Exclusion Never Works For Free

The causal exclusion argument is advertised as needing nothing the nonreductive physicalist does not already grant. Physicalism, closure, distinctness, higher-level efficacy, and a ban on overdetermination go in, and the redundancy of the higher-level cause is supposed to come out. I argue that the advertisement conceals a purchase. Closure supplies a physical producer of the effect. Physicalism supplies a physical base for the higher-level cause. Those are two roles, and no canonical premise makes them one item. The diagnosis retains a no-overdetermination principle, a univocal reading of 'physical', and productive causation. The producer must also uniquely determine the cause it is meant to replace, a requirement I call the Uniqueness Assumption, and the premises leave it unmet. Without it, the five canonical theses are jointly consistent. Meeting it costs a bridge, such as identity, realization, or grounding. And even where the bridge is granted, as with pain and its neural realizer, a further applicability premise is needed before a realized property and its realizer compete. The point is logical, not metaphysical. The producer and the base may coincide in the world. What the canonical argument does not contain is a premise that says so. The advertised reductio therefore requires an unstated sixth premise, while its application to a realized property and its realizer requires a further contested scope claim. Exclusion never works for free.