The mental and the physical appear radically distinct from each other. Yet, they must also be linked, at least according to a scientifically informed account of the two. The central task of the philosophy of mind must be, therefore, to explain how the mental can be dependent on the physical, yet different from it: what, in the fundamentally physical world, sets mental features apart from the non-mental, purely physical features? Here, an answer to this question is outlined according to which, first, the notion of “physical” is tied to our ability to apply fine-grained interventions to the world, enabling more precise and fundamental control over it, and second, the notion of “mental” is tied to our ability to apply coarse-grained interventions to the world, enabling more efficient control over it. This account provides distinct roles for the two, in a world that is fundamentally physical.