Does consciousness itself do any causal work? When a conscious intention moves your body, does consciousness cause the movement, or only the underlying neural state? If consciousness is just an epiphenomenon, it seems impotent. Yet our sense that consciousness drives our actions seems essential. This problem asks: What causal role, if any, does consciousness or phenomenal character play?
Distinguish between the causation of conscious states and the causal role of consciousness itself. Examine how identity theory and physicalism address this.
The puzzle arises from a combination of two ideas you have already studied. From your work on mental causation, you know that mental states can, in principle, cause both other mental states and physical behavior — your belief that it is raining causes you to grab an umbrella. From your study of epiphenomenalism, you know that one powerful response to this picture is deflationary: what actually causes the umbrella-grabbing is the underlying neural state, and the accompanying conscious experience is merely a passenger — causally inert, like the shadow of a moving train.
The question this topic raises is more specific: even if we grant that mental states can be causally efficacious (against epiphenomenalism), does consciousness itself — the phenomenal, "what it's like" dimension of those states — contribute any causal work? Consider the example: when you wince at pain, it is tempting to say the conscious *feeling* of pain caused the wince. But one can imagine a philosophical zombie — a creature physically identical to you — who lacks phenomenal experience entirely yet produces the same behavioral response via the same neural machinery. If the zombie's wince follows from neural processes, and yours does too, what additional causal contribution is the conscious feeling making?
This is the exclusion problem in its consciousness-specific form. The worry is that the physical description of a causal chain is already complete at the neural level. If physical events have sufficient physical causes, where does consciousness insert itself? Three broad positions emerge: (1) identity theory sidesteps the problem by identifying conscious states with neural states — consciousness isn't separate from the physical process, it *is* the physical process, so there is no additional thing needing causal entry; (2) property dualism maintains that phenomenal properties are distinct from physical properties but supervene on them, raising the question of how non-physical properties could causally interact with physical systems; (3) interactionism bites the bullet and claims consciousness does causally interact with physical systems, typically facing objections about how this is compatible with physical closure.
A key clarification helps here: there is a difference between the causal efficacy of mental states (which identity theorists and functionalists can accept) and the causal efficacy of the phenomenal character of those states (which is the harder problem). You may believe that pain causes avoidance behavior. But is it the *quality* of pain — the awful feeling — that does the causing, or merely its functional role (the information-processing role it plays)? If it is only the functional role, then a system that processes pain-like signals without any phenomenal experience would behave identically, suggesting consciousness adds nothing to the causal story. This remains one of the genuinely open problems in philosophy of mind.
Topics in reflective domains aren't scored by quiz answers. Read, reflect, and mark when you've thought it through.