Mental Causation - Problems And Buddhist Response

Guglani, A. Mental Causation—Problems and Buddhist Response. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 38, 371–384 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-021-00243-9

25 Pages Posted: 27 Jul 2020 Last revised: 13 Apr 2023

Date Written: June 21, 2020

Abstract

When one says, “I had a desire to have a glass of water and this was followed by my action to fetch the glass of water” then the common-sense observation would assume that one’s mind caused this action. In this paper, I assume that there is a mind or there are ‘mental states’ which either belong to an enduring self or constitute a selfless stream of consciousness. I will provide the debate between Advaita Vedanta and Abhidharma Buddhism to present this tension between enduring self and the selfless stream of consciousness clearly. However, the aim of this paper is to look at how the mind is assumed to have causal powers. Is this assumption valid or not? Jaegwon Kim presents three problems that arise out of this assumption: “mental anomalism,” content externalism and causal exclusion. I shall look at these problems in detail in part I. In part II, I shall provide Buddhist arguments in favour of mind especially consciousness that can escape the reductionist arguments formulated by Kim by looking at the recent debates in contemporary physics especially quantum mechanics.

Keywords: eliminativism, emergentism, epiphenomenalism, reductionism, supervenience

Suggested Citation

Guglani, Aakash, Mental Causation - Problems And Buddhist Response (June 21, 2020). Guglani, A. Mental Causation—Problems and Buddhist Response. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 38, 371–384 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-021-00243-9 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3640722 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3640722

Aakash Guglani (Contact Author)

Digital India Foundation ( email )

G-46, Sector 3
Noida, Uttar Pradesh
India

HOME PAGE: http://digitalindiafoundation.org/

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