Rational Causation

by Eric Marcus

We explain what people think and do by citing their reasons, but how do such explanations work, and what do they tell us about the nature of reality? Contemporary efforts to address these questions are often motivated by the worry that our ordinary conception of rationality contains a kernel of supernaturalism—a ghostly presence that meditates on sensory messages and orchestrates behavior on the basis of its ethereal calculations. In shunning this otherworldly conception, contemporary philosophers have focused on the project of “naturalizing” the mind, viewing it as a kind of machine that converts sensory input and bodily impulse into thought and action. Eric Marcus rejects this choice between physicalism and supernaturalism as false and defends a third way.He argues that philosophers have failed to take seriously the idea that rational explanations postulate a distinctive sort of causation—rational causation. Rational explanations do not reveal the same sorts of causal connections that explanations in the natural sciences do. Rather, rational causation draws on the theoretical and practical inferential abilities of human beings. Marcus defends this position against a wide array of physicalist arguments that have captivated philosophers of mind for decades. Along the way he provides novel views on, for example, the difference between rational and nonrational animals and the distinction between states and events.

Genres: Philosophy

279 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2012

About the author

Eric Marcus is a communications expert who has been communicating with the broad public and specific niche audiences for three decades.  His work has ranged from writing consumer-oriented books and developing promotional and informational materials for non-profit and commercial enterprises to production jobs for both documentaries and television network news.

Eric’s ten books include Why Suicide?, What If Someone I Know Is Gay?, and Breaking the Surface, the #1 New York Times best-selling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis.  In addition, Eric has written articles and columns for the New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsweek, and the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

His many clients have included Waldenbooks, PBS “American Experience,” and Sanky Communications (for which he has worked on development materials for Planned Parenthood NYC, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, and MOMA, among others).  Most recently, Eric has worked with the family of the late Sir James Goldsmith to create detailed illustrated guides for their two nature reserves and luxury resorts that convey to guests, potential guests, and travel industry experts the essential qualities and features of these remarkable places.

Eric is a former associate producer for ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning.”  For a recent PBS “American Experience” documentary about the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York’s Greenwich Village, Eric wore several hats, including advisor, associate producer, still photographer, and author of the film’s online teaching guide.

In addition to his behind-the-scenes work, Eric also has extensive experience on the other side of the microphone and camera as a spokesman on a range of issues related to his books.  He is also a seasoned moderator and conversation facilitator, and in that capacity has worked in both public and private forums for clients ranging from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association to Unilever and the University of South Dakota.

Eric Marcus is a graduate of New York City public schools, after which he attended Vassar College and earned master’s degrees from Columbia University in both journalism and real estate development.

Reviews

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers much of the same ground as Sebastian Rödl's Self-Consciousness. Both books are fundamentally concerned with articulating the causal efficacy of reason. Where Rödl develops arguments about perception as a conscious power of knowledge and practical reason as a self-conscious power of agency, Marcus articulates and defends both an account of reason as a self-conscious power of inference and a similar account of practical reason. Where Rödl drew heavily on Kant, Hegel, Aristotle and even Aquinas at times, placing them in conversation with contemporary philosophers, Marcus focuses almost completely on contemporary debates within analytic philosophy. Both draw heavily upon Anscombe for their understanding of agency but go beyond Intention in important ways. It seems clear that there is something fundamentally right about the account of rational causation in Marcus's book. According to Marcus, believing p because q is a matter of representing p as to-be-believed because q is to-be-believed. Similarly doing x because one is doing y, is a matter of representing x as to-be-done, because y is to-be-done. Because of this, acting for a reason and inferring are matters about which one must be able to state one's reasons, one must be able to say why one believes or is acting. They are essentially self-conscious, in Rödl's terms. Marcus argues that rational causation is sui generis, differing from efficient causality. Though it is unclear exactly what this claim amounts to.

What is correct about Marcus's account of rational causation is that it takes reason on its own terms, refusing to truncate the nature of reason for fear offending a dogmatic physicalism. Besides defending these views, Marcus provides an interesting account of animal agency that allows that animals act for reasons but not because they represent an end as to-be-done. Thus unlike human beings, animals possess knowledge and act for reasons, but they lack self-consciousness, and thus, the ability to represent their reasons as reasons. It would be interesting to place this account in dialogue with MacIntyre's similar account in Dependent Rational Animals.

While Marcus, does an excellent job of dispelling many of the dogmatic physicalist criticisms that are to be expected from an account of rational causation, something is still lacking from his account. Readers are left wondering just what type of causality rational causation really is, if not some type of efficient causality. This nagging doubt is fed in part by the fact that Marcus accepts global supervenience such that given a world with an identical set of physical facts an identical set of mental facts follows. The relationship between physical states that realize mental states is not adequately explained; nor are we told why, if mental facts are irreducible to physical facts, we ought to accept global supervenience. A more satisfying account ought to explore these questions. One possibility would be to place Marcus's work in dialogue with Thomist accounts of the mind. Aquinas offers reasons for thinking that global supervenience is true while avoiding any sort of reductive account of the mind. Similarly, it would be extremely interesting to explore the implications of Marcus's work in the context of the social sciences. This might help to elaborate more fully the nature of rational causation as a distinct form of causality.

Despite these criticisms Rational Causation is an excellent contribution to debates concerning epistemology, agency, and causality, and should serve as a foundation for future work addressing questions in these areas.