Assessment and Critique of Current Mental Causation in Reduction and Non-reduction Physicalism

Mental causation is the virtue that describes what mechanism in the mental state causes the physical state. The problem of mental causation is based upon the property of dualism. Type identity theory as reduction physicalism and token identity as non-reduction physicalism results in epiphenomenalism. Functionalism in comparison to causation is the concept of realization, but it ultimately confuses epistemology with ontology. Philosophers have failed to present a type of physicalism that does not result in epiphenomenalism. Physicalism is confronted with the dilemma that one side is epiphenomenalism and the other side is the resolution of metaphysical problem with the epistemological trick. To resolve this dilemma we need to go beyond physicalism, both reduction and non-reduction. We need to not think of physicalism as the most complete approach to answer the mind-body problem, which this paper attempts.