Stephen Morse seems to have adopted a controversial position regarding the
mindbody relationship: John Searle’s non-reductivism, which claims that conscious mental
states are causal yet not reducible to their underlying brain states. Searle’s position has
been roundly criticized, with some arguing the theory taken as a whole is incoherent. In
this paper I review these criticisms and add my own, concluding that Searle’s position is
indeed contradictory, both internally and with regard to Morse’s other views. Thus I argue
that Morse ought to abandon Searle’s non-reductive theory. Instead, I claim Morse ought
to adopt a non-eliminative reductive account that can more easily support his realism about
folk psychological states, and the existence of causally effective mental states in a purely
physical world.

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• What does It Mean to be a Mechanism? Stephen Morse, Non-reductivism, and Mental Causation
• What does It Mean to be a Mechanism? Stephen Morse, Non-reductivism, and Mental Causation