Exclusion Again

This chapter maintains that the non-reductive physicalist's best strategy for avoiding the causal exclusion argument, as defended in Bennett (2003), is unavailable to dualists. One strategy for denying the underlying exclusion principle is to focus on the notion of causation in play, i.e. to reject an oomphy notion of causation in favour of something along the lines of a pure counterfactual dependence notion. The other strategy focuses on the relation between the causes. In the relevant cases, the causes are causally sufficient for the same effect, but are tightly related in some way that defuses the threat of overdetermination. Only the latter strategy works, but it is unavailable to the dualist.