Book Publishers Association of Alberta

The Material Mind puts the issue of understanding how the mind fits into the natural order into broad perspective, linking the question of causal efficacy of cognitive properties and events with issues of their reducibility, the reality of causal powers, and with a relevant concept of emergence. The Material Mind develops a concept of reduction that is compatible both with scientific change and with the possibility of multiple reduction bases. It shows that cognitive and other higher-level properties can be construed as causal powers, develops a concept of emergence compatible with reduction, and shows that the integration of the mind into a scientific conception of the world does not deprive mental properties and events of causal efficacy. The book defends the possibility of downward causation of physiological effects by cognitive causes, by questioning the justification of both the principle of the causal closure of the physical domain and the principle of causal-explanatory exclusion.