Tropes and Mind: In Defense of the Trope Solution to the Problem of Mental Causation

Sammanfattning: The trope solution to the problem of mental causation combines a trope monism, i.e. that properties are tropes and all tropes are physical, with a type dualism, i.e. that although all tropes are of a physical type, there are subsets of tropes that are also of a mental type. It does so in order to reconcile three individually plausible yet seemingly incompatible principles that together would ensure the efficacy of mental properties in a physicalist framework: (i) That mental properties are at least sometimes relevant to physical events [relevance]; (ii) that every physical event has in its causal history only physical events and properties [closure]; and (iii) that mental properties are not physical properties [distinctness]. Two major objections to the trope solution are addressed: the first claims that the trope solution merely replaces one problem at the level of events with another at the level of tropes and types; the second claims that trope monism is incompatible with type dualism. The first objection is shown to be based on a flawed conception of the trope solution, but it nevertheless forces a concession that opens up for the second objection. In defense of the trope solution it is argued that what the second objection claims to be a denial of the multiple realizability argument – which is what leads to the incompatibility – might actually be a valid response to it.