about human agency and causation, a particular commitment on the nature of consciousness does not directly affect my discussion of agency. With or without an additional immaterial mind, I believe that a purely physicalist account of agency

ingredient in downward causation, Arthur Peacocke , in his essay in this volume, assimilates it to “whole-part influence”). Murphy then turns to the issue of mental causation: How do reasons get their grip on the causal

a concept of the downward causation of the mental in order to reconcile the notion of mental causation and free will with neurobiological causation.  But I stop here and I have saved you 20 minutes to ask me questions.

a concept of the downward causation of the mental in order to reconcile the notion of mental causation and free will with neurobiological causation.But I stop here and I have saved you 20 minutes to ask me questions. Topic

the system of causation, at another level not susceptible to physical description. This goes back to Thomas Aquinas and his discussion of primary and secondary causation. In the light of these ‘safe’

(true, downward) mental causation implies nonreducibility [as Stoeger and Murphy argue] and physicalism implies the converse, it is hard to see how these two views could be compatible.” Meyering distinguishes three versions of

the present from past causation; and this frees the present for newness in the future. God is unceasing in serving the world in this manner. By God imparting the quality of openness to the future, God makes room for the distinction

above that the main issue is causation. To say that the mental level of functioning is not reducible is to say that a complete causal account of what goes on in the world has to take it into account. Now it may be difficult, surprisingly so, to

divine causation differs from any other kind - we should not expect to be able to characterise it within our own terms we have no ‘pure-secondary causes’ to look at - everything is informed by divine

of ‘top-down’ causation we know about are all analysable in ‘bottom-up’ terms. Top-down causation is a purely explanatory procedure, it is a bold strategy to invoke it for ontological purposes, and to suppose that a