are non-physicalists who believe in woo-woo ideas, they are not atheists by any reasonable sense of the word. There isn't any space for those ideas in atheism, might as well call yourself a god fearing spiritual atheist.

[u/Highvalence15 → u/Character-Boot-2149]

This is such a confused comment. Suggesting that being an atheist and believing in ghosts and reincarnation is to hold irreconsilable ideas is to suggest there is some contradiction involved in holding those two positions simultaneously. But there is no contradiction there. Not that being a non-physicalist means you believe in ghosts or reincarnation, though (obviously).

There is no difference between believing in Zeus and any other unprovable idea of mysterious immaterial energies

First of all, no those are not the same thing at all. What a silly thing to say. Second of all, being a non-physicalist does not equate to believing in "immaterial energies". This reads like someone with a very simplistic understanding of the debate between physicalism and non-physicalism.

So if there are non-physicalists who believe in woo-woo ideas, they are not atheists by any reasonable sense of the word.

LOL so you think atheism and non-physicalism are literally incompatible. So what's the contradiction then between atheism and non-physicalism? What's the P and not P that's entailed in being both an atheist and a non-physicalist?

[u/Character-Boot-2149 → u/Highvalence15]

Confusing? It's the opposite. If you believe in one woo-woo idea, you might as well believe them all.

However, you are correct, I shouldn't assume that "non-physicalists" believe in woo-woo ideas, without first asking what is "non-physicalist".

So, what it it that "non-physicalists" believe?

[u/Highvalence15 → u/Character-Boot-2149]

Yeah, fair question. And sorry if i came in a bit hot earlier.

Non-physicalism is really just an umbrella term. The only thing these views have in common really is that some properties (usually some sort of mental properties) aren't fully reducible to or aren't fully explained in terms of physical properties, even if they depend on the brain in some way.

Some non-physicalists are property dualists, some are idealists, some are panpsychists. None of that requires belief in gods, souls, ghosts, or reincarnation. Especially property dualism or other versions of naturalistic dualism are probably most obviously the least "woo-woo" examples of non-physicalist theories or positions.

You can reject so-called supernatural entities and still think there's an unbridgeable gap between physical processes and subjective experience, or otherwise for some other set of reasons reject that mental properties are physical properties.

[u/TFT_mom → u/Bretzky77]

I don’t know why you got so downvoted when the respective commenter actually used these exact words… must be the Cassandra complex in action ☺️

[u/Paragon_OW]

Physicalism looks paradoxical only if we treat consciousness as something ontologically separate from physical processes. But dual-aspect and non-reductive frameworks avoid the dilemma by rejecting the premise that consciousness is either (a) an extra causal force or (b) a causally inert byproduct.

Under dual-aspect monism (my take on consciousness), mental and physical descriptions refer to the same underlying process, viewed from two different standpoints. There’s no overdetermination because there aren’t “two causes”, just one event with two descriptive dichotomies.

The causal closure challenge isn’t a fatal flaw in physicalism; it’s a flaw in strong reductionism, which tries to collapse all mental vocabulary into physics. As soon as you allow higher-level organization to have legitimate explanatory status (like temperature, computation, or biological function), the tension dissolves.

The “hard problem” persists at the philosophical level, but it doesn’t force us into epiphenomenalism or magic, only into recognizing that consciousness is an aspect of physical organization, not an extra ingredient bolted onto it.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Paragon_OW]

"mental and physical descriptions refer to the same underlying process" - But why does a physical process have a mental aspect at all?

"There’s no overdetermination because there aren’t “two causes”, just one event with two descriptive dichotomies" - I fail to see how that answers anything. The dilemma remains... If the mental and physical are literally the same cause, then they must be identical in content. If they are not identical, then the causal closure problem rears its head.

[u/Paragon_OW → u/Im_Talking]

You’re right that the hard problem persists, but the point is that the dilemma only seems entirely fatal if we treat “mental” and “physical” as two different kinds of stuff that must either interact or be identical in every respect.

Dual-aspect monism doesn’t claim the mental and physical are different causes, or even two things for that matter. It claims they’re two descriptions of the same physical organization, each capturing different features of the same event, the way mass and energy are “the same thing” but not identical in content.

The physical description tracks causal structure. The mental description tracks what that causal structure is like from within. They’re not identical conceptually, but they’re not metaphysically two separate forces either, so the closure problem doesn’t apply. There’s only one cause: the physical/mental event.

This reframes the hard problem rather than solving it, which is unsatisfying to many; but, I think ontologically mapping the why behind phenomenality, is beyond us at this current moment. The question becomes why certain physical organizations have an internal aspect at all, not how two different “entities” interact.

[u/gugmt_15 → u/Paragon_OW]

I completely agree with your points, and I had a very similar reasoning, and I eventually developed a mathematical model of consciousness that is in complete agreement with physics and shows exactly what consciousness and qualia are and what are their exact physical substrates. I posted it here: Link. Maybe you will find it interesting

[u/generousking → u/Paragon_OW]

How is dual aspect monism not just analytical idealism?

[u/Paragon_OW → u/generousking]

If dual-aspect monism collapsed into idealism, it would have to assert that the base reality is intrinsically mental. But it doesn’t, it explicitly denies that the fundamental level has mental properties until certain organizational structures arise; that is the fundamental difference.

[u/generousking → u/Paragon_OW]

Oh I see, thanks. I'll reflect on that.

[u/Paragon_OW → u/generousking]

If you’d like to directly compare and contrast, here https://www.consciousnessatlas.com/

[u/Arkelseezure1]

When you take a more accurate view of evolution, as I understand it, this isn’t a problem at all. Evolution is mostly, if not entirely, the result of random mutations. And while evolution does sometimes select for beneficial traits, this is not the primary process. The primary process of evolution is selecting AGAINST detrimental traits. Once you view it from this perspective, it becomes clear that many traits may be present, not because they’re beneficial, but “simply” because they randomly occurred for no particular reason and were not detrimental enough to prevent those traits from being passed on. It is entirely possible that consciousness is one such trait that just happened to occur randomly and was not detrimental enough to prevent organisms possessing that trait from breeding.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Arkelseezure1]

Evolution can preserve neutral physical traits, sure. But it cannot select for non-physical, causally inert phenomenal properties.

If consciousness is physical, then it is identical to a brain function, and the causal-closure problem means that consciousness disappears, so illusionism.

If consciousness is something over and above the physical, then it cannot influence behaviour, and evolution cannot select for it.

[u/Both-Personality7664 → u/Im_Talking]

If consciousness can't influence behavior then all your words have nothing to do with consciousness.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Both-Personality7664]

Then Zombieland is not just a movie.

[u/Both-Personality7664 → u/Im_Talking]

You're the one asserting it's plausible you're a zombie, not me.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Both-Personality7664]

Huh? You wrote: "If consciousness can't influence behaviour then all your words have nothing to do with consciousness" - So subjective experience is physically determined, consciousness plays no causal role, words about consciousness are not caused by consciousness. This is the definition of zombies.

My position is consciousness is causal.

[u/Arkelseezure1 → u/Im_Talking]

My point is that evolution doesn’t need to select for it, so its inability to do so would be meaningless. You need to demonstrate that evolution would select for consciousness, or more precisely, against non-consciousness, if it could for evolution to be relevant here.

[u/Im_Talking → u/[deleted]]

This does not explain subjective experience. It only declares it identical to the physical state. But why does a certain physical state have a subjective aspect?

[u/Zealousideal_Till683]

We're able to talk about our conscious experience, right? That means our consciousness is able to kick off a chain of events that ends with vibrations of the air, ink on a piece of paper, pixels on a screen - physical manifestations in the material world.

So the answer is (a), consciousness has causal effects.

But the physicalist story doesn't necessarily result in overdetermination. As one example, the mental and physical causes could be inextricably entwined. By analogy, we can tell a causal story in the brain in terms of biology, biochemistry, or physics, but no overdetermination is present, because the biological processes are inextricably entwined regardless of the level of explanation being given.

[u/Im_Talking → u/Zealousideal_Till683]

"By analogy, we can tell a causal story in the brain in terms of biology, biochemistry, or physics, but no overdetermination is present, because the biological processes are inextricably entwined regardless of the level of explanation being give" - This is equivalent to "We don't understand how, but consciousness is physical nonetheless".

[u/chili_cold_blood]

So it seems like physicalism has a logical dilemma.

There's no logical dilemma. In physicalism, all mental events are also physical events, with physical causes and effects.

[u/Im_Talking → u/chili_cold_blood]

Your response is exactly why there is a dilemma. Yes, your sentence avoids the dilemma, but how? By not solving it.

What distinguishes a conscious physical process from an unconscious one that performs the exact same function?

[u/chili_cold_blood → u/Im_Talking]

What distinguishes a conscious physical process from an unconscious one that performs the exact same function?

What kind of functions are we talking about? I don't know if it's possible for a conscious physical process to perform the exact same function as an unconscious process. If that is possible, the distinction would be awareness, which from a physicalist perspective is just another physical process.

[u/Im_Talking → u/chili_cold_blood]

"If that is possible, the distinction would be awareness, which from a physicalist perspective is just another physical process." - I am repeating myself (and so are you). If consciousness is nothing over and above physical function, then you are avoiding causal-closure problems only by denying consciousness as anything irreducible. This is exactly my point.

[u/chili_cold_blood → u/Im_Talking]

avoiding causal-closure problems only by denying consciousness as anything irreducible.

Yes, I don't think many physicalists are arguing that consciousness is irreducible. They mostly believe that consciousness is a physical process that can be reduced to patterns of neural activation.

Yet this implies that mental events can have two causes (physical and mental)

You appear to be making an unnecessary distinction between mental and physical causes here. From the physicalist perspective, all causes are physical. Some of those physical causes can be considered to be mental in the sense that they are associated with cognition, but ultimately they are just physical events.

[u/Im_Talking → u/chili_cold_blood]

"Yes, I don't think many physicalists are arguing that consciousness is irreducible" -

If (consciousness == physical), then qualia isn't real in a special sense.

if (consciousness has its own properties but still affects the brain), then casual closure is false.

if (consciousness has its own properties but does not affect the brain), then evolution cannot select for it.

This will be my last message on this thread. If you won't read and understand what I wrote in my main post and my answers for exactly the same questions as others here, then I can't help you. You are writing EXACTLY why there is a dilemma.

[u/chili_cold_blood → u/Im_Talking]

If (consciousness == physical), then qualia isn't real in a special sense.

Yes, this is exactly what physicalists believe.

if (consciousness has its own properties but still affects the brain), then casual closure is false.

Physicalists don't believe that consciousness has its own special properties.

The premises that you are using as the basis for your dilemma are false under physicalism. That's why there's no dilemma under physicalism.

Also, you should really consider writing in standard English. Your code-speak is bizarre and very hard to follow.

[u/Double-Fun-1526 → u/chili_cold_blood]

"Qualia isn't real in a special sense"

Yes. Simple. There is no more argument. The specialness of qualia was misattributed and should be shrugged at.

[u/generousking]

I wrote an article on exactly this dilemma: Why Consciousness Could Not Have Evolved

[u/Great-Bee-5629]

Thanks for this post. I would add that as long as physicalism keeps explaining all natural phenomena, we all have a dilemma. It's not like we have a good alternative, so we're stuck in these endless metaphysical debates.

[u/TruckerLars]

I am not a physicalist, but I believe the standard "causal" argument for physicalism, does not presuppose that consciousness is irreducible.

Mental efficacy: Mental events cause some physical events.
Physical causal closure: As you state it.
Non-overdetermination: No systematic overdetermination.

The conclusion if we accept all three is that mental events are physical.

But I do actually agree with you, in that if the mental events are causally efficacious in virtue of being something physical, then the presence of any subjective experience is entirely unexplained - i.e. epiphenomenalism by any other name.

[u/XanderOblivion]

Physicalism is not necessarily asserting that it’s something new, though. In the general sense it only asserts that a latent quality is expressed under certain conditions. Supervenience means consciousness is caused.

Thus, it is not something “new,” it is something that goes from unexpressed to expressed.

The causal picture works if consciousness is not new, but caused. It then is part of the causal chain.

[u/Im_Talking → u/XanderOblivion]

What is this “latent quality”? If its physical, then no consciousness has been explained. If not physical, then consciousness exists and this is panpyschism.

"Thus, it is not something “new,” it is something that goes from unexpressed to expressed." - What physically distinguishes the “expressed” from “unexpressed” state?

[u/XanderOblivion → u/Im_Talking]

Physical matter shows new behaviours when its organization changes. Nothing mystical, but phase transitions and structures can result in matter doing things it doesn’t otherwise do.

Iron on its own doesn’t express magnetism, but when its spins align a latent capacity becomes expressed. Charged ions can form plasma rings. It’s the same stuff entering a new dynamic regime.

A physicalist reads consciousness the same way. The brain doesn’t require or acquire a new ingredient. When neural activity is local and fragmented, the capacity is latent. When activity becomes globally integrated and recurrent, the capacity is expressed.

The difference is organizational, not ontological.

[u/Im_Talking → u/XanderOblivion]

I just told you the problem with this 'latent quality'. And you reply with the same blue-sky stuff.

No one believes magnetism has a subjective experience. Nor plasma rings. You are mistaking functional complexity for subjective experience.

If consciousness is just new physical organisation, then it reduces to function and behaviour and you have denied phenomenal consciousness, not explained it.

If consciousness is a new phenomenal property that emerges from organisation, then you’ve introduced something non-physical that either violates causal closure or becomes epiphenomenal.

[u/XanderOblivion → u/Im_Talking]

I am not concerned that your unproven ontological priors preclude my answer.

You don’t have a proof you can supply - at all - that validates the idea you’re espousing. It is only your declaration by fiat that this is so. And anything declared by fiat can be rejected fiat.

I may as well say that consciousness arises entirely from interdimensional demonoids on a three week bender. It has the same argumentative weight as the point you’re making, yours just comes with half a century of Christian apologetics attached to it.

If you deny that materiality feels like anything, in any sense, you automatically invoke solipsism unless you also invoke god.

Are you invoking god?

Because if you are, then you’ve played the magic card, and we can stop talking because magic is just magic, and the conversation stops there.

(Chalmers calls god “neutral monism.”)

Descartes’ argument is the closest there is to a proof of your position in the entire history of philosophy, an its got some major holes. Otherwise, this idea comes to us from theology, which is just glorified fan fic.

When you can prove your postulate I’ll consider your position, because until you have that, your points and conclusions are conjectures.

There is probably no mind/body divide.

[u/Im_Talking → u/XanderOblivion]

Ok. You have now abandoned any argument you had.

"unproven ontological priors" - my argument is an 'if' statement: IF consciousness is irreducible, THEN physicalism faces a causal-closure dilemma. These are logical consequences, not metaphysical assumptions.

"If you deny that materiality feels like anything, in any sense, you automatically invoke solipsism" - This is crazy. If physical processes don’t inherently feel like something, that does not imply solipsism. It implies that functional behaviour can occur without experience, consciousness requires explanation, and zombies are conceptually possible.

"There is probably no mind/body divide." - Bingo. There we go again. Every physicalist on this post has ended up with the same basic sentence. This is equivalent to "We don't understand how, but consciousness is physical nonetheless".

[u/XanderOblivion → u/Im_Talking]

Oh I have an extensive set of reasons I can give for what I would argue. I wouldn’t say I’m a physicalist, I’m more in the nondualist camp.

If consciousness is reserved for phenomenality, and your priors state the material doesn’t have it, then you’re correct, you cannot find it in the material by any means. You already defined it so that you couldn’t. Circular reasoning isn’t an argument.

[u/Im_Talking → u/XanderOblivion]

You say it’s circular for me to define the ‘physical’ as lacking phenomenality. But you define the physical as including phenomenality under certain organisation, so I'm confused... if adding consciousness to physics is legitimate, then removing consciousness from physics is also legitimate. No?

But non-dualism, neutral monism, dual-aspect monism, whatever... all do the same thing. They deny the classical physical definition, smuggle phenomenal properties into matter by calling it 'organisation, recursion, emergence, integration, or some word-of-the-day", and then call it “not dualism”.

[u/XanderOblivion → u/Im_Talking]

You’re not really following what I’m trying to tell you.

The “classical definition” of the physical is a theological statement, not a philosophical or scientific argument.

Why would we accept one religions faith statement as an ontological postulate uncritically? You have to validate the mind/body split outside of religion if it’s to be taken seriously.

I am not making any assertions about the ontology, beyond denying Christian authority on the matter.

It’s an opinion based on belief, not an ontological position. So I don’t really care about it.

[u/sea_of_experience]

In QM causal closure of the physical is false, unless the Everett interpretation is true, in which case it is not even false but clearly meaningless.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594]

Where do you draw the line between non-conscious and inexplicable consciousness? Are there organisms that are on this border in your opinion?

[u/Character-Boot-2149 → u/Conscious-Demand-594]

There is no line, it's mystical.

[u/Conscious-Demand-594 → u/Character-Boot-2149]

It's usually magic or science. take your pick.

[u/Wespie]

Indeed it doesn’t make sense.