Physicalism and Mental Causation: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action

This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency. Physicalism--the thesis that everything there is in the world, including human
minds, is constituted by basic physical entities--has dominated the philosophy of
mind during the last few decades. Yet, there is no generally accepted definition for
most of the core notions of physicalism, including fundamental notions such as
'causation, ' 'determination, ' 'realization, ' or even 'physicalism' itself. This lack of
an unanimous conceptual foundation for the physicalist agenda impedes the
solution of more specific problems in the philosophy of mind, for instance problems
pertaining to mental causation and human agency.
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As of yet, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on various key concepts and
how they relate to the more specific problems physicalism attempts to solve is still
missing. This book presents a range of essays written by established and
leading authors in the field on the conceptual foundations of physicalism and
its interconnections with philosophical problems concerning mental causation
and human agency.