Causal closure

However, as Kim has agreed, it seems intuitively problematic to strip mental events of their causal power.

[8] In modern times, it has been pointed out that science is based on removing the subject from investigations, and by seeking objectivity.

This outsider status for the observer, a third-person perspective, is said by some philosophers to have automatically severed science from the ability to examine subjective issues like consciousness and free will.

[12] Some philosophers have criticized the argument for the physical causal closure by supporting teleology and mental-to-physical causation via a soul.

For instance, the movement of a writer's fingers on the keyboard and a reader's eyes across the screen is irreducibly explained in reference to the goal of writing an intelligible sentence or of learning about the physical causal closure arguments, respectively.

To say, "I am moving my fingers because my brain signals are triggering muscle motion in my arms" is true, but does not exhaustively explain all the causes.

Goetz and Taliaferro urge that this challenge is unjustified, partly because it would imply that the real cause of arguing for the physical causal closure is neurobiological activity in the brain, not (as we know it is) the purpose-based attempt to understand the world and explain it to others.