The Causal Closure of the Physical Challenged in the Light of Causality —The Case of Biological Mutations

Abstract

The main challenge to mental causation arises from the causal exclusion argument proposed by Jaegwon Kim, which involves the principles of causal closure of the physical domain and non-overdetermination. The central aim of this article is to counter this argument with the idea that phenomena of essential chance—such as “absolute coincidences”—underlie intrinsic creations over the course of evolution. In the case of a mutation, given the symbolic nature of the genetic code, the potential functional effects resulting from an alteration in an organism’s DNA sequence are not a necessary outcome of the preexisting state of the natural system, even defined probabilistically: The probabilistic chance underlying the alteration of the genotype is converted into an essential chance of the functional effects of mutations. This instance of causal intransitivity challenges the principle of causal closure and makes room for the appearance of entities and properties that are causally irreducible to those that preceded them.