Pitts J Brian
Faculty of Philosophy and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Philosophia (Ramat Gan). 2020;48(2):673-707. doi: 10.1007/s11406-019-00102-7. Epub 2019 Jul 31.
Since Leibniz's time, Cartesian mental causation has been criticized for violating the conservation of energy and momentum. (Non-epiphenomenalist property dualism is analogous.) Many dualist responses clearly fail. But conservation laws have important neglected features generally undermining the objection. Conservation is , holding first not for the universe, but for everywhere separately. The energy (or momentum, ) in any volume changes only due to what flows through the boundaries (no teleportation). Constant total energy holds if the global summing-up of local conservation laws converges; it probably doesn't in reality. Energy (momentum) conservation holds if there is symmetry, the sameness of the laws over time (space). Thus, if there are time-places where symmetries fail due to nonphysical influence, conservation laws fail there and then, while holding elsewhere, such as refrigerators and stars. Noether's converse first theorem shows that conservation laws imply symmetries. Thus conservation trivially nearly entails the causal closure of the physical. But expecting conservation to hold in the brain () simply assumes the falsehood of Cartesianism. Hence Leibniz's objection begs the question. Empirical neuroscience is another matter. So is Einstein's General Relativity: far from providing a loophole, General Relativity makes mental causation .
自莱布尼茨时代以来，笛卡尔式的心理因果关系就因违反能量和动量守恒而受到批评。（非副现象论的属性二元论也类似。）许多二元论的回应显然是失败的。但守恒定律有一些重要的、被忽视的特征，总体上削弱了这一反对意见。守恒首先不是适用于整个宇宙，而是分别适用于宇宙的每一处。任何体积内的能量（或动量）变化仅仅是由于流过边界的东西（不存在瞬移）。如果局部守恒定律的全局总和收敛，那么总能量才会保持恒定；但在现实中可能并非如此。如果存在对称性，即定律在时间（空间）上的一致性，那么能量（动量）守恒才成立。因此，如果存在由于非物理影响而导致对称性失效的时空区域，那么守恒定律在这些区域就会失效，而在其他地方，比如冰箱和恒星所在的地方，守恒定律仍然成立。诺特定理的逆定理表明守恒定律意味着对称性。因此，守恒几乎理所当然地意味着物理的因果封闭性。但期望守恒定律在大脑中成立，这仅仅假定了笛卡尔主义是错误的。因此，莱布尼茨的反对意见是在回避问题。经验神经科学则是另一回事。爱因斯坦的广义相对论也是如此：广义相对论远非提供了一个漏洞，而是使得心理因果关系…… （原文此处似乎不完整）
