Exclusion endures: How compatibilism allows

dualists to bypass the causal closure argument

CHRISTOPHER DEVLIN BROWN

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Kim (1993) maintains that his ‘exclusion argument’ forces us to accept re-
ductive physicalism, which identifies mental and other high-level properties
of the world with lower-level properties, over nonreductive physicalism,
which avoids such identifications. According to Kim, the exclusion argument
shows that any nonreductive view leads to either epiphenomenalism or an
unacceptable overdetermination of physical effects by physical causes.
However, Kim’s assessment is far from universally agreed upon, and vari-
ous nonreductive physicalists have developed responses to the exclusion ar-
gument, aiming to maintain that physicalism need not collapse mental and
other high-level properties into lower-level physical properties. A popular
nonreductive physicalist approach called ‘compatibilism’ is exemplified by
the work of Bennett (2003, 2008), developing a line of thought that goes
back to Malcolm (1968) and is found in Yablo 1992, Mellor 1995 and
Pereboom and Kornblith 1991, and is similar to the approach offered by
Shoemaker (2001).
My contention is that despite its popularity, compatibilism is a poisoned
chalice for physicalists. Bennett’s route for nonreductive physicalists to
escape Kim’s exclusion argument is equally a route for dualists to escape
the causal closure argument. Compatibilism thereby undercuts the strongest
argument in favour of physicalism.
In ‘Exclusion again’, Bennett (2008) starts her defence of nonreductive
physicalism by construing the exclusion problem as the following quintet
of mutually exclusive claims (I’m using her titles for these claims):
Distinctness: mental and physical properties are distinct
Completeness: every effect has a sufficient physical cause
Efficacy: mental events at least sometimes cause physical events, and do
so in virtue of the mental properties of the event
Nonoverdetermination: events are not systematically overdetermined
Exclusion: if an effect has more than one sufficient cause, then it is
overdetermined
Normally these claims are put together into an argument against
Distinctness, with the other propositions as the premisses. A compatibilist
thinks that there is an alternative way to resolve the tension than by denying
Distinctness – which is the reductionist’s move – via a sophisticated rejection
of Nonoverdetermination. The problem with this is that allowing

Analysis Vol 79 | Number 4 | October 2019 | pp. 587–594 doi:10.1093/analys/any095

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588 | christopher devlin brown

overdetermination of physical effects by mental causes also opens the door to

nonphysicalism. The reason is that Kim’s exclusion argument against non-
reductive physicalism is essentially the same as the causal closure argument
against dualism.

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Just in case you can’t remember the details of the causal closure argument,
here it is: as Papineau (2009: 1) puts it, ‘every physical effect has a sufficient
physical cause’, mental phenomena have physical effects, and physical effects
are not systematically overdetermined, so all phenomena that causally affect
the physical – including mental phenomena – are themselves physical.1 So
formulated, the exclusion argument and the causal closure argument are
nearly indistinguishable, save that exclusion targets nonreductive physicalism
and causal closure targets dualism.
Most nonreductive physicalists will endorse the causal closure argument as
the basis for embracing physicalism in the first place, at the same time as
aiming to show that it does not require us to follow Kim in reducing mind
down to neural or other lower-level phenomena. For instance, Bennett (2008:
282) says that nonreductive physicalists
. . . should not merely argue that we are not in trouble over the exclusion
problem; we should argue that we are not in trouble while the dualist
still is. . . . [W]e should do our best to deny that the exclusion argument
is a good argument for reduction, while nonetheless insisting that it is a
good argument for the claim that the mental is nothing over and above
the physical. . . . After all, actual arguments for physicalism are rather
hard to come by, and we should not throw the baby out with the
bathwater.
The general issue here is clear enough. If one or more of the claims in the
exclusion argument are denied or construed in a way that is consistent with
dualism, then the physicalist opens up a route for a dualist to bypass the most
powerful argument for physicalism, since these two arguments are essentially
the same. For instance, suppose a nonreductive physicalist were to simply
deny Nonoverdetermination and allow that events can be systematically
overdetermined by various causes. If it were acceptable to deny
Nonoverdetermination in this straightforward way, then a dualist could
claim that it is acceptable for physical events to be causally overdetermined

1 There is a growing body of literature (e.g. Crane and Mellor 1990, Montero 1999, 2005)
on how ‘physical’ ought to be understood. Most of the debate focuses on whether ‘phys-
ical’ ought to be tied to physics somehow (Smart 1978, Melnyk 1997, 2003), or be defined
as essentially nonmental (Montero and Papineau 2005, Worley 2006), or some combin-
ation (Wilson 2006). It is outside the scope of this paper to really delve into this debate,
even though the meaning of ‘physical’ has obvious consequences for the exclusion and
causal closure arguments, which explicitly invoke the term. For my purposes it is sufficient
to take ‘physical’ to mean ‘not fundamentally mental’, though there are problems with
such a definition (see Montero 2006 and Brown 2017).
 exclusion endures | 589

by both physical and nonphysical causes. Thus, it is vital for a compatibilist

to make sure that the route she is opening up is navigable by a nonreductive
physicalist but not by a dualist.
Unfortunately, the route that Bennett-style compatibilism provides for

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nonreductive physicalists is equally open to dualists. This attempts to block
the exclusion argument by attending to the tight modal relationship between
higher- and lower-level properties required by nonreductive physicalism.
However, a similarly tight modal relationship will be embraced by any dual-
ists who hold that natural laws are metaphysically necessary. Despite its
increasingly widespread popularity among nonreductive physicalists, it thus
seems that the compatibilist’s proposed solution cannot be upheld without
removing the barriers to dualists of this sort.
Let us look at the details. The compatibilist view defended by Bennett
amounts to a nuanced denial of Nonoverdetermination (the claim that no
events are systematically overdetermined). She thinks that an effect can have
multiple sufficient causes without being ‘problematically’ overdetermined in
the way that a death by firing squad is overdetermined by the many bullets
entering the body. In Bennett’s view, problematic overdetermination only
occurs when the influences of causes M and P are strongly modally inde-
pendent, in the following sense: if cause P had happened without cause M,
effect E still would have happened, and if cause M had happened without
cause P, effect E still would have happened – unless one or both of these
propositions are vacuously true.2 The vacuous truth of one of these propos-
itions is sufficient for the effect to be non-problematically overdetermined.
This deserves some unpacking. Compatibilism offers a modal analysis of
overdetermination using counterfactuals. Applying this to the firing squad
example, suppose there are two shooters named M and P who both fire
bullets into a poor condemned person, and that event E, the unfortunate’s
death, follows after the firing of the bullets. This example assumes that, at
minimum, E is causally dependent on either M or P in the actual world. If
there is a nearby counterfactual world containing only M, and in that world
E follows M’s firing, and there is a nearby counterfactual world containing
only P, and in that world E follows P’s firing, then E is overdetermined by
M and P.
Notice that if E hadn’t occurred in both counterfactuals, as would be the
case if two bullets were needed to kill the condemned person but one alone
was insufficient, then M’s and P’s firings jointly constitute a single sufficient
cause and E is not overdetermined. If E occurs in one of the counterfactuals

2 The relevant possible worlds are ones that are maximally close to the actual world (ac-
cording to a metric of similarity), yet in which P or M occurs alone. This is in line with the
popular counterfactual account of causation proposed by Lewis (1973); but Bennett is
careful to stress that her non-problematic overdetermination test does not require endor-
sing a more general counterfactual account of causation.
590 | christopher devlin brown

but not the other, then again E has only one sufficient cause. Alternatively –
and this is very important for a compatibilist – suppose the actual-world
example were such that M and P are different names for the same shooter:
now there is no world containing M shooting without P shooting. Thus, it

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would be vacuously true that every world containing M but not P is one in
which E follows M’s shooting – since there are no such worlds, given M and
P are the same person.3
Nonreductionists deny that mental and narrowly physical properties are
identical, and instead can allow mental properties to be realized by different
physical states, like pain being realized by neurons or silicon. However, this
doesn’t affect the ability of a nonreductionist to use Bennett’s test for non-
problematic overdetermination, since as long as either ‘M without P is fol-
lowed by E’ or ‘P without M is followed by E’ is vacuously true, then the test
is passed.
Bennett thus claims that a nonreductive physicalist can have events invol-
ving high-level M (henceforth M ¼ mental) properties and their low-level P
(henceforth P ¼ physical) realizers come out as cases of non-problematic
overdetermination. That’s because nonreductive physicalists hold that the
physical realm metaphysically determines the mental, even if not vice versa.
So they will say that there are no metaphysically possible worlds with our
world’s P properties yet without our M properties. And this means that
causal events involving those properties will pass the test for non-problematic
overdetermination. It is vacuously true that every world in which P occurs
without M is a world in which E occurs – since there are no such worlds.
Bennett thinks that no dualist can make a similar move involving the
vacuous truth of the non-problematic overdetermination test, since dualists
are committed to the claim that there are possible worlds that copy actual-
world physical properties without copying mental properties. She believes
that every dualist must deem that the connection between physical and
mental properties is metaphysically contingent, saying ‘I do not think that
dualism is consistent with the metaphysically necessary supervenience of
everything on the physical’ (Bennett 2008: 299). However, there is a coherent
dualist position – which I will call ‘necessitarian dualism’, as has been dis-
cussed by Horgan (1993), Wilson (2002) and others – that takes a different

3 It is also vacuously true that all these worlds (none) are also worlds in which E does not
follow M without P or P without M. This is, admittedly, weird: all worlds (none) that
contain M without P or P without M are worlds in which E does and does not occur. Is
this a problem for Bennett’s non-problematic overdetermination test? I think not: she is not
proposing a general criterion for causation, but rather a narrow criterion for causal over-
determination. As I pointed out, the test assumes that there is some sort of causal rela-
tionship between P or M and E in the actual world. So long as one of the disjuncts of the
test is vacuously satisfied – as when P ¼ M or œ(P occurs!M occurs) – then the test is
passed. It does not matter what other modal propositions concerning P, M and E are true,
though they may sound weird and contradictory when juxtaposed.
 exclusion endures | 591

stance on the modal relationship between the mental and physical, and this
position also makes the claim ‘P without M causes E’ come out as vacuously
true.
Necessitarian dualists are those who embrace dispositional essentialism –

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that is, they hold that properties possess their nomological profiles essentially
(see Bird 2005, 2007). So they will hold that, if there are psychophysical laws
governing the occurrence of nonphysical mental M properties given appro-
priate physical conditions P, then it will be metaphysically impossible to have
P without M.4 If this is a coherent view, then Bennett has failed to create a
solution to the exclusion problem that a nonreductionist could endorse but a
dualist cannot. This is because a necessitarian dualist can accept that all
physical effects have sufficient physical causes (as per Closure), yet invoke
Bennett’s compatibilism to say that physical effects are non-problematically
overcaused by both physical properties and nonphysical properties that ne-
cessarily accompany them.
However, Bennett is not oblivious to this move by the dualist and tries to
undercut it in two ways. She asserts that necessitarian dualism – which she
refers to as ‘metaphysical-necessitation-dualism’ in her discussion of whether
compatibilism ‘requires physicalism’ (Bennett 2008: 298–99) – is either ul-
timately incoherent or radically undermotivated. I think that neither of these
responses works.
First: is necessitarian dualism coherent? If dualism cannot be wed to dis-
positional essentialism without becoming non-dualism, then the view is
contradictory. However, explaining the view in more detail will address
Bennett’s concern and show why the ‘dualism’ is appropriate in ‘necessitarian
dualism’.
Necessitarian dualism is just a combination of a few relatively familiar
positions. For instance, psychophysical laws that connect the physical and
nonphysical are borrowed from epiphenomenalist dualism, such that the
nonphysical is nomologically necessitated by the physical. Whenever physical
property P is realized in a world containing law L, nonphysical property M is
nomologically necessitated. However, unlike dualist epiphenomenalism, ne-
cessitarian dualism allows the mental to be causally efficacious via overde-
termination. This is borrowed from interactionist dualism of the sort which
admits that physical causes are fully sufficient to cause physical effects, but
adds that there are overdetermining nonphysical causes of those effects.
The final ingredient is dispositional essentialism, which says that properties
are at least partially individuated by their nomological roles – what a

4 My discussion is couched in terms of property dualism, as opposed to substance dualism.

This seems fine, since property dualism is far more popular in contemporary philosophy.
However, necessitarian dualism is strictly speaking neutral between property and sub-
stance dualism, and could alternately be formulated as the view that nonphysical sub-
stances, rather than nonphysical properties, are necessitated by physical properties.
592 | christopher devlin brown

property does is constitutive of what a property is. When added to the afore-
mentioned account of psychophysical laws, the result is that every world
containing P is also a world containing L, since L is essential to P on this
view. Every world containing P and L is also a world containing M, so

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nonphysical M is necessitated by physical P in every world in which P occurs.
I see nothing incoherent in such a view, even if contemporary, post-Kripke
(1980) dualism is nearly always formulated around the modal claim that
nonphysical mental properties are those which are not necessitated by the
physical. Such formulations have been considered plausible, I think, merely
because the sort of view under description here has been largely ignored. I
suspect that this error is primarily due to the sorts of arguments that phil-
osophers have used in the past few decades to motivate dualism, especially
since the publication of Chalmers’ (1996) massively influential The
Conscious Mind. This leads to the second criticism of necessitarian dualism:
that it is undermotivated.
One might think that the strongest argument for dualism is the ‘conceiv-
ability’ or ‘zombie’ argument (Chalmers 1996), which says that if it is con-
ceivable that all of our world’s physical properties could be realized without
any mental properties being realized, then it is possible that the physical and
mental could come apart in this manner. If such a scenario is possible, then
physicalism is false, since physicalism seems to require that the physical ne-
cessitates the mental. A necessitarian dualist cannot appeal to this argument,
since she must say that there is no possible world in which our world’s
physical properties could fail to generate mental properties. Does this mean
that there are no grounds on which necessitarian dualism could be defended?
No: the necessitarian dualist must merely appeal to a different argument
for dualism, like the well-known knowledge (Jackson 1982) or explanatory
gap (Levine 1983) arguments.5 These do not invoke a modal disconnect
between the physical and mental, but instead rely on epistemic considerations
– respectively, that certain mental properties cannot be inferred from know-
ledge of physical properties, or that physical properties fail to explain certain
mental properties.6 In this way a necessitarian dualist can reject the now-

5 These arguments are sometimes used (e.g. McGinn 1989) to support the view that certain
mental properties cannot be understood to be physical, yet that they are nonetheless
physical. Though this is a legitimate way to use these arguments, there is nothing prevent-
ing a dualist from appealing to them also – which, in fact, dualists do (Robinson 1993).
6 These arguments rely on epistemic considerations, but if they are to serve dualism, then
they must somehow make the leap to a metaphysical conclusion. One might think that the
only way to make the leap is by adding some sort of modal premiss to the effect that
physical properties do not necessitate mental properties – which would disallow a neces-
sitarian dualist from using these arguments. However, I think these arguments need not
include this modal premiss; they can instead be understood as abductive arguments for
dualism. If even an ideally rational being with access to all of the relevant scientific facts is
unable to infer everything about phenomenology, and is still unsatisfied by physical ex-
planations of phenomenology, then perhaps the best explanation is that the mental is
 exclusion endures | 593

typical modally based argument for dualism, yet still motivate her view with
an argument that does not rely on the possibility that mental properties can
fail to supervene on physical properties.
I can imagine that a nonreductive physicalist might accept all this and say,

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‘Well, what’s so bad about that? Both nonreductive physicalism and a non-
standard kind of dualism pass Bennett’s non-problematic overdetermination
test – so what?’. The problem, which I noted at the beginning of the paper, is
that the exclusion problem uses nearly all of the same premisses as the causal
closure argument for physicalism – which is the strongest argument for phys-
icalism. Allowing one of these premisses to be denied in the exclusion argu-
ment in a way that a dualist can adopt will allow the dualist to get around the
causal closure argument – not a very good thing for a physicalist to allow.
Bennett’s proposed response to the exclusion argument – allowing so-called
‘non-problematic’ kinds of overdetermination – is a route navigable by a
coherent and defensible sort of dualism. In this way, compatibilism allows
a necessitarian dualist to say that causal closure is not broken by physical
effects being overdetermined by both physical and nonphysical causes. Thus,
by Bennett’s own criteria for a good answer to the exclusion problem, she
and other compatibilists fail to provide a satisfying solution.7

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7 Many thanks to David Papineau and the anonymous referees for their abundant helpful
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594 | christopher devlin brown

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