Moritz Schulz

This paper argues that the exclusion problem for mental causation can be solved by a variant of non-reductive physicalism that takes the mental not merely to supervene on, but to be grounded in, the physical. A grounding relation between events can be used to establish a principle that links the causal relations of grounded events to those of grounding events. Given this principle, mental events and their physical grounds either do not count as overdetermining physical effects, or they do so in a way that is not objectionable.

The relation between chance and actuality gives rise to a puzzle. On the one hand, it may be a chancy matter what will actually happen. On the other hand, the standard semantics for ‘actually’ implies that sentences beginning with ‘actually’ are never contingent. To elucidate the puzzle, I defend a kind of objective semantic indeterminacy: in a chancy world, it may be a chancy matter which proposition is expressed by sentences containing ‘actually’. I bring this thesis to bear on certain counter-examples, proposed by Hawthorne and Lasonen-Aarnio, to Lewis' ‘principal principle’