MENTAL CAUSATION IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD

Peter Menzies

1. Introduction
Mental causation is the phenomenon in which a mental state causes another mental
state or causes some behaviour. As Jaegwon Kim (1998, 2005) reminds us, not much
of commonsense psychology would make any sense if mental causation were not real.
Our conception of ourselves as conscious, intentional agents capable of perception,
memory, and reasoning is tied up with the assumption of the reality of causal
processes involving cognitive phenomena.
However, philosophical questions about mental causation revolve around, not
so much whether it is important, but rather how it is possible in the first place in the
light of certain metaphysical assumptions and principles. The classic instance of the
philosophical problem of mental causation is Descartes’ discussion of how mind-body
interaction is possible in his dualist metaphysics, according to which mind and body
are two radically different kinds of substances. Philosophers from Pierre Gassendi
onwards have pointed out such causal interaction is impossible within Descartes’
metaphysics which accords primacy to causation by contact forces and in which
minds do not have any spatial location or extension. The general consensus among
philosophers is that Descartes was not successful in solving this problem.
In contrast to Descartes’ problematic dualism, the monist metaphysics of
physicalism is thought to be more congenial to explaining how mental causation is
possible. For example, on the identity theory of the mind, mental states are just neural
states of the brain, so that mental causation is a simple instance of neurophysiological
causation. Unfortunately, this simple solution to the problem doesn’t work if the
identity theory isn’t tenable. Many philosophers of mind now believe this to be the
case in view of the many serious objections faced by the theory, the most serious of
which turns on the multiple realizability of mental states (Fodor 1974; Putnam 1975).
However, physicalism as a more general framework has not lost its appeal despite the
waning popularity of the identity theory. Physicalists continue to believe that the
world and its contents are nothing over and above the structures described by
fundamental physics. The idea that physicalists try to capture is that all the objects in
the worlds are constituted out of physical particles, and that all the properties and
relations that these objects enjoy depend, in some constitutive sense, on the properties
and relations mapped out in fundamental physics.
While there are still unresolved problems about the precise formulation of this
metaphysical view, most physicalists accept a formulation of physicalism in terms of
a supervenience thesis. The following formulation by Frank Jackson (1998) has
become reasonably standard:

Physicalism about the mental: Any world that is a minimal physical duplicate of
the actual world is also a mental duplicate of it.

A minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a world that contains the same
physical objects, physical properties and relations, and physical laws as the actual
world; and nothing else. It is important to restrict the set of worlds used in the
supervenience thesis to the set of minimal physical duplicate worlds. For the
physicalist should not accept that any world that is a physical duplicate of the actual
world is a mental duplicate. For there are worlds that duplicate the physical entities of
the actual world but include, in addition, a number of non-physical entities such as
Cartesian minds. Such worlds are not relevant to the formulation of physicalism,
which is supposed to be at best a contingent truth about the actual world, not a
necessary truth about all worlds. Physicalists need not deny that there are such worlds
with Cartesian minds in the remote regions of logical space; they need insist only that
the actual world is not such a world.
The supervenience thesis above expresses a minimal commitment of
physicalism. It is a thesis endorsed by both reductive physicalists who accept the
identity of mental with physical properties and non-reductive physicalists who do not.
In recent years, non-reductive physicalists have tended to outnumber reductive
physicalists, mostly because considerations about multiple realizability have been
regarded as biting into the plausibility of the identity theory. Non-reductive
physicalists express the hope that they can explain how mental causation is possible
within the austere metaphysical framework of physicalism while avoiding the
reductionism of the identity theory. Indeed, they hope that it is possible to vindicate
not only the reality of mental causation, but also its independence and autonomy from
physical causation.
This paper will divide into two parts. In the first part I shall argue that
physicalism, whether of the reductive or the non-reductive variety, faces a challenge
just as serious as that faced by Cartesian dualism. I shall outline an argument that
proceeds from physicalist premises to the conclusion that mental states are causally
inert or epiphenomenal. The argument is related to the well-known exclusion
argument advanced by Jaegwon Kim (1998; 2005) that purports to show that non-
reductive physicalism is an unstable position that should be replaced by reductive
physicalism. Like Kim’s argument, the argument I advance appeals to an exclusion
principle about causation to the effect that a state that is causally sufficient for some
effect excludes any mental state that supervenes on it from being causally efficacious
with respect to the effect. However, the exclusion principle I appeal to is weaker than
Kim’s principle. Also my argument is directed at all versions of physicalism,
reductive as well as non-reductive. Ultimately, I shall conclude that the argument I
describe is not sound: physicalism can escape the conclusion about the causal
inertness of the mental but only by abandoning the exclusion principle about
causation. Many physicalists will find this conclusion hard to swallow, as the
exclusion principle appears to be very intuitive to them, with Kim (2005), for
example, claiming that it is an analytic truth. We shall see that the principle, when
appropriately formulated, is not a general truth of any kind, as there are
straightforward counterexamples to it.
The second half of the paper takes up the issue whether there is a better
formulation of the exclusion principle. Philosophical discussions of exclusion
principles seldom proceed in terms of a well-ground theory of causation. I plan to
remedy this defect by motivating a conception of causation as difference-making and
then using it to formulate an alternative, more satisfactory version of the exclusion
principle not vulnerable to the counterexamples to the earlier version. Much of this
discussion reports on work done in collaboration with Christian List (List and
Menzies 2009; Menzies and List 2010). We have argued that the new principle is at
best a contingent truth about causal systems and have identified the conditions that a
causal system must satisfy in order for the principle to be true. It turns out that the
principle can apply in two non-trivial ways to a causal system. The first –the case of
upwards exclusion–is familiar from the argument against physicalism: here a lower-
level cause excludes a higher-level cause. But the second–the case of downwards
exclusion–is often overlooked: here a higher-level cause excludes a lower-level one.
These cases of downwards exclusion are particularly interesting, as they support the
causal autonomy of higher-level properties. This is a surprising turn of events: far
from supporting reductionist thinking, the exclusion principle actually turns out to be
the lynchpin of an argument that vindicates the causal autonomy of mental properties.
In the last section of the paper I turn to consider the implications of this result for
recently popular compatibilist forms of non-reductive physicalism. Compatibilists
attempt to answer the exclusion argument against mental causation by claiming that
mental and physical states work in tandem to cause to behaviour in a form of non-
standard overdetermination. I concentrate on Sydney Shoemaker’s (2007) version of
compatibilism, arguing that the downwards exclusion result demonstrates the
untenability of his view that mental causation involves a kind of non-standard
overdetermination in which one kind of cause rides piggyback on another.

2. A New Exclusion Argument

It may be best to illustrate the new exclusion argument against non-reductive
physicalism by way of an example, first introduced into philosophical discussions by
James Woodward (2008). The real-life example concerns the research of Richard
Andersen (2004) and colleagues at Caltech on the neural encoding of intentions to
act.1 Andersen and his colleagues made recordings from individual neurons in the
parietal reach region (PRR) of the motor cortex of monkeys. This region is known to
encode intentions or higher-order plans to reach for specific targets, say a piece of
fruit in a particular location. Andersen developed a program that correlated the
monkey’s intentions to reach for specific goals, as revealed in their movements, with
certain patterns in the recorded firings of neurons in their PRR. Using neural
recordings, the program was able to predict with 67.5% accuracy the reaching
behaviour of the monkeys towards eight targets.
The neural signals that encode the monkeys’ intentions to reach for certain
targets were recorded as averages of the firing rates (spikes per second) of individual
neurons. But clearly the same aggregate firing rate in a group of neurons is consistent
with a lot of variation in the behaviour of individual neurons. For example, very
different temporal sequences of neural firings can give rise to the same firing rate. So
an intention to reach for a certain target can be realized in many different ways at the
level of individual neurons. Nonetheless, each intention is associated with a
distinctive aggregate pattern of firing rates. It is useful to introduce some simple
notation. Suppose the monkeys can have intentions to reach for certain targets, I1, I2,
I3 etc, and can perform the corresponding actions A1, A2, A3, etc. Suppose that
intention Ii can be realized at the level of individual neurons in different token
patterns of neural firings, Ni1, Ni2, Ni3, etc. Suppose that on some specific occasion a
monkey forms the intention Ii to reach for a particular object and performs the
corresponding action Ai. Suppose further that Ni1 is the particular token pattern of
neural firing that realizes or encodes the intention Ii on this occasion. What was the
cause of the monkey’s action Ai? Was it the intention Ii, or its particular neural
realization Ni1? Let’s assume that both the intention and its neural realization are
causally sufficient for the action. It is very tempting for physicalists to answer that it

1
The ultimate goal of Andersen’s work is to develop neural prosthetics for paralyzed subjects
that decode their intentions to reach for specific targets from neural signals and use these to
control external devices.
was the highly specific, neural state Ni1 that caused the monkey to perform the action.
But if the neural state did all the causal work, it would appear that the intention,
which we are assuming is numerically distinct from its highly specific neural realizer,
has no causal role and so is epiphenomenal.
Let’s look at the argument in more detail. The argument relies on a number of
assumptions or principles, some of which were implicit in this informal presentation
of the argument. Let’s make these assumptions and arguments explicit.

(1) Supervenience and realization: mental properties supervene on distinct

physical properties; and so any given instance of a mental property will have an
instance of a distinct physical property as its supervenience base (alternatively,
any mental state will be realized by a distinct physical state).

This supervenience of mental properties on physical properties is a simple

consequence of the contingent supervenience thesis that we are taking to be the
minimal commitment of physicalism. Since we are discussing non-reductive
physicalism, the supervenience thesis is spelled out in terms of mental properties
supervening on distinct physical properties.

(2) Causation entails causal sufficiency: if the state S1 causes another state S2,
then S1 causally sufficient for S2.

What is meant by causally sufficiency here? I shall understand this as follows: a state
S1 is causally sufficient for S2 (in the actual world) if and only if all the worlds among
the set of minimal physical duplicates of the actual world in which S1 holds are worlds
in which S2 holds. Given that the minimal physical duplicates of the actual world hold
fixed the fundamental physical laws, this means that these laws entail that an S1-state
will lawfully evolve into an S2 state. Of course, this is a questionable assumption that
commits us to a deterministic conception of causation. While I concede that causation
may involve probabilistic rather than deterministic processes, I make this assumption
mostly because it simplifies our discussion without any significant loss of generality.
It would be misguided, I think, to imagine that the assumption of determinism is the
source of the difficulties affecting mental causation, which can be solved by
repudiating this assumption. If there is a solution to the mental causation problem, it
is one that surely holds good even if we assume that causation is deterministic.

(3) The transmission of causal sufficiency across realization: if a mental state M

is causally sufficient for a behavioural state B and M is realized by a distinct
physical state P, then the physical state is causally sufficient for the behavioural
state B.

This principle should be no more controversial than the definition of causal

sufficiency given above, since it follows as an analytic consequence of this definition.
To see that the principle must be true given the definition of causal sufficiency,
suppose, for reductio, that it is false; that is, suppose that the mental state M is
causally sufficient for B and that M is realized by a distinct physical state P but P is
not causally sufficient for B. Then it follows that among the minimal physical
duplicate worlds there are some worlds in which P holds but B does not. But by
definition of supervenience, the P-worlds are all M-worlds, so the worlds in question
must be ones in which M holds but B does not hold. But this contradicts the
assumption that M is causally sufficient for B, so demonstrating the falsity of our
initial supposition.

(4) The new exclusion principle: if a mental state M is realized by a distinct

physical state P that is causally sufficient for B, then M does not cause B.

This principle is related to an exclusion principle that Jaegwon Kim (1998; 2005)
formulates as follows:

(5) Kim’s exclusion principle: if a state S1 is causally sufficient for a state S2,
then no distinct state obtaining at the same time as S1 can cause S2.2

It’s easy to see that the new exclusion principle above follows from Kim’s principle.
Suppose that a state M is realized by a physical state P that is causally sufficient for B.
Then M and P obtain at the same time, and so it follows from Kim’s principle that M
can’t cause B. On the other hand, it can be seen that the new exclusion principle
doesn’t imply Kim’s principle. Suppose that mental state M and physical state P
obtain at the same time but are not related by supervenience. Since the new exclusion
principle only applies to pairs of events related by supervenience, nothing follows
from the principle concerning whether M excludes P from causal efficacy. These
considerations show that the new principle is weaker than Kim’s. Kim (2005) says
that his exclusion principle is an analytic, a priori truth; and if this is correct it would
follow that the new exclusion principle is also such a truth. We shall see later that
neither principle is a truth of this kind. For now I simply rest content that the new
principle is no more implausible than Kim’s principle.
We are now in a position to formulate the new exclusion argument. I present the
argument schematically, but with a little effort it can be easily translated into a
concrete argument using the example about the monkeys’ neurally encoded
intentions.

Suppose, for reductio, that a particular state M causes some behaviour B.

By (1) the state M is realized by a distinct physical state P.
By (2) the state M is causally sufficient for B
By (3) the state P is causally sufficient for B.
By (4) the state P excludes M as a cause of B.
Hence, a contradiction.

This argument is extremely simple. But a physicalist who accepts the assumptions and
principles listed above must accept the conclusion that the causal efficacy of any
mental state is excluded by that of its underlying physical realizer.

2
Kim usually formulates his exclusion principle with the qualifying clause “unless it is case
of genuine overdetermination”. However, I omit this qualification in order to simplify my
discussion. By the term “a case of genuine overdetermination”, Kim means the kind of
situation in which the multiple causes operate independently of each other in much the
manner of two assassins who, completely independently of each other, shoot the same victim
at the same time. Since there is general agreement that mental causation doesn’t involve this
kind of overdetermination, it’s reasonable to assume that the condition specified in the clause
is not satisfied in the case of mental causation and so can be safely ignored. Nonetheless, the
whole question of whether mental causation involves overdetermination is discussed further
in section 6 below.
 This argument is related to Jaegwon Kim’s famous exclusion argument (1998;
2005), which has a slightly broader target. Kim’s exclusion argument attempts to
show that any kind of property dualism that implies the mental properties are distinct
from physical properties is committed to epiphenomenalism about the mental.
Property dualists include both non-reductive physicalists who accept the
supervenience of mental properties on physical and non-physicalists who deny this.
Kim’s argument proceeds from slightly different premises to the same conclusion
about epiphenomenalism about the mental. The differences between the arguments
result from the fact that they have different targets. Kim’s argument establishes a
stronger conclusion that all forms of property dualism are committed to
epiphenomenalism about the mental, but it proceeds from stronger premises, in
particular relying on a contingent principle to the effect that the physical world is
causally closed.

3. Descartes’ Revenge
I have argued that the new exclusion argument is a problem for non-reductive
physicalists. However, it might be doubted whether the argument is effective against
reductive physicalists who assert the identity of mental properties with physical
properties. There is some reason for this skepticism, as the premises of the argument
all concern the relationship between mental properties and distinct physical properties
that form their supervenience bases. For example, the supervenience premise states
that a mental property supervenes on a distinct physical property, or alternatively, that
the mental state M is realized by a distinct physical state P. In any case, even without
the distinctness qualification, the argument would be powerless against the identity
theory. If M is identical to P, then the argument generates no contradiction at all: the
fact that P is causally sufficient for B doesn’t undermine the causal efficacy of M with
respect to B given that P and M are the same state.
In this connection, it is worth noting there was something unrealistic in the way
I presented the example about Andersen’s work on the neural encoding of monkey’s
intentions. I ran an informal version of the argument by supposing that the monkey’s
intention Ii is realized by a distinct neural state Ni1; and then appealing to exclusion
reasoning to show that the causal powers of the intention are excluded by those of the
underlying neural state. But it would be more reasonable to think in this example that
the monkey’s specific intention is actually identical with a neural state: namely, the
aggregate neural state of neurons in the cluster having a collective average firing rate.
This abstract neural state is plausibly represented as a disjunction of all the more
specific realizers Ni = Ni1 v Ni2 v Ni3 v …v Nin, where each disjunct represents a
highly specific neural state consisting of a temporally ordered sequence of the
individual neural firings such that together these states have a specified average firing
rate. It is indeed reasonable to think that Andersen and his colleagues thought of the
monkeys’ intentions as being identical with such aggregate neural states, as what they
were directly trying to manipulate were the aggregate patterns of firings. So these
experimenters are best seen as reductive physicalists who could plausibly claim that
the new exclusion argument is not effective against their view.
However, let’s subject this thought to more scrutiny. Does the reductive
physicalist really emerge unscathed by the new exclusion argument? Let’s suppose
that every mental state is identical to a physical neural state, perhaps a fairly abstract
one. Let’s suppose that each of the monkey’s intentions can be identified with an
abstract aggregate pattern of neural firing, as suggested above. It would still seem that
the argument should go through to show that this abstract physical state will have its
causally efficacy pre-empted by the more specific neural state which realizes it. The
only assumption required to kick-start the argument is the assumption that the target
state be realized by a distinct underlying physical state. And this is true for the neural
state Ni, which on a given occasion will be realized by one state from the set {Ni1v Ni2
V Ni3 v …v Nin}. These are more highly specific versions of Ni, each being a complex
state consisting in a temporally ordered sequence of individual neural firings that
satisfies the aggregate average associated with Ni. These highly specific states are
distinct from Ni and so the new exclusion argument goes through to show that the
causal efficacy of Ii = Ni is excluded or preempted by the causal sufficiency of one of
the highly specific realizer states. It is easy to see that the argument can be reproduced
for any physical property that one cares to identify with a mental property: by taking
its realizers to be more fine-grained specifications of this physical property, one can
show that the physical property has its causal powers pre-empted by its more fine-
grained realizers.
It doesn’t require much effort to see that the physicalist world picture itself will
lead to a natural generalization of the argument. As defined above, physicalism is
committed to a multilayered model of reality, stratified into different levels and
bottoming out in fundamental physical level.3 Entities belonging to a given level have
an exhaustive decomposition without remainder into entities belonging to entities
belonging to the next level down. So living organisms can be decomposed into cells,
which can be decomposed into molecules, then atoms and so on to the basic
fundamental physical particles – perhaps the quarks, leptons and bosons of the
standard model. Physicalism, as I have defined it, accepts that the distribution of
fundamental particles with their properties and relations together with the way this
distribution evolves in conformity with the fundamental physical laws, will fix
everything else in reality.
If this picture is correct, then any non-fundamental state, whether it be a mental
state, a neurophysiological state, a biochemical state, molecular state or atomic state,
will have fine-grained realizers at the next level down that are distinct from it. These
realizers will consist in lower-level states involving constituents of the objects of the
higher-level states configured into complex arrangements. So for example, if we take
one of the fine-grained neural states Nij above, which consists in a specific temporally
ordered sequence of individual neuron firings, then this state can be decomposed into
a highly complex state involving molecular arrangements and processes that actually
realize the sequence of neural firings. This complex molecular state will be distinct
from the given neural state because there are many other arrangements of molecules
and molecular processes that could realize the same neural state. This process of
decomposition can reiterated until one finally reaches a decomposition of the neural
state in terms of a state at the level of fundamental physics. An application of the new
exclusion principle at each stage of the decomposition process will show that the
causal efficacy of each state resulting from the decomposition is rendered void by the
causal powers of its realizer, until we finally reach the last stage where only the
fundamental physical realizer state has any causal powers.
In this way, I would argue, the new exclusion argument can be generalized so
that it applies even in the situation in which the mental state is identified with a neural
state. The generalization of the argument depends only on the assumption guaranteed
by physicalism that any non-fundamental state, whether it be a mental, neural,

3
It is controversial whether there is a fundamental physical level, but I shall assume that there
is so as to simply the supervenience definition of physicalism.
chemical or atomic, will be realized by a distinct finer-grained physical state, and
indeed ultimately by the finest-grained state of all, the realizing state specified by
fundamental physics. The upshot of the generalization of the argument is that only
causal powers possessed by any property and any instantiating state are possessed by
fundamental physical properties and states. Ned Block (2003) aptly calls this the
causal drainage problem because the causal powers of properties and states at all but
the lowest level drain away to the lowest level. This is an indeed a serious problem for
any physicalist, whether reductive or non-reductive, who accepts the five assumptions
and principles required to generate the exclusion argument.
Let’s take stock of where we have arrived in our reasoning. At the outset, we
saw that Descartes’ substance dualism was jettisoned because of its inability to
explain the causal interactions between mind and body. It’s impossible, so it is said, to
vindicate mental causation within the metaphysical model of substance dualism. At
first sight, physicalists seem to be in a better position to carry out the project of
vindication. After all, what could be clearer than the fact that mental states at the very
least supervene on physical neural states that can evidently produce or give rise to
behaviour? But now it would seem that the new simple exclusion argument threatens
to muddy this clarity. By generalizing the argument in an apparently unproblematic
way, one can show that not only mental causation is unreal, but also biological,
chemical, atomic causation are all unreal too. Moreover, the premises from which the
new exclusion argument proceeds are principles that are definitive of physicalism
(such as the supervenience thesis), or are analytic or close to being so (like the
principle of transmission of causal sufficiency across realization), or are assumptions
that many physicalists take to be unexceptionable (like the new exclusion principle).
If we should repudiate substance dualism because of its failure to vindicate mental
causation, what should we say about physicalism, both of the reductive and non-
reductive variety, that evidently fails to vindicate any kind of upper-level causation? I
entitled this section “Descartes’ Revenge”, because it would seem that, from the point
of view of commonsense plausibility, physicalism is in a much worse position than
substance dualism.
I have argued that the new exclusion argument applies more generally to show
that all non-fundamental properties and states are epiphenomenal. This surely gives us
reason to suspect that the argument is unsound. I will eventually point the finger at the
new exclusion principle as the false premise that physicalists should reject. However,
before moving onto this, I wish to consider whether some philosophical manoeuvre
will stop the drainage of causal powers to the fundamental levels of physics. In this
connection, a number of philosophers have claimed that Kim’s supervenience
argument, which is closely related to his exclusion argument, also generates a causal
drainage problem and must be defective for this reason. However, Kim has responded
that his supervenience argument doesn’t generalize in this untoward way. So let’s
examine Kim’s defence to see whether it can be used to invalidate the generalization
of the new exclusion argument mooted above.
Kim’s defence (1998; 2005) involves his distinctive conception of the hierarchy
of levels. According to Kim, the hierarchy of levels applies in the first instance to
objects: objects are ordered into the hierarchy of levels on the basis of the part-whole
relation so that entities at one level are composed out of smaller constituent entities at
the next level down. The crucial point that Kim makes is that his supervenience
argument posits a supervenience relation between mental and physical properties,
which must, by virtue of the definition of property supervenience, belong to the same
object. In order for the supervenience argument to give rise to causal drainage from
the macro to microlevels, the supervenience relation would have to apply to properties
belonging to objects at different levels. But this is not possible. So, the worries raised
by his supervenience argument are intralevel concerns that do not cut across levels, in
particular micro-macro boundaries. Kim writes:

In general, supervenient properties and their base properties are instantiated by

the same objects and hence are on the same level…So the microphysical, or
mereological, supervenience does not track the micro-macro hierarchy: the
series of supervenient properties, one mereologically supervenient on the next,
when we go deeper and deeper into the micro, remains at the same level in the
micro-macro hierarchy…This means that the supervenience argument, which
exploits the supervenience relation, does not have the effect of emptying macro-
levels of causal powers and rendering familiar macro-objects and their
properties causally impotent. (1998: p.86)

What is to be said in response to this? First, whatever is true of Kim’s

supervenience argument, it is not true of his own exclusion argument that the
properties that compete for causal efficacy belong to the same object. His exclusion
argument starts from the supposition that an organism’s having a mental property
causes its physical behaviour; and then, invoking the physical causal closure
principle, posits a simultaneous physical state that is causally sufficient for this
behaviour. The principle doesn’t require that this physical state should be an
instantiation of a physical property by the very organism with the mental property: the
physical state may consist in a configuration of more basic physical objects having
certain properties and bearing certain relations to each other. So, whatever may be
true of Kim’s supervenience argument, his exclusion argument can cut across levels
to render higher-level properties and states causally redundant.
Secondly, this defence turns on the fact that the standard definition of property
supervenience requires that supervening and base properties belong to the same
object. But this is simply a peculiarity of the definition of this type of supervenience.
What’s actually crucial to the new exclusion argument is the assumption that a higher-
level state supervenes on, or is realized by, a lower-level state. It is possible to define
the supervenience of one kind of state on another in a way that doesn’t require that the
supervening and subvening states should be instantiations of properties by the same
object. For example, here is one such definition: a state S1 is realized by a state S2 in
the actual world if and only if in the set of minimal physical duplicates of the actual
world, all worlds in which S2 holds are worlds in which S1 holds. This definition
doesn’t require that S1 and S2 should consist in the same object instantiating different
properties.
Thirdly, even assuming supervening and subvening properties must belong to
the same object doesn’t stop the causal drainage from non-fundamental to
fundamental properties. For Kim’s own notion of a micro-based property (Kim 1998:
p.?) can be invoked to allow property supervenience to cut across micro-macro
boundaries. For an object to have a micro-based property is just for the object to be
decomposable into non-overlapping proper parts, each of which has certain properties
and all of which bear a certain relation to each other. In other words, an object’s
having a micro-based property is simply constituted by the complex state of its proper
parts being configured in a certain way. So the property of instantiating a temporally
ordered sequence of neural firings may be a micro-based property, since a person has
this property just when the neurons of his brain enter into a certain complex
spatiotemporal relations with each other and have distinctive properties. So a person
may have a mental property and also this micro-based property, meaning that the
supervenience and realization relations can hold between these properties. Clearly
then the generalization of the new exclusion argument can appeal to this kind of
micro-based property to generate its unacceptable conclusion that the causal powers
of all macro-properties drain away to the fundamental physical level.
So, I conclude that nothing that Kim says against the generalization objection
can assuage the worries about causal drainage.

4. Causal Relevance4
Where does the new exclusion argument go awry? I suggest that the error of the new
exclusion principle lies in its claim that one state’s causal sufficiency for an effect
excludes the causal efficacy of any state supervening on the first state. The
fundamental error of this principle is that it mistakes causal sufficiency for causation.
The fact that causal sufficiency doesn’t amount to causation has been known for some
time. Wesley Salmon (1971) pointed out that causal explanation requires information
of the right kind and in the right amount, or in other words, causal explanations must
cite causally relevant factor. However, while a man’s taking a contraceptive pill is
causally sufficient for his not getting pregnant, there is no causal relevance here, as
the man’s taking a contraceptive pill makes no difference to his not getting pregnant.
Even if had not taken the pill, he wouldn’t have got pregnant.
As several philosophers have noted, the man’s taking the contraceptive pill does
not satisfactorily fit the role of a cause because it is overly specific and involves
extraneous detail. To be sure, the man’s taking the contraceptive pill is causally
sufficient for the effect, but causal sufficiency is not the same thing as causation,
which requires causal relevance. To illustrate the difference, consider an example of
Stephen Yablo’s (1992) concerning a pigeon that has been trained to peck at all and
only red objects. The pigeon is presented with a red target and she pecks at it. As it
happens, the target is a specific shade of crimson. What caused the pigeon to peck?
Was it the fact that the target was red or the fact that it was crimson? The exclusion
principle would say that since being red is realized by being crimson and being
crimson is causally sufficient for the pigeon’s pecking, the redness of the target is not
the cause. But this seems wrong, as Yablo points out: the target’s being red is of the
right degree of specificity to count as a cause of the pigeon’s action. In contrast, the
target’s being crimson is too specific to count as the cause: citing it as the cause of the
pecking might give the erroneous impression that the pigeon would not peck at
anything non-crimson.
Many philosophers have sought to capture the idea of causal relevance in terms
of the dictum that causes make a difference to their effects.5 How are we to cash out
this dictum in more precise terms? I agree with those philosophers (Spirtes, Glymour,
4
This section and the next report on work done in collaboration with Christian List in List &
Menzies (2009).
5
Only the simplest form of causal relevance can be captured in terms of difference-making,
as explained below. The full complexity of the concept of causal relevance requires an
account that goes well beyond the simple outline I sketch below. For example, Woodward’s
(2003) interventionist account provides detailed explanations of a range of type-level causal
concepts including direct, total and contributing causes that involve sophisticated elaborations
of the basic notion of difference-making. The account below also abstracts away from the
complications involved in pre-emption and overdetermination examples.
& Scheines [1993] 2000; Pearl 2000; Hitchcock 2001; Woodward 2003) who
interpret causal claims as claims about relationships between variables, and so
interpret the dictum, quite literally, as requiring that changing the value of the cause
variable changes the value of the effect variable. Applied to binary variables
representing the presence or absence of some state, the dictum says that changing the
causal state from being absent to being present (or vice versa) changes the effect state
from being absent to being present (or vice versa). Formally, I suggest that one state
makes a difference to another just when the following conditions are satisfied:

Truth conditions for causal relevance (or making a difference): The state
S1 makes a difference to the state S2 in the actual world just in case (i) if in
any relevantly similar possible situation S1 holds, S2 also holds; and (ii) if
in any relevantly similar situation world S1 does not hold, S2 does not
hold.

For example, the target’s being red makes a difference to the pigeon’s pecking
because in any relevantly similar situation in which the pigeon is presented with a red
target it pecks, and in any relevantly similar situation in which it is not presented with
a red target it does not. The relevantly similar situations in this example are ones in
which the pigeon has received the same training, the targets are presented to the
pigeon in the same experimental setting, there are no confounding influences on the
pigeon and so on. But under this construal of the relevantly similar situations, the
target’s being crimson does not make a difference to the pigeon’s pecking. Condition
(ii) is not met: in a relevantly similar situation in which the pigeon is presented with a
non-crimson but red target, it still pecks. These observations confirm the conjecture
that the requirement that causes make a difference to their effects captures the crucial
notion of causal relevance.
Further confirmation of this conjecture comes from examining how the
suggested truth conditions constrain the specificity of causes: satisfaction of these
conditions ensures that causes are specific enough for their effects, but no more
specific than needed. This is revealed most clearly in the case of many-valued causal
variables. Suppose, for example, there is a drug that causes patients to recover from
an illness. The effect variable is a binary variable whose values are recovery or non-
recovery. But the cause variable is many-valued, with possible values 0mg, 50mg,
100mg, 150 mg, and 200mg. Suppose that any regular dose at or above 150mg cures a
patient, but any lower dose does not. Suppose a patient has taken a regular dose of
150mg and has recovered from the illness. What made the difference to the patient’s
recovery? According to the truth conditions above, the answer is “Giving the patient a
dose of at least 150mg”. It satisfies both conditions (i) and (ii): all relevantly similar
patients who take a regular dose at or above 150mg recover and all those who take a
lower dose don’t. Other answers are either too specific, or not specific enough. For
example, the cause cannot be “Giving the patient a dose above 50mg” because that
does not meet condition (i): some relevantly similar patients who are given a dose
above 50mg, say 100mg, do not recover. Similarly, it cannot be “Giving the patient a
dose of exactly 150mg” because that does not meet condition (ii): some relevantly
similar patients who are not given a dose of exactly 150mg – say they are given
200mg – nonetheless recover. In this way, condition (i) rules out causes that are not
specific enough to account for the change in the effect variable, while condition (ii)
rules out causes that are too specific to account for it.
 The truth conditions for making a difference can be expressed more formally
using counterfactuals, as understood in a possible-world semantics. Specifically, let’s
replace the notion of a relevantly similar situation with that of a relevantly similar
possible world, and thus rewrite the conditionals in the truth conditions above as
counterfactuals:

Truth conditions for causal relevance (making a difference): The S1 makes a

difference to S2 in the actual world if and only if it is true in the actual world
that (i) S1 holds → S2 holds; and (ii) S1 doesn’t hold → S2 doesn’t hold.

I interpret the counterfactuals in accordance with the standard possible-worlds

semantics of David Lewis (1973), which provides truth conditions for counterfactuals
in terms of a similarity relation between possible worlds. The similarity relation,
which may vary with context, is represented by an assignment to each possible world
w of a system of spheres of worlds centred on w. The system of spheres conveys
information about the similarity of worlds to the world w at the centre. The smaller a
sphere, the more similar to w are the worlds in it. So whenever one world lies in some
sphere around w and another lies outside it, the first world is more similar to w than
the second. In terms of this system of spheres, I now state the truth conditions for
counterfactuals as follows: P → Q is true in world w if and only if Q is true in all
the closest P-worlds to w.
By adopting this semantic framework, I follow Lewis rather than Stalnaker, in
allowing that there may be more than one closest P-world to w. Although there may
sometimes be just one such world, this is not the general rule. However, I diverge
from Lewis in imposing only a weak centring requirement on the systems of spheres.
I allow the smallest sphere around w to contain more than one world. Lewis imposes
the stronger requirement that the smallest sphere around w contains only w. This
corresponds to a constraint on the similarity relation whereby no world is as similar to
w as w itself. It also corresponds to the inference rule from the premise P & Q to the
conclusion P → Q. In other words, if P and Q are true in some world so is P →
Q. Lewis’s strong centring requirement, the corresponding constraint on similarity
and the corresponding inference rule may appear plausible. But I cannot accept them.
If the counterfactual formulation of the truth conditions for causal relevance is to
match the earlier formulation, clause (i) of the counterfactual formulation must
capture the idea that every relevantly similar situation in which S1 holds S2 also holds.
In the original formulation, this condition is non-trivial: it rules out insufficiently
specific causes, provided the set of relevantly similar situations in which S1 holds
includes more than one such situation. To match this condition, the counterfactual
formulation must require that even if S1 and S2 hold in the actual world, the smallest
sphere around it also contains some other worlds in which S1 holds.
Before I apply the difference-making account of causation to the exclusion
principle, I note an implication of the account. Several philosophers (Hitchcock
1993,1996; Woodward 2003; Schaffer 2006) have observed that causal statements are
contrastive in character. They have pointed out that descriptions of both cause and
effect seem to involve reference to a contrast situation, or set of contrast situations.
Sometimes the contrasts are made obvious by the use of contrastive focus. For
example, asserting a sentence such as “Giving the patient a 150mg dose of the drug
caused his recovery” highlights the fact that the 150mg dose was one in a range of
doses and not all doses within this range cause recovery. But often the contrast
situations are left implicit. The rule for reconstructing the contrast situations is
straightforward in the case of causal claims involving binary variables. Here the
contrast situation is simply the opposite value to the actual one. So the causal claim
“The state S1 caused S2” is to be understood as “S1’s holding rather than not holding
caused S2 to hold rather than not hold”. All these observations are predictable based
on the account of causation as difference making. If causal statements convey
information about how variation in one variable is associated with variation in
another, as explicated by a pair of counterfactuals, it is no surprise that they can be
expressed contrastively.
The various examples discussed above – Andersen’s monkey and Yablo’s
pigeon – can be seen as counterexamples to the exclusion principle. In each case, the
exclusion principle leads us to identify the intuitively wrong property as the cause of
the given effect. In Yablo’s example, the causally relevant cause of the pigeon’s
pecking is not the crimson, but the redness of the target, contrary to what the
exclusion principle implies. This is supported by the truth of the counterfactuals:

Target is red → pigeon pecks.

Target is not red → pigeon does not peck.

In contrast, the following counterfactuals are not both true:

Target is crimson → pigeon pecks.

Target is not crimson → pigeon does not peck.

It is natural to interpret these counterfactuals in terms of a similarity relation that

makes the closest-worlds in which the target is not crimson ones where it is some
other shade of red.6 Given this assumption, the second counterfactual is false: in the
closest worlds in which the target is not crimson it is some other shade of red, in
which case the pigeon will still peck.
A similar treatment can be given for the example of the monkey. The causally
relevant cause of the monkey’s reaching action Ai is not its particular neural state Ni1,
but its intention Ii. The following counterfactuals are true:

Monkey has intention Ii → monkey performs Ai.

Monkey doesn’t have intention Ii → monkey doesn’t perform Ai.

Whereas the following counterfactuals are not both true:

Monkey has neural property Ni1 → monkey performs Ai.

Monkey doesn’t have neural property Ni1 → monkey doesn’t perform
Ai.

Assuming that the closest worlds in which the monkey doesn’t have neural property
Ni1 are ones in which it has another neural property realizing the intention Ii, one can
see that the second counterfactual is false: in any such world, the monkey has another
neural property that realizes Ii and so performs Ai.
In summary, requiring causes to be causally relevant, one can see that the
exclusion principle is false. Even when some state S1 is causally sufficient for another
state S2, a state that supervenes on S1 can nonetheless be a cause of S2. The monkey’s
6
I discuss this assumption further in the next section.
intention Ii to reach for a specific target is the cause of its reaching action Ai even
though it is realized the neural property Ni1, which is causally sufficient for the action.

5. Revised Exclusion Principle

We have seen that within the framework of a difference-making account of causation
there are some persuasive counterexamples to the exclusion principle. A central
feature of this principle is that it is couched in terms of causal sufficiency: it states
that a property that is causally sufficient for some effect excludes certain other
properties from being causes of that effect. But one might ask: “Why talk of causal
sufficiency rather than causation?”
Naturally, this raises the question of what happens if we reformulate the
exclusion principle, replacing the reference to causal sufficiency with one to causation
in a more adequate sense, understood as difference-making. So let’s consider the
following revised principle:

Revised exclusion principle: For all distinct states S and S* such that S* is
realized by S, S and S* do not both cause state T.

Here the truth conditions for causation are those for difference-making introduced
above. The principle can also be formulated in two different, but logically equivalent
ways. The first is the counterpart of the original principle, whereas the second is
seldom explored in the debate about the exclusion problem:

Revised exclusion principle (upwards formulation): If a state S causes a

state T, then no distinct state S* that supervenes on S causes T.
Revised exclusion principle (downwards formulation): If a state S causes a
property T, then no distinct state S* that realizes S causes T.

Although logically equivalent, the two formulations draw our attention to two
different ways in which the exclusion principle can apply. An instance of upwards
exclusion occurs when there exists a subvenient difference-making cause that
excludes a supervenient one; and an instance of downwards exclusion, usually
overlooked, occurs when there exists a supervenient difference-making cause that
excludes a subvenient one.
Is the revised exclusion principle true or false? Let’s focus on the instance of the
principle that concerns the causal relationships between a mental state M, a neural
state N, and a behavioural state B. Throughout the discussion, I assume that N realizes
M in the actual world. We are interested in the logical relationship between the
following two propositions:

(1) M is a difference-making cause of B.

(2) N is a difference-making cause of B.

Using the truth conditions introduced above, each of these propositions is equivalent
to a conjunction of counterfactuals:

(1a) M holds → B holds.

(1b) M doesn’t hold → B doesn’t hold.
(2a) N holds → B holds.
(2b) N doesn’t hold → B doesn’t hold.
 The revised exclusion principle dictates that propositions (1) and (2), or
equivalently (1a), (1b), (2a) and (2b), are never simultaneously true. But is this claim
actually correct? One benefit of formulating the difference-making conception of
causation in terms of counterfactuals is that it makes this question logically tractable.
One can prove that these four counterfactual holds only under very special conditions.
To state this result, call a causal relation between M and B realization-sensitive if B
fails to hold in all those M-worlds that are closest ~N-worlds (i.e., where M has a
different realizer from the actual one). The result is the following:

Compatibility Result (List and Menzies 2009): If M causes B, then N causes

B if and only if the causal relation between M and B is realization-sensitive.

Rather than prove this result here, it is more instructive to describe a situation that
exemplifies the result. So consider the situation represented in Figure 1. The
concentric spheres represent sets of more and more similar worlds to the actual world;
the innermost sphere contains the actual world, labelled w, and the other worlds
deemed maximally similar to it. The set of N-worlds is represented by the region with
diagonal lines, the set of M-worlds by the larger region that includes the set of N-
worlds. The shaded region represents the set of B-worlds. In this situation, it is easy to
see that M causes B. First, since M holds throughout the innermost sphere, that sphere
picks out the closest M-worlds, and since B also holds in it, counterfactual (1a) is true.
Second, since B does not hold in any ~M-worlds, it fails to hold in all the closest ~M-
worlds and thus counterfactual (1b) is true. Further, the causal relation between M and
B is realization-sensitive: since B does not hold in any ~N-worlds, it follows a fortiori
that it does not hold in any of the closest ~N-worlds that are M-worlds. And finally, N
does indeed cause B: counterfactuals (2a) and (2b) can easily be verified to be true.

N .w

Figure 1

It is important to note, however, that the conditions under which the

counterfactual pair (1a)-(1b) implies the pair (2a)-(2b) are very special. Figure 1
illustrates this point nicely. Although both M and its actual realizing state N are
difference-making causes of B here, the realization-sensitivity of the causal relation
between M and B means that small perturbations in the way in which M is realized
would result in the absence of B. In other words, if M were realized by any neural
state other than N then B would cease to hold. When might we expect these conditions
to obtain? If the mental property M were identical to the neural property N, then we
would certainly expect instances of M to stand in realization-sensitive causal relations
with respect to instances of N. The fact that M-instances had certain effects when and
only when N-instances are present would simply reflect the identity of the properties.
However, I do not rule out the possibility of other explanations of the existence of
realization-sensitive causal relations.
At this point it is useful to consider a logically equivalent formulation of the
Compatibility Result that is relevant to the Downwards Exclusion. In analogy with the
earlier definition, call a causal relation between M and B realization-insensitive if B
holds in some M-worlds that are closest ~N-worlds (i.e. where M has a different
realizer from the actual one). The following proposition is an immediate corollary of
the Compatibility Result:

Downwards Exclusion Result (List and Menzies 2009): If M causes B, then N

does not cause B if and only if the causal relation between M and B is
realization-insensitive.

Again let’s consider a schematic example that exemplifies this proposition, focusing
on the situation represented in Figure 2. As before, the system of spheres represents
sets of worlds with greater or lesser degrees of similarity to the actual world, labelled
w. The set of N-worlds is represented by the region with diagonal lines, and the set of
M-worlds by the larger region that includes the set of N-worlds. The shaded region
represents the set of B-worlds. This figure shows that M causes B, since B holds in all
the closest M-worlds and fails to hold in all the closest ~M-worlds, i.e.,
counterfactuals (1a) and (1b) are both true. It is also easy to see that this causal
relation is realization-insensitive: B continues to hold in some, indeed all, of the M-
worlds that are closest ~N-worlds. Finally, it is easy to see that N does not cause B:
the counterfactual (2b) is false, since B holds in all the closest ~N-worlds.

.w

Figure 2

6. Some Implications for Compatibilism

To highlight the significance of these results I want to examine some of their
implications for a non-reductive physicalist solution to the mental causation problem
that has come to be called compatibilism. This has recently become a popular position
among philosophers. (See Bennett 2003, 2008; Crisp and Warfield 2001; Pereboom
2002; Thomasson 1998.)
This solution says that any piece of intentional behaviour has two causes: a
mental state and the neural state that realizes it. These causes are not partial causes in
the way that a short circuit and the presence of oxygen are each partial causes of a fire
since the mental state and its realizing neural state are each causally sufficient by
themselves for the physical behaviour. Nor are they standard overdetermining causes
in the way that two assassins who fatally shoot their victim at the same time are each
causes of the victim’s death. For the mental state and its realizing neural state are
metaphysically connected in a way that the overdetermining causes usually are not. In
short, the compatibilist solution says, very roughly, that a mental state and its
realizing neural state are non-standard overdetermining causes of a piece of
intentional behaviour.
Sydney Shoemaker (2007) has provided the most fully developed version of the
compatibilist solution. Shoemaker argues that in any given world a property’s identity
is determined by its causal profile — the set of its forward-looking causal powers to
cause other properties and its backward-looking causal powers to be caused by other
properties. In other words, whether properties count as the same or different depends
on whether they have the same causes and effects.7 In his discussion Shoemaker gives
equal weight to a property’s forward- and backward-looking causal powers. But it
will serve my exposition to focus just on properties’ forward-looking causal powers.
Further, talking about a property’s forward-looking causal powers is shorthand for
talking about the causal powers of instances of the property. An instance of a property
F has the causal power to produce an instance of the property G just in case the first
instance can in suitable conditions cause the second. The causal powers of properties
are to be understood in terms of generalizations about the causal powers of their
instances.
Shoemaker (2007, Chap.2) explains realization in terms of the inclusion of
causal powers. He states that one property G realizes another property F just in case
the forward-looking causal powers of F are a subset of the causal powers of G. So a
neural state N realizes a mental state M just in case the forward-looking causal powers
of the mental property are a subset of the causal powers of the neural property. This
definition is supposed to avoid the problem that the causal role of the realized
property is preempted by the causal role of the realizer property. He remarks that, on
the contrary, his account starts with the supposition that the realized property has a
causal profile, and nothing in the account takes this assumption back. Moreover, his
account avoids appealing to a problematic kind of overdetermination. While it is true
that a mental state and a neural state are both causes of behaviour, the neural state has
its causal role in virtue of the causal role of the mental state. He explains this by
analogy with an example. Suppose a firing squad fires a salvo of shots at Smith but
the only shot that hits Smith is one fired by Jones. In this case the salvo killed Smith,
but it did so in virtue of a particular shot, Jones’ shot, that killed Smith. As a further
illustration, he cites Yablo’s example about Sophie, the pigeon:

Now we take scarlet as a realizer of red. The forward-looking causal features of

a red are a subset of the forward-looking features of scarlet…This instantiation

7
While Shoemaker actually believes that a property’s causal profile defines its inter-world
identity, his account of the realization relation depends only on causal profiles providing an
intra-world criterion of identity.
 of red was realized in an instantiation of scarlet, and the instantiation of scarlet
was of course causally sufficient (in the circumstances) for the occurrence of
Sophie’s pecking. But it seems right to say that it was the instantiation of red,
not the instantiation of scarlet, that caused Sophie’s pecking. (2007: p.14)

The instance of scarlet caused Sophie’s pecking but it did so in virtue of the realizing
the instance of red.
Crucial to the feasibility of the compatibilist solution is acceptance of two
principles that are implicit in Shoemaker’s discussion. The first principle is that causal
sufficiency is the same thing as causation. Shoemaker is tacitly committed to this
principle. In the quoted passage above, for example, Shoemaker moves back and
forwards from the claim that an instance of a colour is causally sufficient for the
pigeon’s pecking to the claim that it is a cause. The second principle is what I earlier
called the transmission of causal sufficiency across the realization relation: if a
property is causally sufficient for another property then any property that realizes the
first property is also causally sufficient for the second. This principle holds as an
analytic consequence of Shoemaker’s definition of realization in terms of inclusion of
causal powers and his assumption that causal sufficiency is the same thing as
causation.8 Acceptance of these principles allows one to argue that if a mental
property is causally sufficient for some piece of intentional behaviour, then both the
mental property and its realizing neural property are causes of the behaviour and that
neural property is a cause in virtue of the fact that the mental property is. Though
there are other routes to compatibilism, many philosophers who offer compatibilist
solutions to the mental causation problem seem to be committed to these principles.
Despite its initial plausibility, the compatibilist solution does not, I think, stand
up to critical scrutiny. The solution entails that in Yablo’s example the red and the
scarlet properties are both causes of the pigeon’s pecking; and that a mental property
and its realizing neural property are both causes of intentional behaviour. If this looks
like one too many causes, the multiplication of causes does not end with two causes.
In section 3, I argued that the new exclusion argument generated a causal drainage
problem in that causal powers of higher-level properties drain away to the
fundamental physical level. The principles used in this argument generate a
descending sequence of properties, one for each level in the hierarchy of levels, each
of which is causally sufficient for some effect. To generate such a sequence all that is
required is the assumption that some higher-level property, say a mental property, is
causally sufficient for some effect, say some behaviour. Then by successive
applications of the supervenience principle and the principle of the transmission of
causal sufficiency across realization, one can show there is a descending sequence of
properties, each of which (bar the first) is a realizer of the one above and each of
which is causally sufficient for the effect. The upshot of this argument is that an effect
of a higher-level causal property such as a mental property has many causes: besides
its mental cause, it has a neural cause, a biochemical cause, a molecular cause, an
atomic cause and so on, one for each level in the hierarchy of levels. Positing two
piggybacking causes is somewhat implausible, but positing a whole sequence of
piggybacking causes for any effect strains credibility.

8
The principle of the transmission of causal sufficiency across the realization relation does
not require the specific doctrines of Shoemaker’s framework. A compatibilist who held that
properties are sets of possibilia and that realization is a matter of the inclusion of one set of
possibilia in another would also be committed to the principle.
 In any case, a central assumption of compatibilist solutions to the mental
causation problem, namely, that causal sufficiency is the same thing as causation, is
seriously mistaken, as I have been at pains to argue. Replacing the causal sufficiency
conception of causation with a more sensible one like the difference-making
conception does not increase the plausibility of the compatibilist solution. Indeed, the
downwards-exclusion result, described in the last section, implies that when a mental
state causes some behaviour in a realization-insensitive way, then the neural state that
realizes it cannot also cause the same behaviour. So when the realization-insensitivity
condition is met, the downwards-exclusion result rules out as impossible the kind of
dual cause solution entailed by compatibilism. There is good reason to think the
realization-insensitivity condition is met in the kinds of cases that compatibilist take
as their standard models. For instance, it is reasonable to think about the Yablo
example that the causal relation between the target’s being red and the pigeon’s
pecking is realization-insensitive in that the causal relation doesn’t depend on the
particular way in which the redness of the target is realized by its being scarlet. More
precisely, it is plausible to think that the similarity ordering of possible worlds
relevant to this example is such that in some of the closest-worlds in which the target
is not scarlet but still red the pigeon pecks. Given the reasonableness of this
assumption, it follows from the downwards-exclusion result that the target’s being
scarlet can’t also be a cause of the pigeon’s pecking along with the target’s being red.
The easiest way to see this is to consider the counterfactual “If the target had not been
scarlet, the pigeon would not have pecked.” The realization-insensitivity condition
implies that in some of the closest worlds in which the target is not scarlet but is
nonetheless red the pigeon pecks, which then implies that this counterfactual must be
false.
More generally, it follows from the downwards-exclusion result that if the
causal relation between a mental state and some piece of physical behaviour is
realization-insensitive in the way specified above, then it’s logically impossible for
any state that realizes the mental state to be a cause of the same behaviour. So any
kind of compatibilist solution to the mental causation is ruled out where there is a
reasonable assumption that the mental causation is realization-insensitive.

7. Conclusion
I began this paper by formulating a new exclusion argument that is similar to Kim’s
exclusion argument in attempting to show that a physicalist who accepts certain
principles including a weak causal exclusion principle is committed to the view that
mental states and other higher-level states are causally inefficacious. The argument
differed from Kim’s argument, however, in being directed at all forms of physicalism,
both reductive and non-reductive. My aim was not to endorse the new exclusion
argument, but rather to highlight the absurd implications of the exclusion principle it
employs. I subsequently showed that, within the framework of a difference-making
conception of causation, there are straightforward counterexamples to this exclusion
principle. My intermediate conclusion was that both the new exclusion argument and
Kim’s exclusion argument are unsound to the extent they rely on an exclusion
principle that implies that a mental state is causally inefficacious with respect to some
behaviour if it supervenes on a physical state that is causally sufficient for the
behaviour.
In the second half of the paper I explored a version of the exclusion principle
that is formulated in terms of difference-making rather than causal sufficiency. The
principle states that if two states are related by supervenience, it cannot be that both
states are difference-making causes of another state. It turns out that while this
principle is not a logical truth, there are nonetheless certain contingent conditions
concerning the realization-insensitivity of difference-making counterfactuals under
which the principle is true. Moreover, the principle can be applied in a upwards
direction to support exclusion reasoning about upper-level states and, less familiarly,
in a downwards direction to support exclusion reasoning about lower-level causes.
The application of the principle in a downwards direction has several significant
implications, one of which I explored in connection with Shoemaker’s compatibilist
solution to the mental causation problem. The downwards exclusion result implies
that the compatibilist view that a mental state and its underlying realizer are both
causes of some piece of behaviour can’t be correct when causation is understood in a
plausible way in terms of difference-making and when the relevant assumption of
realization-insensitivity holds.

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