Mental and conscious events have no physical or mental effects, because the physical world can have no outside causes {causal closure} {causal completeness}. Mental events that seem to cause have physical causes.
If mental states are not just physical states and can have physical effects, physical changes happen without physical laws. However, physical laws account for all observable physical changes [Seager, 1999]. Therefore, non-physical mental states have no physical effects {causal impotence}. In the pre-established harmony (Leibniz), mind and matter do not affect each other but always synchronize, localize to same place, and correlate in intensity, through God. In epiphenomenalism, matter causes mind {mental smoke}, but mind cannot affect matter. In philosophical zombies, all behavior about conscious experience can happen without consciousness.
The physical world seems to have causal closure, with no cause or effect left for mental or conscious forces or events {completeness problem} {causal completeness problem} {causally complete}. Brain physiology seems able to account for all brain functions and all behavior, so mental states, causes, and effects are unnecessary. Human brain examinations never show evidence of mental forces or states. Mental forces or states never have causes or effects.
Newtonian gravity has action at a distance. Perhaps, complex human-brain structures and functions can make new forces {configurational force} (Broad). However, all physical forces involve contact through exchanged particles, and only properties inherent in matter can cause forces. Mental forces cannot be the right type to influence matter. Quantum-mechanical action-at-a-distance phenomena are not like mental forces or states.
Structural properties can only cause physiological properties {epiphobia} that actually cause physical behavior.
6-Philosophy-Mind-Theories-Dualism
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Date Modified: 2022.0225