Presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency.

Physicalism - the thesis that everything there is in the world, including our minds is constituted by basic physical entities - has dominated the philosophy of mind during the last few decades. But, although the conceptual foundations of the physicalist agenda - including a proper explication of notions, such as 'causation', 'determination', 'realization' or even 'physicalism' itself - must be settled before more specific problems (e.g. the problems of mental causation and human agency) can be satisfactorily addressed, a comprehensive philosophical reflection on the relationships between the various key concepts of the debate on physicalism is yet missing. This book presents a range of essays on the conceptual foundations of physicalism, mental causation and human agency.

Preface
Part I: Conceptual Foundations: Realization, Supervenience, and the Characterization of Physicalism
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Introduction
John Heil, Multiply Realized Properties
Carl Gillett, Non-Reductive Realization and Non-Reductive Identity: What Physicalism Does Not Entail
Gene Witmer, Multiple Realizability and Psychological Laws: Evaluating Kim's Challenge
Paul Noordhof, Not Old ... But Not That New Either: Explicability, Emergence, and the Characterisation of Materialism
John Bolender, A Farewell to Isms
Part II: Overdetermination and the Causal Closure of the Physical
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Introduction
E.J. Lowe, Physical Causal Closure and the Invisibility of Mental Causation
Andrew Melnyk, Some Evidence for Physicalism
Barbara Montero, Varieties of Causal Closure
Part III: Mental Causation and the Problem of Causal/Explanatory Exclusion
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Introduction
Peter Menzies, The Causal Efficacy of Mental States
Paul Raymont, Kim on Closure, Exclusion and Nonreductive Physicalism
Ausonio Marras, Methodological and Ontological Aspects of the Mental Causation Problem
Part IV: Causality and Human Agency
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Introduction
Noa Latham, Are There Any Non-Motivating Reasons for Action?
Ralf Stoecker, Climbers, Pigs and Wiggled Ears: The Problem of Waywardness in Action Theory
Terence Horgan, John Tienson, George Graham, The Phenomenology of First-Person Agency
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Name Index
Subject Index