The Dual Explanandum Strategy

Abstract

In this paper I try to fix the price that a non-epiphenomenal dualism demands. To begin with, the defender of non-epiphenomenal dualism cannot hold that mental events cause physical events, since the physical world is causally closed. Hence, she must say that mental events cause events that are not physical, or at least, events that are not affected by the principle of the causal closure of the physical world (this is the "dual explanandum strategy"). However, this is not all: the events mental causes bring about must fulfill certain further conditions, which I spell out. When properly analyzed, it will be seen that these conditions make the dual explanandum strategy highly demanding.