Physicalism and causal arguments: replies to critics

Abstract In Zhong (2023), I develop a causal argument for physicalism—the view that mental phenomena are grounded in physical phenomena—inspired by the familiar causal argument for reductive physicalism. I attempt to show that while the old causal argument is problematic, the new causal argument is convincing. In this article, I further defend my view by addressing objections from four critics (Jessica Wilson, Thomas Kroedel, Bram Vaassen, and Wenjun Zhang). The structure of this paper is as follows. In Section 1, I clarify some of the central notions and assumptions. In Sections 2–3, I respond, in turn, to the criticisms concerning the old argument and the new argument.