Epistemological approaches to mental causation argue that the notorious problem of mental causation as captured in the question
“How can irreducible, physically realized, and potentially relational mental properties be causally efficacious in the production
of physical effects?” has a very simple solution: One merely has to abandon any
metaphysical considerations in favor of
epistemological considerations and accept that our explanatory practice is a much better guide to causal relevance than the metaphysical
reasoning carried out from the philosophical armchair. I argue that epistemological approaches to mental causation do not
enjoy any genuine advantage over theories which treat the problem of mental causation as a genuinely metaphysical problem.