mental causation

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the philosophical problem of how mental events or states — beliefs, desires, intentions, sensations — can cause physical events such as the movement of one's body, given that the physical world appears to be causally closed, meaning that every physical event has a sufficient physical cause; if mental states are identical with physical brain states, causation by mental states seems unproblematic, but dualist accounts that distinguish mind and matter face the interaction problem of how two categorically different substances can causally influence each other; the problem of mental causation is central to debates about physicalism, epiphenomenalism, and the nature of free will