Social Sciences in China, 2024

Vol. 45 , No. 4, 2024

A Philosophical Study of the Internalization of Natural Rationality and the Origin of Mental Causation

(Abstract)

Liu Chuang

Action is not just behavior. Without beliefs, desires, and intentions as reasons, action cannot be considered action. This is the central idea of the contemporary philosophy of action. But where does the root lie in explaining action by the reasons of belief, desire, and intention? What is the fundamental difference between mental causal states and the brain’s neural-dynamic causal states as reasons for action? The literature of philosophy of mind offers various perspectives on these questions. The active inference theory, centered on the free energy principle (FEP), provides new resources for explaining mental causation in animals and humans. The physical explanation of action is limited to efficient causal explanations, while the intentional mental causation emphasized by Davidson and Searle is precisely the internalization of natural teleological causation in animals and humans. This internalization follows the FEP of self-organizing systems; it has evolved through long and complex evolutionary game processes. FEP is not only a telelolgical principle, but also the law of nature that provides the foundation for intentional explanations of action. The active inference that emerges through natural competition and selection follows a second-order natural law, FEP, providing a natural mechanism for resolving mind-body problems such as anomalous monism.

Keywords: teleological causation, efficient causation, evolutionary gaming, emergence, Bayesian brain, active inference