On the Concepts of Mental Causation and Informational Causation

Abstract

The article addresses the problem of mental causation – the question of how phenomena of subjective reality, which lack physical characteristics, can determine bodily processes. The author examines the distinctive features of the informational approach to the mind–brain problem and traces the development of his informational theory of consciousness from its origins in the 1960s, while also engaging with methodological objections raised against it from within analytic philosophy. A fundamental distinction is drawn between informational and physical causation: unlike the latter, the effect in informational causation is determined not by the physical properties of the substrate, but by an established code dependence that remains invariant with respect to those properties. Mental causation is understood as a specific form of informational causation, realized through neurodynamic code transformations in the brain. The author also explores the relationship between the mental and the physical, the problem of subjective reality, the category of the ideal, the principle of isofunctionalism of systems, and its epistemological implications. The article demonstrates the significance of the informational approach for contemporary neuroscience, particularly for decoding the neurodynamic brain codes of subjective reality phenomena. The author critically examines the interpretation of his theory offered by A.A. Zhudina and refutes her claims regarding the reduction of the mental to the physical, the identity of the mental and the physical, the causal closure of the physical domain, and the principle of supervenience. The study concludes that without a solid theoretical account of mental causation, neither a coherent theory of consciousness nor a scientifically rigorous explanation of free will is achievable.